Real Enemy: Fog

Having assembled the greatest peacetime air force concentration in U. S. history at Dayton (TIME, May 25), early last week the Army prepared to move its 672-plane armada toward Chicago. The fleet was to attack a mythical foreign horde which threatened the south end of Lake Michigan. But before the armada could get its wheels off the Dayton airfields, a real enemy pounced upon it: fog.

After an emergency meeting in the dead of night, Frederick Trubee Davison, Assistant Secretary of War for Aeronautics, Major General James E. Fechet, Chief of Air Corps, and his assistant, Brigadier General Benjamin Delahauf Foulois (in command of the maneuvers) set the armada's schedule back 24 hr. Particularly was this irksome to Secretary Davison. His guest and fellow-observer at the Dayton concentration was his fellow-Yaleman, close friend and sub-cabinet colleague and rival, David Sinton Ingalls, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics. Last year Secretary Ingalls put on a whopping good show over New York City and the Eastern coast, fixed the Navy's air service firmly in the public mind (TIME, May 19, 1930). This year Secretary Davison was determined that the Army's green-&-yellow aerial arm should outshine the Navy's silver planes.

When the weather cleared in the midwest, the Army armada gave Chicago its delayed spectacle: close formation flying, aerobatics, mass combat and attack operations. Then the show moved to its culmination in the East. With only two minor mishaps--one plane forced down, one damaged while landing--the fleet crossed the Appalachian highlands and settled upon five airfields near Manhattan.

A theoretical coalition of foreign powers had vanquished overnight the U. S. Battle and Scouting Fleets, destroyed the Panama Canal, was about to loose a fleet of planes on New York from aircraft carriers. The actual enemy was again bad weather.

The armada was to circle east and north over Connecticut, over Ossining, N. Y. sweep down the Hudson River (so that in case of accident no plane would fall in the city), dogfight over lower Manhattan, then proceed to dedicate the new Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.

At noon, Alfred Emanuel Smith took a party of friends to the top of his Empire State Building (world's tallest). Crowds congregated in Manhattan's Central Park. Militant pacifists under Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise prepared to harangue street gatherings, urge them to beware the blood on the glistening wings overhead. But the show had to be postponed three hours on account of bad flying weather and around 3 p.m. it looked as if the spectacle would have to be called off entirely. Black clouds hung over Connecticut. But Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, who was to lead his squadron of Missouri National Guard observation planes, flew off to the rendezvous to inspect the weather. Like oldtime cavalry commanders who preferred their personal mounts to Army issue, he flew his own fleet Lockheed-Sirius to Ossining, reported fair flying conditions. At Mitchel Field, L. I., General Foulois gave the "Let's go!" signal. The show was on.

The scenario called for a breath-taking display of air power--sham battles in the air, mass flying formations with the wings of the planes 16 ft. apart. The dreary weather permitted only a stately parade of the squadrons down the hazy Hudson. Except for a few power dives and dog fights over Floyd Bennett Field, the only aerobatics of the afternoon took place inland over New Jersey. A patrol of pursuit planes dove at the World-Telegram-Eastern Air Transport's "flying press box," shooed it further off the course.

Although the New York performance did not come up to its elaborate billing, the ensuing drive upon New England-- where another mythical enemy threatened --more than made up for it. Favored by a high ceiling, the division performed as it had never had a chance to do since leaving Dayton, flew by the reviewing stand at Boston Harbor in such close-packed formation that the passage of the entire column consumed only n minutes. Most impressive was the finished work of the 95th Pursuit Squadron, commanded by Lieut. Irving Woodring, last of the Army's famed "Three Musketeers." Time and again the 18 Boeings roared down from the sky to smite the bombers. Heartened by the armada's proud showing the commanding officers determined to try another demonstration over Manhattan en route to Washington, should the weather there turn fair. In any event, Assistant Secretary Davison could point with pride to the Army's getting its 672 planes across the mountains and up the coast without losing a man or machine. With ten days more for mobilization to continue, caution had thus far averted all of the six deaths which Army casualty charts forecast.

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