raphy will influence the immediate development of air navigation. Its main result will be that aircraft will be navigated with a safety and dependability far exceeding that now obtained on steamships.

CHAPTER X

AERONAUTICS IN NATIONAL DEFENSE; MILITARY AND NAVAL AVIATION

Aeronautics has introduced a new element into warfare and has carried warfare into a new element.

"The arm that will serve the enemy will be that arm that is the newest, the most sudden and the most terrible — the airplane.”— Marshal Foch. "The battleship is dead. The future is with the airplane . . .”— From Admiral Sir Percy Scott's book, "Fifty Years in the Royal Navy."

"The air controls the water. Unless all warships can get under the water they will be blown out of the water. . . . As the locusts swarmed over Egypt, so will the aircraft swarm in the heavens, carrying (some of them) inconceivable cargoes of men and bombs, some fast, some slow. Some will act like battle cruisers, others as destroyers. All cheap (and this is the gist of it), requiring only a few men as the crew."-Lord Fisher.

MILITARY AERONAUTICS

WHAT CONSTITUTES THE AIR SERVICE

HE Air Service of the War Department is a separate and co-ordinate branch of the line of the Army.

TH

It is not only a combat service, in the same sense as the Signal Corps and the Corps of Engineers, but is also a combat arm in the same sense as the Cavalry and the Artillery.

As a combat arm it is divided into three distinct branchesPursuit, Bombardment and Attack. It is further divided into heavier and lighter-than-air branches, and the latter into balloon and airship divisions. Pursuit aviation is the operation of aircraft against aircraft in the common element- the atmosphere whether over land or sea. Bombardment aviation is the dropping of explosives, torpedoes, gas or incendiary composition upon material on land and sea. Attack aviation is the direct assault upon personnel, whether on the ground, or on board ship, by aircraft armed with machine guns, light cannon, hand grenades or small bombs.

The Air Service operates its own complicated and difficult supply service that requires expert knowledge in widely different fields. As far as the rest of the Army is concerned, the duties of the Air Service are accomplished by pilots and observers in aircraft, but

in order to keep the equipment in the air, a highly-trained enlisted force is necessary. The manufacture of aircraft is a specialized art which calls into activity seventy-two distinct trades. The personnel of the Air Service must have a grasp of the art sufficient for the problems of maintenance as well as operation and this training is provided by means of twelve specialized schools of instruction.

ITS ORGANIZATION AND ACTIVITY

The Air Service is directed by a Chief, who is a Major General, and an Assistant Chief, who is a Brigadier General. Four great groups provide the channels through which the Air Service functions. They are:- Training and Operations, Supply, Information, and Administrative. In an effort to provide additional co-ordination and to facilitate decisions involving all branches of the Air Service, there is an Advisory Board, consisting of the chiefs of groups and of working members of wide experience in all the different phases of aviation.

The Air Service constitutes 80% of governmental aeronautical activity. By personal contact or correspondence, it endeavors to avoid duplication and to co-ordinate its work with that of the twenty or more additional governmental agencies having to do with aeronautics. Thus it is in direct touch with the Joint Army and Navy. Board, which deals with the major problems of military and naval defense; the Aeronautical Board, the duties of which are more particularly to co-ordinate military and naval aeronautical activities; the Interdepartmental Committee on Meteorology, representing the War and Navy Departments and the Weather Bureau; the Board of Surveys and Maps, the Ordnance Technical Staff, the War Department Technical Committee, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and to a limited degree by representation on the unofficial Sub-Committee on Commercial Aviation of the Economic Liaison Committee for Foreign Trade, which has interested itself in the aeronautical establishments, ambitions or concerns of the Post Office, State, Commerce, Agriculture, Interior, Treasury, Labor and other departments.

The Air Service was very active in operations in 1920. In addition to the flying at the various fields, thousands of miles between stations were covered by air. The Air Service has maintained a policy of aiding commercial aeronautics wherever possible and has lent much assistance to such projects as the Aerial Mail, Aerial Forest Patrol, map making, etc. It has stimulated commercial enterprise by laying out routes and urging municipalities to establish air ports, along specifications prepared by the Service. In absence.

of suitable aerial regulation, it has devised rules which have formed the basis for much commercial activity in various parts of the United States.

