Abstract
MAJOR BAIRD, in introducing the Air Service Estimates' to the House of Commons on February 22, gave an outline of o the work which had been done in creating - the new Air. Force. The works and lands used by the R.F.C. and R.N.A.S. have already been taken, over, I and co-ordination between the Air Ministry, the War Office, and the Admiralty has been secured by holding weekly conferences of the three staffs. Among the more interesting details of the speech from a scientific point of view are the particulars which Major Baird gave of the activities at the front. After all, the real measure of the success of scientific investigation in aeronautics at home is to be sought in the results achieved in the fighting area. These results were ex pressed in very concrete form in the speech, and we quote some figures given. In one day on the Western front 127 enemy batteries engaged were under aerial observation, twenty-eight gun-pits were destroyed, eighty more were damaged, and sixty explo sions of ammunition were caused. In reconnaissance work nearly 16,000 photographs were taken in one month. Our bombing machines, in short-range opera tions, dropped an average of 6500 bombs per month, representing a weight of about 120 tons. In addition to these activities, about 150,000 rounds of ammunition per month were used in attacking troops from the air. Such figures as these cannot fail to awaken a sense of the extreme importance of the Air Services in modern warfare; and the first item, viz. the destruction of i 127 batteries in a single day, brings home in a very convincing manner the effectiveness of aircraft for the control of artillery. Major Baird warmly commended I the work of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics [ in furthering the technical side of the subject, and expressed the hope that its valuable labours would add to the efficiency of the new Air Force in the future. The speech met with an enthusiastic reception, which it well deserved, for a more remarkable record of pro gress in so new a branch of the Services could scarcely be imagined.
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Military Aeronautics. Nature 100, 512–513 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/100512b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100512b0