220 



NATURE 



[February i6, 1922 



The Air Conference. 



T T is yet too early to judge of the effects on the 

 ■■■ future of aeronautics of the official and unofficial 

 speeches made in the course of the Air Conference at 

 the Guildhall, London, on February 7 and 8, but there 

 can be no doubt as to the seriousness of the various 

 speakers or the representative character of the gather- 

 ing. The dominant note of the Air Minister's address 

 was lack of belief in the future of civil aviation in 

 Europe, an expression of opinion not shared by the 

 members of the conference. It was asserted by more 

 than one speaker that a subsidy is needed by the 

 London-Paris air service only because France has 

 given a large measure of assistance to her designers, 

 constructors, and pilots. Whilst the British aircraft 

 companies have carried six passengers per machine 

 on each journey, the corresponding figure for French 

 aeroplanes is two ; on the other hand, the major 

 portion of the goods traffic has been taken in the air- 

 craft of other countries. 



The conference was opened by the Secretary of 

 State for Air, Major F. E. Guest, but for the 

 greater part of its proceedings Lord Weir was in 

 the chair. Matters relating to the Air Force were 

 not under review, as at the previous conference — a 

 development towards secrecy in the new fighting Ser- 

 vice which may be noted. Provision was made for the 

 reading of papers on the first day, the morning being 

 devoted to civil transport and the afternoon to technics 

 and research for both aeroplanes and airships. The 

 second day was fully occupied by discussion from the 

 assembled experts from the various branches of aero- 

 nautics. The depression produced by Major Guest was 

 not removed by the carefully prepared paper read by 

 Lord Gorell, the Under-Secretary of State for Air, and 

 speaker after speaker was moved to' protest. Lord 

 Gorell's paper showed that air activity is great in many 

 parts of the world, and that other countries are spend- 

 ing more money on development than is Britain. 

 Probably Lord Weir voiced the general sentiments 

 when he indicated a better quality for the endeavours 

 of this country, and suggested that enough had been 

 learnt to justify the development of the Imperial air 

 route, England-Egypt-India. A permanent committee 

 is now being formed to deal with the matter, and the 

 only resolution put to the conference endorsed the view 

 and was acceptable to the Air Ministry. 



Col. Bristow, with an intimate knowledge of the 

 working of the London-Paris air service, remarked 

 that "it is lamentable in the extreme that in this 

 year, the fourth after the Great War, the British 

 commercial air fleet should consist, all told, of fewer 

 than twenty aeroplanes ; in fact, on the day the paper 

 was written there were only six or seven." 



The exhibits on the aerodrome at Croydon on the 

 day preceding the conference must then have con- 

 stituted the whole of the existing commercial air 

 fleet, and the number may be contrasted with an 

 output of 1000 aeroplanes per week at the close of 

 the war. The smallness of the civil, as compared 

 with the military, side was referred to by Sir 

 Samuel Instone, of the Instone Air Line, on the -fol- 

 lowing day, when he mentioned the fact that the 

 subsidy for civil aviation is 20o,oooZ., whilst the ex- 

 penditure on the Air Force has been 18,500,000?. ; of 

 the 20o,oooZ. it is proposed that the spending of half 

 on new craft should rest with the Air Ministry, and 

 not with the transp>ort companies. 



The discussion on this section of the subject (civil 

 transport) turned on the importance of civil aviation 

 to progress. There was a strongly expressed view 

 that the new system of transport has come to stay. 



NO. 2729, VOL. 109] 



and the president of the Federation of British Indus- 

 tries attended the conference to give the blessing of 

 the business community and to announce adherence to 

 the theory of a sound subsidy in the early stages of 

 development. That the industry will ultimately sup- 

 port itself on a commercial footing was not doubted, 

 but no one accepted as satisfactory the statement of 

 the Air Minister that in certain directions Britain could 

 wait for ten years and then start again. 



Where is the principal stumbling-block? The 

 Director-General of Civil Aviation indicated it as " the 

 military be-all and end-all of aviation." The present 

 complete stoppage of airship work and the unsym- 

 pathetic attitude of the Air Ministry add further argu- 

 ments in the same sense. Major Scott's paper on 

 airships finished with an expression of opinion that 

 commercial airships were immediately possible as 

 technical devices, and support was given to this view 

 in the discussion. Another instance of Air Force 

 dominance is furnished by the experiments on a heli- 

 copter, mentioned by Lord Gorell and Gen. Bagnall 

 Wild ; it appears to be regarded by certain Air Force 

 officers as important and a subject for immediate ex- 

 periment and research ; technical experts and men of 

 science regard expenditure of money on the helicopter 

 as waste owing to the lack of promise of success for 

 very many years to come. The Brennan helicopter at 

 Farnborough is being built in secrecy, and, so far as 

 can be gathered, the Aeronautical Research Com- 

 mittee has not been consulted. 



This lack of balance between military wishes and 

 technical possibilities gave point to Col. M. O'Gor- 

 man's reference to the need for more scientific know- 

 ledge in high quarters at the Air Ministry. He 

 pointed out that fighting now depends on technical 

 complications beyond the understanding of military 

 commanders, and that dependence on their opinions 

 alone will necessarily lead to an unbalanced policy. 

 The need for such remarks was shown by Lord Gorell 

 when he said : "I do not speak in the least degree as 

 a technical expert ; probablv in the position which I 

 happen to hold it would be a disadvantage to pretend 

 to any degree of technical qualifications." Col. 

 O 'Gorman was unable to see why technical and 

 scientific knowledge should be a disqualification in a 

 Minister. 



During the discussion on civil transp>ort much refer- 

 ence was made to the need for research, but in the 

 afternoon the theme was research and yet more re- 

 search. A deep impression on the conference was pro- 

 duced by Sir Richard Glazebrook's references to R38. 

 Lord Gorell's paper contains the passage: "Since 

 the decision of the Dominion Premiers was taken, the 

 conquest of the air has suffered one of_ the greatest 

 disasters of its history in the terrible accident to R38. 

 It ought to be decisively said that the disaster has not 

 affected, and will not affect, the belief in the future 

 of airships. We are not so faint-hearted a race as to 

 allow ourselves to be deterred even by such an event ; 

 ii is the toll that Nature inevitably exacts from those 

 who seek to probe her secrets — and it has been paid." 



Sir Richard Glazebrook asked: "Was the loss of 

 the airship R38, with its crew of officers, technicians, 

 and men, necessary? Was it one of those dreadful 

 and seeminglv inevitable incidents in the evolution^ of 

 a new craft? " and answered his questions by saying 

 that "knowledge existed from experiments in the air 

 tunnels which would have enabled the collapse of the 

 ship to be fxDretold." The knowledge had not been 

 applied because of a gap between model and full-scale 

 experiments; attempts by the designers and the Aero- 



