AIR POWER AND SEA POWER.

Of course, air power is admittedly going to exercise considerable influence over sea power in the future, and in areas where fighting aeroplanes can operate the Fleet will have to be defended by its own aircraft. There is nothing new in that conception. Throughout the later stages of the war the capital ships of the Grand Fleet carried their own aeroplanes, which were launched from their gun turrets, and there was also an air-plane carrier. From the first it has been recognised by naval officers that air attack upon a fleet must be met by air defence by the fleet. That air defence is the responsibility of the Air Ministry, and that it is not at present being completely met, is common knowledge.

The state of things is so unsatisfactory that the relation of the Navy and the Air Force is at present being investigated by the Committee of Imperial Defence, and, as is generally known, the First Sea Lord and the Chief of the Air Staff are, in a friendly spirit, endeavouring to find a solution to a very difficult problem. It is one that confronts no other country, because in America, Japan, and elsewhere the Fleet provides and trains its own air force. The problem was set forth in the House of Commons on Tuesday, and Mr. Amery pointed out that an effort was being made to ascertain “how the integrity of naval control over the air units actually working with the fighting fleet can be secured, and secured consistently with the fullest training of the personnel of those units in every aspect of air science, and how that co-operation can be secured most effectively, most economically, and in such a way as to encourage to the greatest extent the development of this aspect of the work of the Navy.”

Everyone has realised for a good many years past – Mr. Churchill himself did so at least ten years ago – that the Fleet must be provided with aerial eyes for reconnaissance, gun-spotting, and defence, and must control its own eyes when it is using them. The Navy which has no aerial eyes in time of war, or the eyes of which are asquint or otherwise defective, will stand defeated before the war opens.