"Even in the region of the air, into which with characteristic British prudence we have moved with some tardiness, the Navy need not fear comparison with the Navy of any other country.The British sea-plane, although still in an empirical stage, like everything else in this sphere of warlike operations, has reached a point of progress in advance of anything attained elsewhere.
"Our hearts should go out to-night to those brilliant officers, Commander Samson and his band of brilliant pioneers, to whose endeavours, to whose enterprise, to whose devotion it is due that in an incredibly short space of time our naval aeroplane service has been raised to that primacy from which it must never be cast down.
"It is not only in naval hydroplanes that we must have superiority.The enduring safety of this country will not be maintained by force of arms unless over the whole sphere of aerial development we are able to make ourselves the first nation.That will be a task of long duration.Many difficulties have to be overcome.Other countries have started sooner.The native genius of France, the indomitable perseverance of Germany, have produced results which we at the present time cannot equal."So said Mr.Winston Churchill at the Lord Mayor's Banquet held in London in 1913, and I have quoted his speech because such a statement, made at such a time, clearly shows the attitude of the British Government toward this new arm of Imperial Defence.
In bygone days the ocean was the great highway which united the various quarters of the Empire, and, what was even more important from the standpoint of our country's defence, it was a formidable barrier between Britain and her Continental neighbours,"Which serves it in the office of a wallOr as a moat defensive to a house."But the ocean is no longer the only highway, for the age of aerial navigation has arrived, and, as one writer says: "Every argument which impelled us of old to fight for the dominion of the sea has apparently been found valid in relation to the supremacy of the air."From some points of view this race between nations for naval and aerial supremacy may be unfortunate, but so long as the fighting instinct of man continues in the human race, so long as rivalry exists between nations, so long must we continue to strengthen our aerial position.
Britain is slow to start on any great venture where great change is effected.Our practice is rather to wait and see what other nations are doing; and there is something to be said for this method of procedure.
In the art of aviation, and in the construction of air-craft, our French, German, and American rivals were very efficient pacemakers in the aerial race for supremacy, and during the years 1909-12 we were in grave peril of being left hopelessly behind.But in 1913 we realized the vital importance to the State of capturing the first place in aviation, particularly that of aerial supremacy at sea, for the Navy is our first line of defence.So rapid has been our progress that we are quite the equal of our French and German rivals in the production of aeroplanes, and in sea-planes we are far ahead of them, both in design and construction, and the war has proved that we are ahead in the art of flight.
The Naval Air Service before the war had been establishing a chain of air stations round the coast.These stations are at Calshot, on Southampton Water, the Isle of Grain, off Sheerness, Leven, on the Firth of Forth, Cromarty, Yarmouth, Blythe, and Cleethorpes.
