Bombers for Britain

Near Cardington, Ohio, a British Lockheed bomber cracked up and burned. Two young U.S. Army Air Forces lieutenants died in her blackened hulk. Few miles away, on the Army's Patterson Field, another Lockheed, with the red-white-&-blue cockade of the R.A.F. on her camouflaged sides, ground-looped on a take-off and burned as her pilots skipped out of danger. At Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field four Douglas DB75 whisked in from the west in formation, were landed by their khaki-clad pilots as nice as you please.

By a few such signs the U.S. public learned last week that the newest section of The U.S. Army Air Forces--the Ferrying Command--had started to function. It was furiously busy clearing the pile-up of completed bombers for Britain that had clogged aircraft-factory parking areas. The Ferrying Command, organized only a month ago, had lost its first men. But that was an expected incident. More important, it was delivering ships--to the Atlantic seaboard for shipment by sea, to Canada for flying across the North Atlantic.

Just as important, it was delivering a needed by-product to The Air Forces: intensive training of airmen on big ships, the kind that Army fliers would be flying night & day if most of them were not booked for Britain.

Closemouthed about its new activity, The Air Forces nevertheless let a few hints drop on the scope of the Ferrying Command's job. At Detroit, at Nashville, at Dayton and other points it had set up stations manned by crack engineering crews. Their job was to fit transient bombers with items of equipment (instruments, armament, etc.) not available when they finished their last test flights at the factories. To man the bombers, the Ferrying Command already had around 200 air crews, was reputedly planning to run the total up to 600 before long. For this expansion it was training fliers at Albuquerque, N.Mex., and at Barksdale Field, La.

Since Britain is getting around two-thirds of all U.S. military aircraft production (perhaps 1,000 of the 1,476 in June --see p. 32) the upstart Ferrying Command was getting all the priority it needed in men and materials. It also had a go-getting commander who has long had a reputation in the Army flying service for getting what he needs. The Ferrymen's boss, slim, 45-year-old Colonel Robert Olds, who has been flying for the Army since he was commissioned in 1917, today is as fine a big-ship handler as there is in The Air Forces. Accounted one of the flying service's white-haired boys, handsome Bachelor Olds has flown Flying Fortresses on two good-will trips through South America, commanded a four-engine bombardment group, cracked many a record sitting in the pilot's seat of a B17. More photogenic than the average seamy-faced flying man, he has appeared to advantage in many a newsreel, in thousands of newspaper pictures publicizing the Army flying service. He has also won the D.F.C.. a special Harmon medal and, recently, the trophy of the Ligue Internationale des Aviateurs, for many a first-class job of flying.

But by last week the Ferrying Command was beginning to cut badly into Bob Olds's flying time. He was in & out of Washington, in & out of conferences, in & out of stacks of telegrams and letters. His new command may get him shortly the star of a brigadier general, and that will be all to the good with Careerman Olds. It also slates him for a lot of desk-sitting. That is distinctly not to the good for a flying soldier who is happiest when he is camped under a set of earphones in the office of a four-engined bomber.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.