HC Deb 15 February 1945 vol 408 cc513-24

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Pym.]

5.59 p.m.

Mr. Quintin Hogg (Oxford)

The House has heard with deep regret, and the country with grave disquiet, of the melancholy and mounting toll of air accidents among the persons carried by Transport Command and kindred services. Since 7th February this matter has been before the House at Question time on no fewer than three occasions, and in no case has the House, I think, received the measure of reassurance which it sought. I need only call to mind facts which are within the recollection of all—the deaths of two gallant commanders and of two well-loved and conscientious Members of this House and of that urbane brilliant servant of this country, Mr. Peter Loxley, lost with all his papers and some of his colleagues; all within a matter of weeks.

It being Six o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Pym.]

Mr. Hogg

The details of these losses have never yet been given to the public. What the public never has learned, and never will know, is the number of accidents which have not proved fatal, and the number of accidents which have taken place and have proved fatal to people who do not come within the category of very important persons. It would be a mistake to say that this was an entirely new problem. Ever since the beginning of the war the death rate of air transport has been a great deal too high. It was already so much in my mind on 1st September, 1943, that I wrote to my right hon. Friend about it. On that occasion I called to his attention a number of the older accidents in which persons, each one of whom might have been worth an Army Corps to our side, had either died or risked their lives in quite avoidable mishaps.

I need only recall the case of His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent. We all know that that plane ought not to have been flying on that route or at that height. There was General Pope, in the Middle East, who was the first commander of our First Armoured Corps. There was General Gott, who was considered of such brilliance among desert commanders as to be appointed before General Montgomery to command the Eighth Army in one of the decisive battles of the war. He was carried back over the desert in an obsolete type of aircraft, without escort, at a time when they knew Messerschmidts were about. Perhaps it is not so well known that Field-Marshal Wilson suffered an accident, which nearly proved fatal, on Ismailia airfield, owing to insufficient landing arrangements. General Sikorski, whose death is perhaps even more felt now than it was at the time, was allowed to take off from the dangerous landing strip at Gibraltar in a plane which had been loaded up with extra human passengers at the very last moment. We have not received, in respect of these older accidents, or in respect of the newer accidents, any real reassurance from my right hon. Friend. On the contrary, there has been a disquieting tendency on his part to try to make us think that everything is all right. There was a poem by a 19th century poet about a doctor whose prescriptions always went wrong. I think he poisoned a dog, and did something else to a cat, and each stanza ends with the words: 'Yes, yes,' said the doctor, 'I meant it for that.' There is a nasty savour of that 19th century doctor about the assurances that we get from time to time from the Air Ministry when they come to deal with air accidents. As regards the recent accidents, all I can say is that the facts have not been made known and are still subject to inquiry. All we do know is that the Expediter plane, at this time of the year, over the mountains of Italy, was sent out with a distinguished cargo and that it was a plane not fitted with any de-icing equipment. We have been led to believe that Mr. Peter Loxley's plane ran short of petrol, and that it was a York, which is supposed to carry petrol for the longest possible flights. In some cases we hear even more disquieting information, which cannot be substantiated because the facts arc not known, that parachutes are stowed away in parts of the aeroplane which are inaccessible, and that pilots are sometimes induced to undertake flights against their better judgment, that engines and wings have fallen from planes and that some planes used for transport purposes are not really airworthy.

There is a doctrine in law which lawyers call the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, which means that, where things are obviously going wrong with a system or an organisation which ought to work reasonably well, it is not for the plaintiff to make out a case; it is for those who are responsible for the system or organisation to defend themselves, because, as lawyers say, the thing speaks for itself. Safety is not a single factor. It depends on many different factors; on good maintenance, on good airfield staff, good planes, good pilots and a good deal of commonsense, but. I do suggest that this melancholy list of mishaps is sufficient to indicate some grounds for thinking that safety, at present, is not being given a high enough priority in transport activity.

The public are not, I think, prepared to accept it from the Secretary of State that all is perfectly well. The air is not inherently as dangerous a form of travel as that would imply, and it would be disastrous if the impression went abroad, which I am sure would be false, that our pilots, or planes or our organisation were not every bit as good as the best that the rest of the world can produce. I feel certain that there is deep public disquiet on this matter. The House requires more information, independent inquiries, less complacency, less insistence upon the need of military security in matters about which hon. Members are by no means satisfied that security considerations exist or should be paramount, and some guarantee of positive action. Otherwise, I feel confident that the sense of public disquiet will be displaced by public outcry.

