AIR ASCENDANCY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1941, Page 6

AIR ASCENDANCY

FACTORS IN WAR POSITION. Since wo have been so definitely in the ascendancy in the air during the past Iwo years —not in numbers but in the quality of our aeroplanes—-we might reasonably expect the see-saw to swing and Germany to forge ahead for a time, writes tile air correspondent of the “Spectator." Fortunately that does not appear to be likely. The year and a-half of war lias been used by our designers to skip a step in the evolution of the military aeroplane. This is partly because the high rate of production demanded of the British aircraft industry prolonged the life of some old but efficient types over the period when they would have been replaced if output could have been interrupted freely, and partly because the development work of the new, engines lias been pushed on to a stage | where production is ahead of schedule. We are at the end cf a clearly-marked technical stage in the air. Ail the types with which we began the war now have new and better understudies which will gradually appear in the squadrons, as new production is skilfully dovetailed into the old. In Germany. on the contrary, although there are a few new types, the chief change is in modifications of the older types —re-engined, rearmed and re-armour- j ed, but in general as far behind our new types as the German aeroplanes of last summer were behind the Hurricanes and Spitfires then. The rigid German system of quantity production lias precluded big changes without an impossible drop in output.