BEST IN THE WORLD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 March 1939, Page 5

BEST IN THE WORLD

BRITAIN’S FIGHTING AIRCRAFT Sir Kingsley Wood’s Confident Claim HUGE EXPENDITURE UNDER AIR ESTIMATES IMPRESSIVE FACTS OF EXPANDING PRODUCTION (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day,, 10.55 a.m.) RUGBY, March 9. Introducing the Air Estimates, totalling £220,626,700—the largest Estimates in the history of the Air Ministry—Sir Kingsley Wood reminded the House of Commons that in 1934 the Air Estimates totalled about eighteen millions. This year they were about twelve times greater than in any year from 1929 to 1934 land roughly double the aggregate expenditure on the three services in 1932 and 1933. This year’s increase alone, amounting to seventy-four millions, and coming after a succession of increases, was equal to the total cost of all the defence services in 1913. Sir Kingsley Wood explained that the heavy expenditure this year was due mainly to the large number of modern aircraft now coming into the squadrons, the cost of providing additional manufacturing capacity and the construction of new stations. It was accounted for, too, by unexpectedly good progress in speeding up production, and an unexpectedly enthusiastic response to the appeal for recruits.

They were now spending a quarter of a million pounds daily on the production of aircraft alone, and production would be increased still further. In November he had said that the output would be at a rate 150 per cent higher than that twelves months earlier. That 150 per cent increase had already been achieved. He hoped that the four-fold increase in the rate of production which he had promised for May, 1940, would be achieved by next December. He could say with confidence that in the types of machines now being issued to bomber and fighter squadrons, the country possessed what he believed to be the best in the world.