6.9 p.m.

Mr. Edgar Granville (Eye)

There is unfortunately a strange apathy towards human losses during a war other than those suffered at the hands of the enemy, and therefore I think that we are indebted to the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg) for raising this matter on the Adjournment. I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Air will defend the Air Ministry like a Gladstone, as it were, but I hope he will bear in mind that nobody is prepared to criticise the Royal Air Force or that gallant band of accident investigators who are something like mechanical detectives and render great service in reaching important conclusions as a result of their inquiries into aircraft accidents. I hope that, as a result of this short Debate, subject to security considerations, the fullest publicity is going to be given by the Press and the B.B.C. to the causes of these various disasters, as is given in the case of railway accidents, and accidents upon the roads and at sea.

I have had some experience with regard to the causes of air accidents, and there are many practical details on which some of us would like the right hon. Gentleman to give considered answers if not to-night at some other time, and provide more information than he has given us in the past. We would like to know whether the aircraft compasses are tested after each long-distance section of an extended flight. [An HON. MEMBER: "Of course not."] Well, they ought to be. When an aircraft lands at night and takes off next morning for the flight on the next day compasses ought to be checked as far as possible. We would like to know if passengers are issued with what are called by the R.A.F. "Mae Wests" or emergency lifebelts, and do these York machines and the other transport machines that are used carry rubber emergency lifeboats? What is the practice in the Royal Air Force and in British Overseas Airways in regard to a routine certificate of airworthiness such as is necessary with regard to civil aviation which ensures reliability? Are Royal Air Force rescue launches available at the various Royal Air Force sea, stations not only in this country, but at important coastal focal points abroad? Then, as my hon. Friend said by implication, who is it who makes the decision to fly in bad weather? Is it the pilot or is it the officer commanding the particular airfield at which the machine has touched down or originally taken off? Finally, I would like to know from the right hon. Gentleman if there is radio contact-and communication not only between the machine and the home or intermediate station but between machines when travelling in a flight. There is the fatigue of crews, too. Anyone who has anything to do with the reports of accident inquiries knows that fatigue is always a considerable factor at the end of a crossing. I hope he will look at the point of mechanical routine, supervision and inspection and investigate fully the question referred to by the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) and myself the other day of the provision and efficiency of de-icing equipment.

There have been many losses described by my hon. Friend. There will be a large number of conferences to be attended by statesmen and officials in the future, and the House of Commons requires from the Minister for Air some sort of assurance that there is going to be a complete overhaul of whatever department of the Air Ministry is responsible for the whole organisation of these flights. The right hon. Gentleman has several courts of inquiries on his hands, and I hope that when he gets the result of these investigations, which I hope he is going to expedite, he will make them available to the House and to Parliament and the widest possible public opinion as a contribution to prevent a repetition of these serious accidents and loss of valuable life.

6.13 p.m.

Mr. Molson (The High Peak)

We do not in this House attach more importance to the recent accident in which two of our colleagues lost their lives than we do to any of these other accidents in which important passengers have been killed, but it is natural that one's friends in Italy should write to one about the circumstances in which the accident took place. A few days ago I received a letter, from which I will proceed to quote: I do not think that Bernays and Campbell or any of them should have been allowed to travel the way they did on that particular day. The weather was damnable and they were carried in two aircraft which I do not believe were suited to the weather conditions. I think I am right in saying they were not fitted with de-icing apparatus.

Major Studholme (Tavistock)

On a point of explanation. May I say that we left Rome in perfect weather? It was not until we got to Bari, on the far side of the mountains right down the Adriatic, that the storm started to come up. There was no reason whatever when we left Rome, as far as I could see, why we should not have started.

Mr. Molson

One presumes that even in the case of transport aircraft there is some knowledge of what the weather conditions are going to be at the destination.

Mrs. Tate (Frome)

What are weather reports for?

