By Milton Bronner
London, Sept. 4—Supremacy in the air is the goal European nations are racing for. France stands easily first, with England a poor second, and Germany a great question mark.
British engineers are trying to offset French numerical superiority while the best German brains are at work not only inventing new devices but evading the restrictions upon their air future by the allies.
These developments are causing the most concern—especially to the French:
Germany’s recent amazing strides in perfecting gliders, which they claim may change the entire future of air history; while a German glider remained up more than two hours, the best the French could do was five minutes.
The reported manufacture in the neighboring country under German supervision of the powerful all-metal giant monoplane known as the Zeppelin Staaken
. Stirred by her fears of possible German aggression in the future and determined to preserve her military domination on the continent, France has the largest and best trained air service in the world. Laurent Eynac, French air minister, claims his country stands first both in military and commercial aviation.
French aircraft factories, encouraged by the government, are turningout 150 machines a month. France has 126 squadrons of airplanes in her offensive and defensive forces and by the end of next year proposes to have 220 squadrons, or nearly 2,000 ready for active duty. In addition there are 598 planes in civilian work capable of being used for military purposes.
Commercial air travel is possible between Paris and London, Brussels, Strassbourg, Amsterdam, Prague, Warsaw, Vienna, Budapest, Lausanne and Marseilles between southern France and Morocco, between Toulouse and Barcelona and a line is in preparation between Paris and Constantinople.
England is bestirring herself as the result of a scare in Parliament, where it was authoritatively stated that the total active British military force was 32 ½ squadrons, of which 20 were scattered through Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia and India. Parliament was started by the admission that only 97 British airplanes certified as airworthy are in civil aviation and only 83 of them of value for military purposes. Commercial lines are mainly between London and Paris and Brussels.
Premier Lloyd George has announced that a force of 500 machines would be provided for home defense at an annual cost of $10 million. The British are now experimenting with several new devices, building a super flying boat, preparing a bombing machine of enormous horsepower, constructing six all-metal machines, and planning a flying ship.
With German military airplanes destroyed and commercial aircraft construction restricted, Germany complains that her air industry has been throttled. Nevertheless, she has worked wonders with 225 machines, 100 of which were old ex-military machines. With them they have maintained air service all over Germany and also to Holland and the city of Riga in Russia.
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America’s position in aviation is far below other nations in a military way, but much higher commercially. Comparative figures in military aviation—air defense being gauged by the number of new machines—are given by Brig. Gen. William Mitchell, assistant chief of air service:
In Service R’s’v’e Building
U.S. 360 --- 300
Great Britain 600 3,000 1,000
France 2,000 2,000 2,000
Mitchell adds that Italy has 600 machines now building, and Japan has 1,000.
Commercial aviation figures just issued by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America are compared here with commercial records abroad:
Mileage Passengers Tons Freight
U.S. 2,907,245 122,512 62
France 1,460,000 10,305 175
Great Britain 172,000 10,000 17
Germany 1,033,700 6,820 34
Figures for the United States and France are for 1921, for Great Britain six months, and Germany seven months.
From the front page of The Salisbury Evening Post, Sept. 4, 1922. R’s’v’e heading on the first chart may mean Reserved but I don’t actually know.
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