Early in the year Captain R. W. Schroeder established a new world altitude record at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio. In the Spring the Air Service conducted a reserve aviators' contest on Long Island, which was participated in by many former service fliers now in college, but who desired to keep up their training. A remarkable round trip flight to Alaska was made late in the summer. Full accounts of all these activities will be found elsewhere in this volume.

THE ESTABLISHMENT AND HOW IT OPERATES

The Air Service must operate independently or in conjunction with the Army or the Navy or both. Operating as a service for the Military, it performs the functions of observation, gun-spotting, liaison, etc. Operating independently it becomes, in effect, a separate Air Force, pursuing, bombing, and attacking the enemy on the land, and on the sea, under the sea and in the air above both land and sea.

The framework of the Air Service is modelled along that of a Brigade. Such an organization is designed to have two or more wings. Each wing has two or more groups. The group is the tactical unit. Each group is divided into four squadrons. A squadron consists of three or more "flights." A "flight" is made up of three to five aircraft.

At present the headquarters of the Air Service's two wings are at Kelly Field, Texas, and Langley Field, Virginia, respectively. The group, squadron and flight organizations are incomplete, but, roughly, they consist of the following: - Groups-1 day bombardment, I pursuit, 3 observation, I surveillance, I army observation; Aero Squadrons - 2 army observation, 9 observation, 3 surveillance, 4 corps observation, 4 day bombardment, 4 pursuit, I construction. There are also nine photographic sections, 32 balloon companies and 2 air park companies. These forces are stationed throughout the United States and insular possessions and also in Germany.

CHIEF OF AIR SERVICES CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The policy of the Air Service lies not so much in the maintenance of a large establishment in the regular Army as in the building up of the National Guard and organized reserves with civilian equip

ment resources.

The Chief of Air Service, in his report for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1920, as made to the Secretary of War, states:

"Consideration of the functions of the Air Service of the Army discloses the fact that in case of war it must undergo an enormous expansion of both equipment and personnel. In the matter of equipment, its problem is such that it cannot hope to solve it within itself, but must depend upon the whole manufacturing resources of the Nation; in fact, must depend upon resources not yet established and must lay its plans to the end that such resources shall be established and maintained. The Army must spend its appropriations in experimentation, in limited procurement, and in the test, under field conditions, of experimental productions, in order that it may know what equipment to use when war comes.

"Likewise for its personnel it is impracticable to seek an expansion of the Army Air Service that would begin to care for its war needs. It must therefore build its plans upon the annual training and passing into organized reserves of a reservoir of trained flying officers that will be immediately available in case of war; and for its enlisted personnel it must look to the enlisted reserve and to the mechanics engaged in civilian and commercial aeronautics and in aircraft manufactories- sources that are to-day so small as to be almost negligible.

"The vital interest of the Army Air Service lies therefore less in obtaining appropriations, more in securing legislation to foster sources of supply of equipment and personnel for the needs that will be so greatly expanded by war."

In his concluding recommcndations the Chief, in the foregoing report, declares:

"The United States Government should adopt, at this time, a continuing program for the manufacture of aircraft, and should make adequate appropriation therefor, in order to stimulate the aeronautical industry of the United States. Attention is invited to the fact that the close of the next fiscal year will disclose the deterioration, from either use or storage, of practically all the airplanes which were purchased during the war for the Army to the point where they will be unsafe for flying. Adequate replacement will have to be made in order to enable the Air Service to meet not only its operating needs in carrying out its functions as a combatant branch of the Army, but also its present responsibility as the prime governmental agency to co-operate with other bureaus or departments of the Government in the use of aircraft for their purposes.

"Aside from this there must be considered the fact that in time of war this country must again rely upon the aeronautical industry and the facilities which commercial aeronautics will make available for its use. Modern industry requires great foresight in planning the objectives upon which it hopes to realize financial return. Unless the Government recognizes this business principle it can not hope to depend, for its war needs, upon the availability of suitable commercial aircraft and facilities for their employment, nor upon the existence of manufacturing plants and supplies of materials necessary for the rapid production of aircraft. In order properly to foster the aeronautical industry, the Government should announce, by legislative enactment, a policy which will provide for the manufacture of aircraft, covering a period of from three to six years, and must at the same time provide the necessary assurance that funds will be appropriated therefor annually during the continuances of the policy."