OBSOLETE TORPEDO PLANES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 190, 28 August 1937, Page 5

OBSOLETE TORPEDO PLANES

Our Owo CorrespotidBnt.)

Territorial Air Force Equipment BETTER THAN NOTH1NG

(From

WELLINGTON, Last Nigut. The difficulties which. are confronting the Government in its attempt to strengthen the defences of the country are ciearly apparent in. the statement by the Hon. F. Jones. Minister of Defence, that 12 Blackburn Baffin machines are to be purchased for use by the reorganised Territorial Air Force in Cook Strait area. The Baffins, as Mr Jones states, "are not being replaeed by later types and thus become available for other uses" ; in other words they are outmoded. Tliey hgve been standard equipment of the fieet air arm and used on aircraft carriers for the last three years They are torpedo planes and to-day the torpedo plane is suspect, or at ( least vigorously ohallenged in some cireles. They have a limited range of only 760 miles, while to-day maehines ai'e being built with a ratige of from 3000 to 4000 miles. They are single-engined maehines and to-day twin-engined maehines are needed if men are to be trained In the manipulation of later • types of planes. Their top speed is a mere' 160 milea an liour, and the lafcest bombers fly at from 270 to *300 miles an hour, In short, they are slow craft of sharply cireumseribed rango, and not too harshly described by the word "obsolete." Too Slow for Europe. But they have one supreme virtae} they are available. The Government has obviously ohosen to accept them because in this remote ocean they poa* sesg virtues which are denied them by the pace of the European arms race because a start must be made with training because Britain is unable, or unwilliug, to supply better maehines until she has re-equipped her own air force. In short because they are better than nothing. But acceptance of them rais'es the point as to whether the Government will be able to obtain other and later models which it seeks, or whether it will allow itself to be sold older types. That question is being discussed liere. The sanie situation arose a lew months ago in relation to Australia's desire for modern aircraft to equip her newly-expanded air force. The British Government declared that the aircraft factories were unable to suppiy the types requested by the Australians because of the urgency of Britain's need for new maehines. However, the Australian Government -persisted and finally obtained maehines without the delay of 18 months which was at first stated to be inevitable. The Blackburn Baffin is a two-seater torpedo bomber of composite cor.struction powered with a Bristol Pegasus radial air-cooled engine, or alternatively with an Armstrong-Siddeley Tiger, or other engines of similar power and weight. There are two machine-guns, one firing forward through the airscrew and the other niounted over the rear cockpit.