Conclusions.
The foregoing outline of the development of aviation from the earliest times up to the war—a story of human endeavour and achievement in the air with its attendant dangers and difficulties—is not without value in endeavouring to assess that which has since occurred.
At the beginning of the year 1912 the Royal Flying Corps did not exist. At the beginning of the Great War, in 1914, England found herself with an air service which, though much smaller than those of Germany or France, was so excellently manned and organized, trained and equipped, that it placed her at a bound in the front rank of aviation.
The machine was stable, but the engine still unequal to the tasks laid upon it. Civil Aviation practically did not exist.
I shall now describe the extension of air duties under war conditions; the increasing value of aircraft for general action and air tactics and their development and far-reaching effect as the right hand of strategy. This resulted in the expansion of our flying corps from a total of 1,844 officers and men, and seven squadrons with some 150 machines fit for war use, to a total of nearly 300,000 officers and men, and 201 squadrons and 22,000 machines in use at the end of the war, and in the evolution of the machine to a point where we can regard it, not only as a weapon of war, but as a new method of transport for commercial purposes in peace.