Free The Whale Has Wings Vol 1 - Rebirth by David Row Page B

they see as more cost-effective for them than a fleet carrier. Negotiations are in hand for one to be built in British yards, with a possible second ship to be built in France. The main problem for the RN is that there is now very little available space left in the shipyards for the long slips required by a carrier. The Admiralty was considering the diplomatic advantages of delaying one of their own carriers to allow a French purchase to be laid down.
    Italy was heavily involved in Spain, and as a result seems to be rather neglecting its naval aviation, although the traditional naval building program continues. Development seems to be on prototype aircraft, and it is assumed that the demands of Spain on the small Italian aircraft industry will continue to limit any major deployment of aircraft. The Italians have debued a new dive bomber, the Breda Ba.65, in the Spanish Civil war, and its performance is seen as good, although its range is thought to be limited
    In America, the issue wa s, as usual, politics not resources. A new carrier, the USS Hornet, was to be laid down in September 1937, and it was thought the bringing forward of this ship was due to the RN building program. Or maybe the China-Japan war. Or maybe for some other non-understandable American reason; the Admiralty often has difficulty working out the logic of the US building program.
    The Americans have a new torpedo bomber entering service, the Douglas TBD Devastator. This has considerably better performance than the Swordfish, and one of the aims of the new torpedo bomber design is to comfortably improve on the Devastator. They also have a new fighter, the Brewster F2A Buffalo, due to fly late in the year. This comes as no surprise as the performance of their current biplane fighter is well below that of the Goshawk, an initial data suggests the new plane will have a similar performance (although it isn't expected into service until 1939)
     

Chapter 7
    1938.
    The level of tension in the international scene ramped up yet again as Germany announces a peaceful union with Austria, absorbing the country into the third Reich in March. It's not clear to observers why a peaceful democratic union requires quite so many German troops.
    The increased tension plays a part in the crisis in Czechoslovakia in May, when the country almost goes on a war footing as a result of what they think is an impending German attack. While this proves to be a false alarm, one of the effects is to move British war preparations along more rapidly, as the country is at this point nowhere near ready for war.
    The tension also had effects on the allocation of British defence spending; it was deemed that the major threat was from the air, and the RAF was going to get priority in resources. This was obviously bitterly resented by the other two services. The Navy's shipbuilding wasn't terribly affected, as this, and much of the equipment for the ships, was specialised and not able to do anything for the RAF anyway, although there were difficulties with some of the general engineering firms used. The FAA, however, considered it likely to have much greater impact on their planned air program. A certain amount of discussion went on behind closed doors, as a result of which the navy kept its priority for airplanes along with that of the RAF, but agreed to use its fighters to cover its own bases, and land-based attack squadrons would also be available to Coastal Command. To some extent this was already the case, the FAA and Coastal Command (which included quite a few ex-navy senior officers), already had quite a good relationship, and in any case it had been pointed out that the RAF's airframe requirements were limited to some extent by engines the Navy didn't use. It also pointed out that the Goshawk was as good a fighter as the Hurricane in everything but rate of climb, and it would be foolish to disrupt or stop its production line to produce more Hurricanes, especially as it was looking likely