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.
Now you're testing me? OK, no problem ;-)
We should begin by noting that the Brits & French invented tanks, and first used them in the First World War.
The first great combined arms battle is said to have been Amiens, in August 1918, where the allies fielded 532 tanks and 1,900 aircraft.
The first serious "tank theorist" is said to be Britain's JFC Fuller:
"In the inter-war period tanks underwent further mechanical development and, in terms of tactics, J.F.C. Fuller's doctrine of spearhead attacks with massed tank formations was the basis for work by Heinz Guderian in Germany, Percy Hobart in Britain, Adna R. Chaffee, Jr. in the U.S., Charles de Gaulle in France, and Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the USSR.
"All came to similar conclusions, but in the Second World War only Germany would put the theory into practice on a large scale, and it was their superior tactics, not superior weapons, that made blitzkrieg so formidable."
That is interesting. I had an uncle who was a navigator on a B-17. He also had a short career. His crew arrived at their base in early December 1943 and they were shot down on Jan. 11, 1944. That was their fourth mission. The 8th Air Force was not an employer with good long-term prospects.
I think it’s great that his memoirs are starting to come together!
Here’s an interesting one that never made it to full production....but did fly to within 12 miles of Manhattan in 1944.....the JU-390...a 6 engined monster...
http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=409
I'd say, to be considered true "combined arms," those 1,900 planes would have needed to do more than just scout around.
Well, I can't find where they actually bombed enemy positions, but they did definitely strafe enemy troops caught in the open.
So, yes, the first major "combined arms" battle.
It took a genius like Germany's Guderian to figure out that if you put radios in tanks and aircraft, and got those guys talking to each other, you could have a revolutionary war-winning combination.
In the mean time, after a promising start, the Brits wandered off into the clouds somewhere, trying to figure out how airplanes could make infantry obsolete. It didn't happen...
One comment I heard more than once in the UK when discussing WW1 & WW2, "the experts didn't think they'd find enough lads willing to sit and die in dugouts or charge machine guns like they did in the First War".
(In my first comment, I wasn't trying to be a smart aleck, I just never realized the Brits and French could put together a combined arms ops.)
When time permits, I'm going to spend a bit of time looking more at that era, my Grandfather was gassed and shot at the First Battle of the Somme - w/ the 36th Div.
No doubt, that was a critical problem for the democratic allies then, just as it is today. A problem that neither the Nazis, Japanese nor Communists faced.
No problem when you challenge if my conclusions are based on facts. If they are not, then shame on me. And I ought to be able to show where I got my facts.
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