Number of Royal Air Force.

Part of Orders of the Day — Supply. – in the House of Commons at on 22 July 1935.

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Photo of Mr Philip Lloyd-Greame Mr Philip Lloyd-Greame , Hendon

A great deal of it is being done at Teddington now, and in the Government research establishments. There is the Aeronautical Council of Research Committee where work of this kind is continuously undertaken. The Government research people are very closely in touch with the firms and it is our object to combine to get the best out of both. That I conceive to be the right peace time organisation for the industry so that it is able to take all that comes upon it from Government orders, coupled with large-scale orders from outside, and it is also an organisation aiming at providing a proper basis for expansion if ever unhappily that is necessary.

The war organisation is something quite distinct. The war organisation means an almost complete turnover of the peace industry of the country, and it means a turning over of the firms doing civilian work to doing military work. It means that you have to have plans ready in advance so that your industry can turn over to meet the demands not only of one service but of all three services and also to meet the necessary demands of things like shipbuilding and domestic demands which must also be met in time of war, and what is necessary is that those plans should be carried forward and should be prepared so that industry should be planned for a turnover, if ever it becomes necessary, and that that should fit into the peace-time organisation. That work is of course going on all the time. It is vitally necessary that it should go on. It is essential that it should be ready if it should ever unhappily be required. But you do not want, above all, to confuse the two, and nothing could be more unfortunate, particularly when you are anxious to keep the maximum of trade and to ensure the maximum of output, than to mix the peace-time organisation and the war-time organisation, creating a dislocation which would be unnecessary and which would inevitably be involved.

I turn from that to the problem of recruiting. The numbers required for the whole programme are estimated at 2,500 pilots and 20,000 other personnel. This year we are proposing a supplementary increase in Vote A of 12,000, of whom 1,300 will be pilots. What we need is to have a steady intake of both throughout the period of expansion. I was very much struck when I first went to the Air Ministry by the efficiency with which the recruiting organisation had been rapidly developed. It was a subject about which I felt that I knew a little because I had been Secretary to the Ministry of National Service at the end of the war. I thought probably here, at any rate, was a Department in which I could make some useful suggestions, but I really could not make any. There was no recruiting organisation in the country and headquarters were inundated with inquiries. I was greatly impressed with the rapidity with which the staff, hastily increased, dealt with these inquiries and applications as they came in. Very soon the machine had been extended and recruiting was being decentralised in the country. Ten new recruiting offices were opened, in Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth and Portsmouth. They are all staffed by men who are ex-officers of the Air Force and who therefore know the whole life of the Service and can deal with knowledge, sympathy and understanding which will be invaluable to recruits as they come along. I should like to acknowledge, also, the help and co-operation which we are getting from the Ministry of Labour. The response is distinctly good. I shall not give the Comittee just figures of general inquiries, because it is ineffective to deal with anything until an inquiry has become what we call a definite application—something that you can consider on its merits. There has been an enormous amount of work in sifting the inquiries before getting to the definite applications.

Of pilots there have been definite applications from 4,500. We have accepted 75 in the past month, and we expect to take them at a rate increasing up to 150 a month during the rest of this year. In ground personnel there are definite applications from 11,000, and we were able to accept in the last month 1,330. There is not only the taking-in. There is the training of this greatly increased force, and that would present a very difficult problem if we had to do it entirely through newly-created Service stations. We are increasing the number of Service training schools from five to ten, but here we find that civil aviation can make a very great contribution to our need. There are civil schools established at the great civil aerodromes, manned by officers who have passed through the Air Force, some of whom we had specially recommended for their posts, upon whom we could place as much reliance as trainers as we could on serving officers in the training schools. These 13 civilian schools will be utilised, if I may use the expression, as preparatory schools for the pilots who are being taken, with the confident assurance that we shall get all their preparatory training done as well there, and on just the same lines, as if we were training them in our own Service training stations. Having passed through the preparatory school stage in the civilian schools, the pilots will come to the Service training stations. The Committee will appreciate the great value of the passage of officers through this Service at a high standard of efficiency. They know what they have seen at the Royal Review and year after year at Hendon. They know that there is a high standard of efficiency in the officers and non-commissioned officers of this force. We have all realised and appreciated that in the past, but now we see the value of that training and efficiency as the core and training school of expansion.

I pass from recruiting to the new ground stations. We shall have to establish something like 50 new stations in all. That involves 41 aerodromes and various ranges and certain stores depots. The location of these stations must be governed by strategic considerations. I have received a good deal of correspondence—indeed, I think there is hardly a Member of the House who has not written to me to say that there is some very convenient ground in his constituency for an aerodrome.