The current air defence policy has focussed on specified vulnerable areas. This is based on the assumption that pilots can only patrol and fight over their own landing-grounds owing to difficulties of navigation and to the danger of forced landings at night. It was also thought that pilots could not pursue Zeppelins at night and so night-flying stations are situated, close to the vulnerable areas. This of course leaves wide gaps through which enemy aircraft can easily pass.
However, experience has shown many of these assumptions to be false. Pilots are frequently forced down on grounds which are strange to them and have been able to land successfully. Over country which was well lit they have had no difficulty in patrolling wide areas and pilots have been able to chase Zeppelins once within within sight of them.
Lieutenant-Colonel Felton Vesey Holt has suggested that the Flights situated near Birmingham, Sheffield, and Leeds should be moved further east as a step towards the ultimate establishment of a barrage-line of aeroplanes and searchlights parallel with the east coast of England. A line of stations is proposed about twenty miles apart with enough searchlights to allow double lights every three and a half miles along a line between Dover and Edinburgh in conjunction with a barrage-line of searchlights stretching from the London anti-aircraft defence zone to Blyth, with interlying barrage-lines in Kent, Essex, and Norfolk.
The Director of Air Organization, Brigadier-General Sefton Brancker, has approved the changes today, though this will take a while to put into effect.
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