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course, merely extending to the war in the air his popular if overstated thesis that the British Army in the First World War had been ‘lions led by donkeys’, in General Ludendorff’s alleged phrase.
    It is all good emotive stuff; but as usual the truth was very much more complicated. For one thing, Pemberton Billing’s accusation about Farnborough existing at the expense of the private aero companies was specious. At the very least he could be accused of sour grapes, given that he himself had until recently run just such a company, scarcely a single one of whose aircraft designs had yet managed to fly, still less had gone into production. Secondly, his diatribes conveniently ignored the fact that companies in the private sector were not only doing their own original design work but were also building Farnborough’s machines by the hundred, and being well paid by the government for doing so. And thirdly PB, with firm loyalties to his late service the Royal Navy, was only too happy to see the rival War Office get any blame that was going.
    There was also a good deal that PB could have told the House that he did not, such as that British losses in the air at the time were not so very different from those of the French, who were always cracked up to be so much more advanced in aviation. He also failed to mention that it was not so much the wrong aircraft as the lack of a British version of synchroniser gear that was giving the Germans such a huge advantage, and anyway that was for the professional armaments companies like Vickers to produce and not Farnborough. He might also have pointed outthat a high proportion of the British casualties during the six months of the ‘Fokker Scourge’ had little to do with German air supremacy and a great deal with the RFC’s inadequate training for its pilots and poor maintenance by its ground crews which led to unnecessary accidents. 2* Furthermore, although the RNAS was getting all its aircraft from private companies there was no reason to suppose it was getting superior machines. As of March 1916, the month of PB’s maiden speech, the first truly effective fighters from stables such as Sopwith and Bristol were not yet in service. It was not until May that the first Sopwith 1½ Strutters with synchronised machine guns were at last delivered to 70 Squadron in France. In fact, the ‘Fokker Scourge’ was effectively combatted on the British Front by the Farnborough-trained Geoffrey de Havilland’s Airco D.H.2 and the Royal Aircraft Factory’s F.E.8 and F.E.2b fighters: all three having been developed under O’Gorman’s administration. However, the aircraft that probably did most to end the Fokker’s supremacy in the early months of 1916 was France’s Nieuport ‘Bébé’ even though it was still only armed with a Hotchkiss machine gun mounted on the upper wing. From the very first this beautiful little aircraft comprehensively outflew the Fokker and did much to redress the balance of the air war temporarily in the Allies’ favour.
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    It cannot be denied that a good deal of Pemberton Billing’s fiery indictments were justified. The way in which aircraft were commissioned, designed and built for the British war effort was indeed inefficient, the delays often grotesque. In 1915 thirty-four different companies produced 1,680 aircraft. 15 This might sound like a lot but wastage was extremely high. Actual combat aside, training and ordinary accidents (which in those early days of aviation were very frequent) accounted for at least half thecasualties. What happened to the F.E.2b is revealing enough of how the industry lacked a sense of real urgency. This aircraft was a development of Geoffrey de Havilland’s early design. Its first version, the F.E.2a, had been planned as early as August 1913 as a fighter: itself an indication that O’Gorman’s Farnborough was capable of forward thinking since at that time hardly a military aircraft anywhere was being built for any role other