Posted on 04/14/2008 6:42:45 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
London, April 13. – Finding that it cannot catch up with Germany quickly enough in the race for air supremacy, the British Government announced today that it had decided to make inquiries for military aircraft across the Atlantic.
“Definite exploratory action is being taken in regard to the possibility of the supply of aircraft for the Royal Air Force both from the United States and Canada,” Earl Winterton, Under-Secretary of State for Air, told questioners in the House of Commons.
Cheers from all parts of the House greeted the announcement, which followed pressure from influential quarters in recent weeks.
No orders have yet been placed except for training planes from the Boeing branch factory at Vancouver, B. C. It is understood, however, that a mission will leave this country within ten days to discover how many airplanes can be built for Britain across the Atlantic and how quickly they can be delivered.
What Britain needs above all at the moment and hopes to obtain from the United States is a fleet of heavy long-range bombers. According to well-informed aviation experts, there is not a single bomber in the Royal Air Force today which is capable of flying to Berlin and back.
Undoubtedly the German conquest of Austria was the greatest single factor in forcing the British Government to look across the Atlantic for these bombers. A contributory cause, however, is believed to be the unexpected trouble the government is having with the engineering unions in its effort to speed up the rearmament program.
The unions thus far have shown themselves deeply suspicious of the government’s intentions and reluctant to change their rules so as to permit the dilution of skilled by unskilled labor in armament factories. The government is still confident of winning the unions’ help, but at the same time it fears that negotiations between the employers and the unions will take a long time.
Accordingly, the Cabinet has decided to look elsewhere and explore every available source for new airplanes, even if it means going outside the country. For, without help from outside, the British Government now fears, it may find itself in a position of serious inferiority if a war should come.
The British are not too hopeful at the moment of getting what they need from the United States. They are aware that American aircraft factories are busy with American armament orders, and they also understand the political difficulties that may stand in the way of British orders.
Similar inquiries made in the United States and Canada eighteen months ago produced such discouraging replies that the British dropped the idea of help from across the Atlantic and called upon their own aircraft industry for a redoubled effort.
But the British Government now wonders whether substantial orders will not be more welcome to the United States in the midst of a trade recession than in the booming Autumn of 1936. Moreover, it feels that nothing could have a more sobering effect upon Europe than the spectacle of American factories turning out airplanes in large quantities for the British war machine.
Commenting on Earl Winterton’s announcement in London that the British Government was exploring the possibility of obtaining warplanes from this country and Canada, officials said that there was not the manufacturing capacity in this country for quick delivery of anything like 10,000 planes, but that there was a reasonable margin between orders in hand or in prospect and manufacturing capacity.
Obviously certain equipment developed by the American aviation services and of a secret military character, such as superchargers, controls and special types of armament, could not be made available to Britain, but officers said that, while this equipment was desirable, it was not vital.
“Shadow factories,” it was explained, were those that had been surveyed by the government with a view to ascertaining their potential productive capacity of armaments. A survey completed in Canada by the National Defense Department some time ago embraced more than 700 Canadian concerns.
Already some Canadian plants are turning out war material for the British Government, shells for the new 3.45-inch field gun being made by the National Steel Car Company of Hamilton.
As far as British purchases of aircraft in Canada are concerned, nine Canadian concerns are building planes for the National Defense Department, all of them types employed by the Royal Air Force. These include the speediest fighters and bombers.
Some of those companies have representatives at present in London and they are believed to be advancing to the War Office the advantages of having efficient aircraft factories established remote from centers that might be destroyed by aerial bombing in the event of war.
The union’s acceptance of this recommendation will probably enable strike leaders to save their faces, as only a part of the workers struck and many have already returned to work.
The press is unsympathetic to the strike, which is attributed to professional agitators led by Diego Luis Cordoba, a Negro Communist and a former member of Congress.
"Real Time +70 Years" would be 2078. There is only one "real time." Now.
I wouldn't want to be on an aircraft that is being remotely landed in "roughly the right area."
I once read (and I can’t substantiate where I read it) that one of the major reasons Germany lost the war was because it did not build a long-range bomber.
Ah, I just remembered the absolute altimeter, which was radio-based and which was certainly available in 1938. It just timed the delay in ground-reflected waves to work out distance above ground.
THAT plus the cone thing would have helped a lot in blind landings.
I got the message the last time you posted it. It is still wrong. See my tagline.
Yes. Next time do it right.
This will bend your head. An F-15 Strike Eagle can carry more bomb load than a B-17.
LOL, yes. My post 24 clears that up I hope.
Hmm, why ever am I thinking of the mysterious death of Ron Brown all of a sudden?
[Puts on glasses and rubs chin thoughtfully] Hmmm. Ground-reflected waves. It just might be crazy enough to work!
Dude, it IS 2078.
Summer Glau has been the dishy terminatrix-President of the United States ever since the world ended in 2015.
The only newspapers left in the world are the ones in Homer’s basement, hence these articles.
Faster, too, I'll bet.
Reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode where some 1960's era soldiers are magically transported back to the Little Big Horn where they share Custer's fate. Their sergeant back in the twentieth century says something like, "Too bad they didn't take a tank with them."
Odd comment, considering the masterful job Walter Duranty did in covering up Stalin's atrocities.
I hope they get those planes in time!
At about this same time my Dad got sent to the panhandle of Florida to build airfields to train those Brits to fly those planes.
I understand the main planes we ended up with, pre-war, were the B-24 Liberator (Good), the PBY Catalina (Very Good) and the Brewster Buffalo (Very Bad).
Any connection to this factoid found at http://www.pafw.com/nasp.htm?
In 1938, federal legislation authorized a 3,000 aircraft ceiling for Naval Aviation, which in turn brought additional growth to The Pensacola Naval Air Station. Auxiliary airfields were added in and around Pensacola.
Great Britain for one.
Hah! I just knew Tin Miss was working on some scheme of her own
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