Mr. Molson

I proceed to the case of the South East Asia Command, where also there has been a large number of accidents. I understand that Hudson aircraft have been in use there for the transport of important personages which had reached a time in their life when repair was considered uneconomical and when they were not going to be further reconditioned but were going to be scrapped. It was at this time they were still being used for transport purposes in the South-East Asia Command. These are the kind of facts which come to one in the ordinary course of one's inquiries into these matters, and I hope we shall have an assurance from the Secretary of State that all these matters will be investigated. Moreover, I would ask him to consider whether it would not be in the general interests of civil aviation, if a certain amount of publicity were given to these accidents, and explanation of the circumstances in which they arise.

6.16 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Air (Sir Archibald Sinclair)

I do not think that hon. Members will expect me to answer to-day every point which has been put in the course of this short Debate. I can assure them that every point which they have put will be most carefully studied and considered, but there are some which I must answer as I go along. Let me say at once to the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Granville)—because another hon. Member mentioned the same point to me privately—that certainly it is the responsibility of the pilot to decide whether or not to start on his flight. It does happen sometimes that a pilot is subjected to pressure by high officers and others who see the weather is good, and are obsessed by the importance of the mission on which they are travelling, and I have more than once ruled that we must give the utmost possible support to the pilots in such circumstances, and the pilot alone—as indeed is the rule and practice —must decide.

Mr. Henderson Stewart (Fife, East)

Is that in military flying as well as transport?

Sir A. Sinclair

Military flying, of course, is a matter of operations, where the commanding officer must decide. I am, of course, referring to transport operations. The hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg), who opened the Debate, spoke of Air Ministry assurances as though they were always soothing syrup, as though we always made out that flying was perfectly safe and that accidents did not happen. That is certainly not true of any statement that I have ever made. I am too conscious of the hazards which still, in certain circumstances, must attach to flying. All I have ever said—and that I repeat with deep sincerity—is that I, and those who work with me at the Air Ministry, and I know in Transport and the other Commands, are strenuously, by every means in our power, studying the means of reducing accidents. Perhaps I may be permitted to remind. hon. Members that I devoted a passage in my last Estimates speech to that subject, and gave the House some indication of the measures that we have taken recently in the Air Ministry to increase our precautions, our measures to prevent accidents.

I do not think that the public realise—indeed, the public cannot sufficiently realise, because in war time we cannot, for reasons of security, give all the facts and the figures—the rapidity of Transport Command expansion, the difficulties of opening up new routes, and the huge scale on which Transport Command is now operating. The greater part of their work, of course, is in direct support of the Armed Forces in all theatres of war—the air-transported forces, training for that role, carrying supplies, reinforcements, spare parts. All that side is the bulk of their work. However, this evening I shall only deal with—because I know that is all hon. Members want me to deal with—the trunk and feeder services.

The air routes to the Mediterranean and to the Far East are an important and a new factor in our system of strategic communications. They have been very rapidly developed from the old reinforcement routes which we had for combat aircraft. In the past the great air, routes of the world have been. built up gradually, airfield by airfield, gaps filled in here and there. These routes we have had to develop with unprecedented speed. The requirements of such routes in skilled men, accommodation, large airfields, signalling facilities, navigational aids, and, of course, the meteorological organisation, are exacting, and it is necessary, during war-time, that priorities should go to the other Commands, whose impact on the enemy is more direct. Moreover, technical improvements like the retractable under-carriage, and the increasing weight and speed of aircraft, are themselves, when they first come into use, potential sources of accidents. Flying, too, is now being done in almost every kind of weather, and in war-time there are additional sources of danger, such as occasional need to send aircraft over indirect routes to avoid risk of interception by the enemy, and also the restrictions which have to be imposed from time to time in certain areas on. the use of wireless communication. There are also the dangers inseparable from climatic variations at different seasons of the year and in different parts of the world, and appalling storms and electrical disturbances, to which the Noble Lord the Member for Horsham and Worthing (Earl Winterton) referred the other day.

