FLEET AIR ARM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 February 1939, Page 5

FLEET AIR ARM

BIG DEVELOPMENT PLANNED

ADMIRALTY'S PROPOSALS. MAN-POWER TO BE TREBLED. The Admiralty proposes to treble the Fleet air arm —from 3000 officers and men to 10,000 —by 1943. It will become a striking arm of first rank, with its own dockyard and staff. A recruiting drive will be begun at once. The time is foreseen when one-third of the Navy will be in the air, one-third on the surface of the sea, and one-third under water.

The enlistment of hundreds of young men as air mechanics for seven. 12 or 22 years is to be speeded up, as the Fleet air arm is short of men to keep in repair the engines, frames, gears and electrical equipment of its machines.

The Admiralty is planning also to establish an “air dockyard’’ for the repair and maintenance of all aeroplanes used by the Fleet. All sea fliers are to have their own headquarters—at Lee-on-Solent —to wmch all officers and men will return between commissions just as the seamen return to Chatham, Portsmouth or Devonport.

IMPORTANCE OF AIRCRAFTCARRIERS.

The importance of the Fleet air arm has grown so rapidly that already the administration has had to be enlarged. Next month the Air Material Department at- the Admiralty is to be divided. One section will deal with engines under the control of an engineer captain. The other, under a 'naval plot, will deal with equipment and the aeroplanes themselves. The Air Ministry will continue to design and supply machines for naval use, but the needs of the Fleet air arm and the Royal Air Force are widely different. No machine of more than two tons can land safely on a carrier, for example, and as Royal Air Force machines increase in size they become less suitable for naval use.

It is now officially admitted that the Admiralty attaches great tactical importance to me aircraft-carrier. It is regarded as a vital element in plans for the defence of sea-borne trade on thk wider oceans where shore-based aircraft cannot operate. The supreme importance of keeping the machines flown from carriers in first-class condition hardly needs emphasising. A machine flying over land can make a forced landing in a field if mechanical defects develop, but when flying over the sea the machine can safely alight only on its carrier. If it comes down on the water 50 miles away the task of finding it may prove impossible.

AERODROME BEING ACQUIRED. Four aerodromes are also to be handed over by the Air Ministry to the Admiralty. They are at Lee-on-Solent; Ford, near Littlehampton;. Worthy Down, near Winchester; and Donibristle, on the Fife shore of the Firth of Forth. These will not long suffice for the needs of the Fleet air arm, and in due course the Admiralty will have to acquire more land aerodromes, and probably overseas as well as at home. The Navy will need maintenance ratings for its new responsibilities. At the moment it has only a few hundred, transferred from the Royal Air Force. More than 1000 will be required in the next year, and 300 as soon as possible. Candidates, between the ages of 17J and 25, may enter either for seven

years followed by five in the Fleet Reserve, or on the ordinary “continuous service” engagement of 12 years, with the opportunity of re-engaging to earn a pension.