Air Force Accidents The list of disasters sustained by Royal
Air Force machines during last week-end, following on a still longer list of casualties which marked the Empire Air Day displays a week earlier, has awakened very general and very just concern. A measure of risk is inseparable from flying, but some risks are avoidable, and there is an uneasy doubt, in view of the casualty figures, whether every risk is being avoided that could and should be. In a time of rapid expansion of the Air Force some increase in disasters may be inevitable; it is significant that non-commissioned officers have of late figured more prominently in the list of deaths, which indicates that the field from which pilots are drawn is being widened.. It would not be astonishing if the men in the new units, and the officers commanding them, showed some excess of anxiety to reach the approved standard of the force in the minimum of time, with the result that exploits too ambitious for men with limited experience are sometimes attempted. In peace time at any rate the first concern of the pilot and his machine should be the safety- of both. Some of the exercises which figured in the Empire Air Day programmes by no means conformed to that doctrine. The public does not ask for thrills on such occasions, and ought not to be accorded them if it did. It is to be hoped that will be remembered at Hendon a fortnight hence.
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