Major Baird in the House of Commons on Thursday week
ex- plained the first Estimates presented by the new Air Ministry. He said that the work of the Air Force must not be judged solely by the number of enemy machines brought down, though in the month of September last one hundred and thirty-nine German aeroplanes were destroyed by our airmen, while thirteen were shot down. He illustrated the value of the patient airmen acting as artillery observers by stating that in a single day on the Western Front one hundred and twenty-seven hostile batteries were put out of action, twenty-eight gunpits were destroyed, eighty more were silenced, and sixty ammunition dumps were blown up, entirely by means of the boys up aloft in aeroplanes. The airmen also took hundreds of photographs of the enemy's field-works every day, dropped bombs by day and night on his lines and billets, and descended close to the ground to fire on his troops with machine-guns. The transfer of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps had taken place gradually. The Admiralty and War Office asked for such aircraft as they needed, and held a weekly council with the Air Ministry to discuss and settle differences of view. When the Air Council recommended bombing raids to the War Cabinet, it advised as to whether the Navy or the Army should undertake the operations.
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