GAP IN NAVAL DEFENCE

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 6

GAP IN NAVAL DEFENCE

Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes recently criticised what he called "a great gap in naval defence m respect of the inadequate and inefficient control of the Naval Air Service," and urged that the Navy should be free to cnrry on its own air service again. He was deputising at the conference dinner of the Trustee Savings Bank Association at Portsmouth for Sir Thomas Inskip, who was unable to attend owing to a Cabinet meeting. It was not generally known, he said, that, thanks to the far-seeing vision of Mr. Winston Churchill before the war the Navy built up a magnificent air service, which was second to none It had 2800 aircraft of its own and 55,000 men, and was second to none of the Air Services of ■ the world. That force had now gone. In 1923 the Government appointed a committee to re-' port as to how the Naval Air Service should be administered. In these political considerations the settlement was always a question of compromise. The committee recommended a system of dual control. The next committee upon the subject, under Lord Salisbury, gave a 50-50 decision, but stated that the time must come when the Navy must run its own air service. "We have tried this great experiment and failed," Sir Roger Keyes said. He now hoped Sir Thomas Inskip would take early steps to relieve the Navy of a handicap under which it had suffered for many years.