Word: airings
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...French, and learned the value of heavy armored tanks after the debacle of the light tanks in Spain. But Germans are way ahead in production of planes, build them with speed and without gadgets, "to fight in . . . [not] to live in." Since kudos goes to Nazi airmen, morale of air force is excellent. Göring's policy is to produce pilots in short order, then turn them loose and depend on the survival of the fittest...
Actually, Britain is boss of the waves to a greater extent than in 1914, when the German Navy was second in the world, not sixth. But air menace makes the value of England's navy a conundrum, the tradition of Nelson a question mark. London, nerve-centre of the Empire, is 330 miles closer to German airports than Berlin is to English airports. British aircraft and munitions factories are easy targets in the open. And in another war Britain's food supply from overseas may be threatened by air raiders as well as submarine raiders...
Meanwhile Britain is organizing to meet the air threat. Her air armada-pursuit planes, fast Handley Page Hampden bombers-is rapidly being increased as her manufacturing program begins to hit a good stride. The Royal Air Force is equal in morale to the German, its older pilots have had longer training. The British Army's mechanized units (tanks, armored cars), although too few for war strength, are the most advanced in the world. And its officers-neither scholars like the French nor technicians like the Germans-are excellent leaders of men, if only rule-of-thumb strategists...
...sharpest differences of opinion is over air-strength. The claims of the British to a superior air personnel are dismissed by the professionals as fantastic. Aviation, the professionals say, is a young man's game; hence a lack of good pilots in the early-thirty age brackets is not critical. Free-lance figures for British and French air strength are judged far too high. Free lance authorities set British monthly plane replacement capacity at 600, professionals say it is closer to 240. They admit, however, that the British production rate is rising. But, while the British may have solved...
Last week a lieutenant from Randolph Field, the Army Air Corps training centre in Texas, missed the town at which he was instructed to land on a cross-country flight. He turned up with a novel excuse. Said he: his navigation was so accurate that he passed directly over the town, was so intent on scanning the terrain on both sides of his course that he never noticed...