september - october - Fort Sill

THE FIELD ARTILLERY JOURNAL
necessary; further, an officer in the air will not have complete information
on which to base decisions,—in other words, commanders must be on the
ground and trained observers in the air.
Squadron Leader Slessor's remarks about the desirability of a ground
commander's sending his own staff officers up in the air to observe are
interesting. He says:—"However, the important thing to consider is the
point of view which gives rise to the statement quoted; it is a point of view
very widely held, and at the bottom is based on a fallacy, namely, that it is
possible to make reliable deductions in the air. It is not only impossible, but
it is excessively dangerous (author's italics). This is not a point of view, but
a statement of absolute fact. In a naval battle, and possibly in some parts of
a few open, treeless, sandy countries like Palestine or Iraq, you do get the
panoramic view from the air, and it may be possible to make accurate
deductions from what you see, but under European—and most other—
conditions, you absolutely definitely cannot. And for this reason the R. A.
F. observer must be, and is, trained to report exactly what he sees; he must
have a knowledge of army formations, and of how the army works, in order
to help him identify what he sees. But the moment he tries to draw
deductions, and to report tactical or strategical situations he, and any other
observer, whatever his rank or service, becomes a public menace. Major
Cherry quite rightly says that air information must be supplemented by, and
compared with, information supplied by the older forms of reconnaissance;
and to attempt to size up a situation, on however small a scale, without the
aid of those other sources of information and without the close personal
touch only possible on the ground, is to court trouble. Even in open moving
war the air observer, however skilled he may be, fails to see so much that is
important, and perhaps unconsciously he attaches such importance in his
own mind to what he does see, from the mere fact that he has seen it
with his own eyes, that his estimate of the general situation will
probably more often than not be so distorted as to be almost
unrecognizable when compared to a review of the actual situation.
When finally it is considered how much reliance—from psychological
reasons—a commander is bound to place on the report of one of his
own staff who has seen with his own eyes, it will be realized how
terribly dangerous such a proceeding may be."
FRANCE
Revue D'Artillerie
"High Burst Adjustment," by Major P. Maison, and "Execution of
the Reticule Tangent Method," by Major G. Pellion, in the May,
1926, issue, give divergent views on the matter of high
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