§ 89. Mr. RAPERasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether a number of aeroplanes which were quite fit for instructional purposes and for practice flying have been destroyed after the engines had been removed, when they could have been put to good use in training cadets and junior flying officers; and whether a number of late types of machines have been destroyed in France after the engines had been removed, when they have merely had their under-carriages crashed, broken one or two spars, or suffered some other easily repairable injury?
§ The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Major-General Seely)The machines that have been reduced to produce, i.e., reduced to their component parts, fall into two classes:—
- (a) Those that have been declared "obsolete" by the Air Council; one of the points taken into account by the Council in pronouncing a type "obsolete" is its suitability for instructional or practice flying. The total number of such machines reduced to produce from 11th November, 1918, to 28th February, 1919, was 2,646.
- (b) Those that have been so damaged in flying accidents as to be beyond the capacity of the unit concerned to repair them, and not worth the cost of transport to a repair depot. The only standard machines reduced to produce in France are of this class.