Offensive Airman

(See Cover)

"No defensive force can stop a determined offense by air."

This dictum of modern naval warfare was laid down last week by Rear Admiral Frederick Carl Sherman, captain of the great carrier Lexington, whose planes had sunk one and probably two Japanese carriers before she was sunk in turn by torpedoes and bombs delivered by determined Japanese airmen. The sinking of the Lexington ended the second round of a great heavyweight free-for-all, air ships v. surface ships. Before the Lexington's commander got home and buttoned on his reward, the golden shoulder boards of an admiral, another round had ended.

In round one, air power had proved it could sink battleships and did so at Pearl Harbor and in the battle for Malaya, when the Prince of Wales and Repulse went down. Surface power's seconds cried "Foul!" but when the second round opened, the battleship was in No. 2 position in the fleet line. The carrier is now the capital ship of the sea (as the U.S. Navy tacitly acknowledged by concentrating its attacks on the Japanese carriers rather than battleships at Midway).

In round two air power proved it could knock out carriers as it did in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, against the finest, most resourceful defense.

In round three, at Midway, air power finally stopped a great fleet and routed it.

Last Question. One major question is left for air power to answer: Can the airplane, without ground or sea support, win a war on land (i.e., beat Germany)?

If the great Billy Mitchell were still alive, his answer would be "yes." But Billy Mitchell is dead, with his rank posthumously upped and most of his prophecies as bright as the multi-colored ribbons that swatched the breast of his tunic. But except for a few civilian followers such as "Sascha" Seversky and Al Williams, his disciples are mute. Even at this stage of World War II, it is not politic for men in uniform to make predictions.

But Billy Mitchell's men are still on the job and they are in the top drawer of the U.S. Army Air Forces. Harold L. George, who testified for him in his court-martial in 1926, is a brigadier bossing the Ferrying Command. One of Mitchell's defense counsels, Annapolis-educated Lewis Hyde Brereton, is a major general in command of U.S. Air Forces in India and China. Another defense witness, Henry Harley Arnold, has gone farther than the rest.

For the important fact is that this one of Mitchell's followers is today commanding general of the Army Air Forces. Deep-chested, rugged "Hap" Arnold, now white-haired but still grinning with the habitual benignity that has kept his West Point nickname alive through 35 years of Army service, will direct the U.S. Air Forces in the big smash on Germany. Then a new champion may be crowned.

Wait & See. Hap Arnold has made no predictions. He has marshaled the beginnings of what will soon be the greatest air force in the world, has already shipped some of it to Britain to join in the Big Push. But Army airmen have learned better than to talk as loudly as Billy Mitchell did. All they say is: "Wait and see."

It may still be that Billy Mitchell was wrong in his final estimate of the power of the military airplane. But he has been devastatingly right so far. In the greatest upset in warfare since Frenchmen first routed Britons with artillery (at the battle of Formigny in 1450) he had picked in advance the winner of every round.

In Poland and the Lowlands, Germany proved that the side with command of the air can operate successfully on the surface. Britain proved it again in the retreat from Dunkirk. In the Battle of Britain, Germany came close to proving Mitchell down to the last paragraph, but failed because she went at the job with too little vision (and too few airplanes) and because Britain took command of the air.

Proof. The proof switched to the Navy: to Taranto, where British pilots in antique planes proved that the aircraft could sink men-of-war; to the battle against the Bismarck, where they proved that the aerial torpedo could cripple the finest best-protected battleship afloat.

The proof went on. The Jap took it up sank battleships at Pearl Harbor. Navy men pleaded that they had been surprised. He smeared the Prince of Wales and Repulse when every gun in their anti-aircraft batteries was blazing. By then there were few to argue with Al Williams when he wrote: "What has any battleship done to date, in this war, but sink?"

The proof went on. A great naval battle was fought in the Coral Sea, and not a shot was fired by one surface ship against another. Carriers were sunk, and no desperate defense their airmen could make could save them.

The proof went on. Luckily for her enemies, Japan had her battleship admirals too. At Midway the Jap Fleet poked into the range of land-based aircraft, and for the first time in history, on such a scale, naval power with imposing air support met naked air power. It was the carriers again that took the beating. When the Jap turned back, minus two, and perhaps four, of his floating airdromes, airmen could ask some pertinent questions: What price carriers when aircraft get up (as they will next year) to ranges of 10,000 miles, with bomb loads of 25 tons? What price carriers to a group of nations which controls the islands of the seas and can use them (as the Jap uses the Mandates) for stationary carriers that cannot be sunk by aircraft?"

Mitchell's Pupil. When Billy Mitchell died, the air-power revolution lost its one great leader. There were plenty of airmen who agreed with him, and most of them were in the Army Air Corps. But there was none so gifted with the combination of impressive rank, burning partisan zeal and disregard of military convention as the man who had written: "The day has passed when armies on the ground or navies on the sea can be the arbiters of a nation's destiny in war."

