Jump to content

Page:Aircraft in Warfare (1916).djvu/216

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
§ 109
AIRCRAFT IN WARFARE.

Air Department of the Admiralty. Captain Murray F. Sueter, and the Royal Aircraft Factory by the Superintendent. Mr. Mervyn O'Gorman, C.B. In a sense the Advisory Committee may be said to act as a "clearing-house" for information, inasmuch as its functions are to ensure, on the one hand, that the information obtained from the work done at the National Physical Laboratory, and collected from other sources, is duly made available to the Royal Aircraft Factory and to the Services, and, on the other hand, to hear and dispose of the difficulties and demands of the said parties. This latter may be a matter either of tendering immediate advice or of appropriately employing the resources of the National Physical Laboratory, or requisitioning any such other assistance as may be deemed expedient. The work is carried out in the main on an annual programme framed on a sufficiently elastic basis to allow of all possible contingencies being dealt with. In addition to the foregoing, the Committee receive and publish a considerable number of new investigations, also abstracts of most of the work of importance done on the Continent; in these latter respects the work accomplished by the Committee can be best judged from a perusal of the Annual Report presented to Parliament.[1] It is by these means that those responsible for the design, specification, and construction of our aircraft, whether military or naval, have been, and are, kept fully informed of all that concerns them from both technical and scientific standpoints, and have been able to employ the somewhat limited resources granted them by the Treasury to the best possible advantage. Beyond this the staff of the Royal Aircraft Factory includes men of exceptional resource and ability, who have proved themselves again and again more than competent in the execution of the duties entrusted to their care. It is

  1. Reports 1909-10, 1910-11, 1911-12, and 1912-13, at present published.

164