Daily Kennebec journal., 1918-08-24

necessary. While an Army OF three
and a half million has been raisea,
the aircraft situation is as follows:
Six hundred and one De Haviland
fours have been emha rked for France
up to Aug. /. 1918. Of these 81 mad
reached the front by July l.
land fours few over the German lines
Details of its performance nave no'
We have not a single American-made
chasse Cor plane Of attack upon the
battlefront
We have not a single American-naoe
heavy bombing plane upon the battle
front. :,
quantity production a successful chase
or fighting plane.
Other criticisms include;
Abandonment Of the standard J. train
ing machine after 100 had been built az
cost Of .ecoc,ooo and condemned as
Cancellation of orders for 1900 spad
sinsle-seated fighting machines !ast
September as obsolete and afterwaro
ordering 1000 S. z. single-seat spaas.
machine after expenditure OF the -
800 900 and the loss Of several valuable
lives
Delay in developing the Havland ma
chine.
Failure to rush manufa cture Of the
Caproni and Handley-Pase heavy
bombing machines.
Failure to develop an airplane around
the Liberty motor.
Incompetency Of inspectors.
Location of flying fields at unsuita Bile
sites.
Failure to encourage alrplane produc
ers.
Patent monopolies of the original in
ventors.
I'm the opinion of the committee the
disa ppointing results in production are
chiefly due to three causes:
/. That the aiDlane programme was
largely placed in the control of great
automobile and other manufacturers
blems
2. These manufacturers undertook the
Impossible task of creating motor
which could be adapted to all classes Of
flying craft. 1t is not too much to say
that our airplane programme has been
largely subordinated to the Liberty
motor
g. We failed at the beginning Of the
war to adopt the commonsense course
of reproducing the most approved types
OF European machines in as great num-
bers as possible. This should have been
carried on concident with the produc-
ton Of the Liberty motor. This sound
policy has very recently. but after q
lamenI3 Die ldpSe Oh IINe, DeeU adopted.
The mistakes and errors referred to
would probably have been largely
avoided if the aircraft program had
been under the control of one man, as
sisted by skilled aeronautical engineers
and pra ctical flyers to design and test
our machines. with production made
subordinate to them
The pitiful part Of the whole air
craft farce lies in the solemn knowl-
edge that intelligence, efficiency.
honesty, and forbearance from politi-
cal profiteering and favoritism,
would have saved the lives of hun
ireds Of our soldiers now in France.
Nine months ago a United States
senator told the editor Of this paper
that Congress expected, when it
r,ade that $4,000 900 appropriation,
TO have the air full of arplanes
within year The promises and
assurances of the departments and
their experts led Congress to think
great things would be accomplished
with this great sum of money, which
has been dumped here and there in
war profits and waste.
If we had today the mighty air
fleet we ought to have had, the Ger
man army could be smothered and
swept out of existence, German
cities could be brought to their
knees: German munition plants could
tc blown up and railroads destroyed