Wilhelm Mohr

PART V – An address to the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy on the fifty-year anniversary
There was the beginning. It was the time of fumbling when most
nation’s navies and armies had their eyes on this innovative instrument.
Could it be used to their advantage, and if so – how The land forces
quickly used it for reconnaissance and communications in its simplest
form, and likewise for the Navy in order to expand the power of its
artillery: In Norway we were actually quite early in exploiting the field
of torpedoes.
We should not underestimate these efforts. They should be viewed
with the perspective of that time, and there was much uncertainty. The
airplane was still the ’apparatus’ of which it has been said, ’its natural
condition was to be unserviceable, although with knowledge, wisdom
and effort could be brought into the air if only for a short period at a
time’. 45 Also, there was the defence political situation at the time, when
limited resources almost invited to protectionist compartmental thinking.
But let us not be too hard on the past.
That is not the reason why I focus on the pre-war period. It is only to
be aware of the enthusiasts that were there. Enthusiasts from the very
beginning, when flying did not require any other meaning than adventure,
courage and also the ambition of human imagination to master
and exploit the new arena in the air that had offered itself. Think about
it: suddenly this opportunity arose after being earthbound throughout
history until then.
In this way the enthusiasts separated themselves from those more
conformist, perhaps best expressed by Bernhard Shaw: ’You see things
as they are and ask why But I dream things that never were and ask
why not'.
There was no shortage of dreams, and from the perspective of our
Defence Forces, we can well include the pioneers we know from polar
research and the service of science.
It should hardly come as a surprise that from the enthusiasts a notion
of independence gradually matured. A form of independence towards
45 In Norwegian: ’hvis naturlig tilstand var å være tjenesteudyktig, dog kunne det med kunnen,
kløkt og strev bli brakt i luften om enn bare for kortere tid ad gangen’.
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