It is against this background that I invite the House to judge the outstanding achievement of Transport Command in flying 4,000,000 miles in the very wintry month of January, on its main trunk and feeder routes, without a single accident causing death or serious injury to a passenger. This was, of course, an exceptional achievement, and I am sure that the House will not wish to withhold credit from our splendid crews. There is no fear of the world under-estimating—I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford of this—the skill and efficiency of our crews. The Commander-in-Chief, his subordinate commanders and staffs, the maintenance crews—the importance of which has been mentioned more than once by hon. Members in discussions on this subject, and rightly—flying control, the meteorological organisation, the flying training system, scientists and all in the aircraft industry, the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Air Ministry are strenuously working all the time to prevent accidents—

Earl Winterton (Horsham and Worthing)

Can the right hon. Gentleman devote the remainder of his speech not to praise of his own Department or the Royal Air Force but to explaining the circumstances which have given rise to this Debate?

Sir A. Sinclair

If I may say so to the Noble Lord, I think that is an ungenerous observation. I was told that there was a melancholy and mounting toll of accidents in Transport Command—[HON. MEMBERS: "So there are"]—and I am entitled to say that in January it was an astonishing achievement for 4,000,000 miles to be flown without a single accident involving death or injury. That ought to be placed on record, because I do not think the House as a whole would wish to withhold credit from those to whom it is due.

These passengers are nearly all travelling on urgent Government business, a large proportion of them being Ministers, senior officials and high ranking officers of the three Services, and a few of the fatal accidents which have occurred on these routes have, therefore, attracted much publicity. Thousands of successful flights have attracted little, and a false impression is thus created.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman who opened the Debate mentioned two gallant officers, and when I asked who they were, he mentioned the case of Admiral Ramsay, which had nothing to do with Transport Command or the Royal Air Force, and he mentioned General Gott, a lamentable loss which we all feel, but he was attacked by the enemy. His aircraft was shot at, the pilot made a good landing on the airfield, and at the end of the landing run the enemy aircraft swept down and opened another burst of fire and the aircraft burst into flames. It is not really fair to the Royal Air Force or to Transport Command, who had nothing to do with the accident, to drag these cases in.

Take the accident to the Dakota which crashed into the South Downs just over a week ago. That belonged to a group of Transport Command formed just before the invasion of Normandy. Since then their aircraft have flown regularly to congested airfields, and hastily constructed air strips, in France and the Low Countries, often in the worst possible flying weather. Since D-Day that group has flown 141,000 passengers, mainly soldiers and airmen. That accident was its first that involved death or injury to a passenger. It is not giving the House a true impression of the facts to say that things are going wrong. The facts are that far from things going wrong, we are reducing the accident rate by these strenuous efforts to which I have referred in all commands of the Royal Air Force and in particular in Transport Command.

One hon. Member referred to the accident to General Sikorski. He said it was due to overloading the plane in which he travelled. That is not true. It had nothing whatever to do with the accident. It had quite a simple explanation. A piece of machinery in the aircraft broke and, when the pilot tried to move the controls, he found them firmly locked. As a matter of fact, nearly half a million pasengers are carried by Transport Command in a year, and the number is rising, but the chance of a passenger meeting with a fatal accident works out, on current experience, at 1/30 of 1 per cent. During a recent period in which Transport Command flew 37,500,000 miles, only 11 accidents involving death or serious injury to a passenger occurred—one such accident for every 3,500,000 miles flown.

Wing-Commander Grant-Ferris (St. Pancras, North)

When a machine is flown over a certain route, is the main criterion that the pilot should have real experience of that route?

Sir A. Sinclair

That is a very important point and one which particularly came up in the lamentable accident to Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Commanders-in-Chief have a right to their own personal crews, but it is a point on which we have definitely ruled that Transport Command is to have the duty and responsibility of ensuring that crews, carrying even Commanders-in-Chief on their own aircraft on the main transport routes, are acquainted with the route on which they travel. We are fully alive to the importance of that point. I agree that it would be disastrous if it got abroad that our crews and aircraft were not the best. It would be a very false impression. The Royal Air Force has owed much during the war to the confidence and support of Parliament. I therefore ask the House to extend that same confidence and support in generous measure to this new, growing, vigorous and increasingly important Command. I can assure the House that there is no responsible officer connected with the Air Staff in the Air Ministry down to Headquarters Command and the groups who is not striving to do the very thing that the House of Commons wants us to do. I welcome the support of the House. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for opening the Debate and I am glad to have had an opportunity of giving some facts which must impress fair-minded men with the efficiency with which the operations of Transport Command are conducted, and I shall always be willing to give the House information.

It being half-past Six o'Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.