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armoured warships and also transports, which are highly combustible
and whose speed is low.
They respect battleships, not for their guns but for their armour. However,
battleships cannot alone carry dangerously large bodies of troops, and are
not greatly to be feared by a country that, like Australia, is surrounded
by water.
They point out, however, that immunity against oversea invasion can be
guaranteed by an air force only if the defender has enough planes to maintain
numerical air supremacy on the defending side, immunity is complete.
It is all a matter of numbers, Air Force leaders consider, rather than of
the speed or range of individual planes.
A continent isolated by at least 1500 miles of ocean from the nearest
foreign Power (excepting the Dutch, the French, and the Portuguese, who
have colonies nearer than that) has a precise standard by which to judge
what aerial superiority consists in. This standard is the number of planes
the strongest foreign Power can carry in aircraft carriers. Japan, for example,
can now carry about 300 the United States about 400.
If Australia has a greater aerial strength and has the means of main
taining her strength at that level (this is essential) there will be no invasion,
the Air Force considers nor can Australia be effectively blockaded, because
aircraft can compel the blockading ships to keep so far out to sea that
coastwise shipping is safe.
Lessons from China.
To officers of the Australian Air Force the war in China has been of
absorbing interest because it is very much the kind of war that they have
been envisaging and, flatteringly it has followed just a course as they had
predicted. China, they point out, began the war with better aircraft than
Japan and pilots as good, if not better: but Japan had so many more planes
than China that she could afford in the preliminary battle for command of
the air to lose two to China's one and still win the war in the air.
The reason, Air Force officiers say, why Japan waited so long to land
reinforcements in the Shanghai area was that she could not land them
in the face of an unbroken Chinese air force. The battle for command of
the air had to be fought first, and had to be won by the invader at what
ever cost.
Use of civil machines.
Air routes alone cannot give complete mobility to air force squadrons
because the 12 or so machines that make up the fighting force of a squadron
are not completely self-contained.
Yet, in a country of vast distances, each squadron must by some means
be enabled to move faster than the 30 or so motor vehicles that carry its
ground staff and gear. In the Royal Air Force the practice has been adopted
of adding to squadrons that may have to move rapidly to an oversea
post a „tail" of transport planes, usually about three to a squadron, capable
of carrying about 30 men and a considerable weight of equipment. It is
partly because of their suitability for conversion into such transports that
the Air Force welcomes the appearance of larger and faster aircraft on
the Australian commercial routes. To act as transports for fighting squadrons
will be the chief role of the D.C.3's and the others, with their pilots, in
time of war.
