Audit of review
Sir: I have just seen Terence Keeley's review of David Edgerton's book England and the Aeroplane (Books, 11 April), and its dismissive but ignorant comments about my own book The Audit of War. It would be impossible in a letter to rebut in detail all the random thrusts which Keeley makes, or (if he reports correctly) the arguments which Edgerton advances. I will only say that my analysis of British technological failings during the Second World War was based not on 'historical playfulness' (Kee- ley's characteristic phrase) but on wartime and pre-war Cabinet Committee and Min- istries of Production and Aircraft Produc- tion files, together with, in some cases, the official civil histories of production and of design and development. With regard to the aircraft industry in particular, I will only refer readers to the 1943 report on the American aircraft industry rendered by the visiting British aircraft-industry mission led by Sir Roy Fedden, and its conclusion: 'It is sufficient . . . to say that we cannot hope to compete in this country in the future, unless immediate steps are taken to deal with the matter of training engineers. There is not a moment to be lost.'
Correlli Barnett
Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge
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