Billy Mitchell's fate had shown airmen what they could expect if they sounded off out of turn. As soldiers they agreed with the justice of Billy Mitchell's punishment, since he had grievously broken military protocol. They kept their mouths shut, except among themselves, worked mightily with what they had to turn out their limited crop of good airplanes, good pilots, good battle doctrine.

When war came, they were readier than they had any reason to expect they would be. Orders from the Allies had set U.S. aircraft factories humming; designers, encouraged by the Army, & Navy, were ready with new engines and aircraft; U.S. industry was ready. And oldtime believers in air power, such as Frank Andrews (commander of the Canal Zone), Delos Emmons (of Hawaii) and Hap Arnold, held the top Air Force commands.

Hap Arnold had gone into infantry when he left the Academy in 1907, switched to flying in 1911, taking lessons from the Wrights and becoming one of the Army's first four military aviators.* From the start he was a spectacular airman. He still has a scar on his chin from the crack-up he prizes most. Hanging in the wreckage of his plane off Plymouth Beach in 1912, he saw help coming: two old codgers in G.A.R. uniforms in a rowboat. They passed him by; they were against airplanes.

Before World War I he had set an altitude record (6,540 ft. in 1912), won the Mackay Trophy for the first use of wireless in military reconnaissance, became the first man to carry mail by air, and scared the pants off the wide-ranging horse cavalry of the day by flying 30 miles from College Park, Md. to Fort Meyer, Va. and back.

He saw no fighting service in World War I. He was busy at administrative work in Washington, and now can thank his stars he was. In the midst of the biggest air-training program in history, he can look back to 1918 for experience. As Assistant Director of Military Aeronautics that year, he was boss of 30 training schools, 15,000 officers, 125,000 enlisted men. He was also a devoted follower of his old flying mate, spectacular bemedaled Billy Mitchell.

He was in Washington when the Mitchell row burst into flame. After the trial, Hap went into exile at Fort Riley, Kans., but later he began the rounds again. By this time he was a well-educated airman, with service in all the branches of the Air Corps and assorted experience as commander of flying fields, director of all the CCC camps in California, student at the best Army schools.

But most of all he liked flying, and when in 1934 the Army adopted his pet project, a survey of Alaska (Mitchell: "Who controls Alaska controls the Pacific"), Hap Arnold led the survey flight. That flight won him the Mackay Trophy for the second time and put Hap Arnold near the top of the Air Corps, with the rank of brigadier general.

From then on he had plain sailing to the top. General Arnold worked prodigiously at his desk, flew prodigiously, never lost his grin. Articulate, facile with words, he wrote boys' books about a young flying hero; with rugged Major General Ira Eaker as collaborator, he began turning out books about air power. But the lessons of other days had stuck. Arnold and Eaker tore no hair, snatched no lapels from their readers' coats. Their books were sound, but conservative and well hedged. If Billy Mitchell turns out not to be 100% right, neither of them has anything in print to regret.

Today at 56 General Arnold still flies. But the irregular helmet burn has faded from his ruddy face and he seldom gets into a pursuit ship. His mount is the big bomber, which he insisted on developing in the U.S. when the minds of British airmen were on fighters. And he always takes along his lanky aide, Colonel Eugene Beebe, as copilot, for Hap Arnold's theory is that old fellows tire out and may need help at the end of a long flight. So far Colonel Beebe has found nothing to substantiate the boss's theory.

Beyond Mitchell's Dreams. The job General Arnold's Air Forces have to do has grown beyond even the complexity of Billy Mitchell's vision.

Supplies and men are being flown across the oceans of the world and the Ferrying Command has become as important as any of the fighting outfits. It has become more vocal. Ship sinkings by Axis submarines have thrown a load on air power and the Ferrying Command is shouting for more cargo carriers.

Air forces are operating around the world and the men to make them greater are going through flying and ground schools by the thousands. Glider pilots must be trained (a blind spot until recently with Army airmen), planes for fighting men must be moved, bases must be supplied in the six continents that are the Air Forces' battlefield.

Billy Mitchell wrote: "We must relegate armies and navies to a glass case in a dusty museum, which contains samples of the dinosaur, the mammoth and the cave bear."

To prove this assertion is not the object of U.S. airmen. But their job is to prove it as far as concerns the enemy's armies and navies. And on the shoulders of Hap Arnold falls the major responsibility.

He has in his hands the new weapon which has already shown that it can beat fleets and make great armies impotent. Moreover, the particular air force that he commands will soon be a far greater weapon than any other the world has yet seen. In the course of duty he may have to prove that airpower is still underrated.

*The others: Frank P. Lahm, Frederick E. Humphreys, Benjamin D. Doulois.

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