Cargo Planes

The U.S. is getting ready for a Jules Verne venture to win the war: air freighting. To a nation pledged to deliver millions of tons of war materials to war fronts thousands of miles away, the use of fleets of cargo planes over six continents and seven oceans is no free choice. Something has to be done. The United Nations have been losing the Battle of the Atlantic for a long time now, and they are smack up against logistics--the time-space factor involved in war-supply problems. If Russia, China, Britain, Australia and the Middle East cannot be supplied, the war will be lost. Now it is freight-by-plane, or else.

Air Trucks. Any scheme to employ planes on such a grand scale is as heroic in composition as a Beethoven symphony, as knotty in detail as differential calculus. It is a task for poetic imagination far grander than Tennyson's in Locksley Hall, which 100 years ago "saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales. . . ." And it is an even greater practical task. But the argosies are being planned. The Army says that by the end of this summer cargo cartage by air will be the biggest single development in the war effort.

The arguments for vast fleets of cargo planes and troop transports are unanswerable. The only questions are: How many? How soon? What types?

For instance, a fleet of 300 75-ton planes could deliver five whole streamlined divisions across the Atlantic in the same time required by 30 surface transports carrying 2,000 men each. And some 3,500 planes of types now in use (Boeing B-17 four-engine bombers, or Consolidated PBY-2 four-engine patrol bombers) could transfer a streamlined division from one coast to the other in one night. The problem is not whether such hitherto undreamed-of fleets are desirable. The problem is how they can be created.

U.S. Airlines v. Air Freight. While his future enemies were debating how many angels with 60-lb. field packs could stand on the point of a pin, Hitler accumulated transports for Norway, Crete and Libya. Sixteen percent of the Luftwaffe consisted of transports.

In the U.S. a combination of circumstances had prevented the building of an air-cargo system useful in war. U.S. commercial airlines had discouraged the development of freight planes by keeping their rates high; their real revenues flowed from passenger and mail traffic.

The Army had its own pigeon-sized air-cargo system. In 1941 it carted 4,000 tons of airplane parts to & from tactical fields and its depots. But in the U.S. long-range air freighting was an uncharted stratum, even after the Army established a ferry service to deliver combat planes abroad. As late as last autumn only a minuscule 4% of the Army's planes consisted of troop and cargo carriers. The Navy was tardier.

To London, Chungking. U.S. ocean air freight began with a bang last January when the Army requisitioned TWA's five 22 1/2-ton Boeing Stratoliners. Scores of 12 1/2ton Douglas DC-3 airline transports were drafted from the airlines, sent around the nation, to Alaska, Britain, Greenland, Africa, China. Airline crews who knew the art of distance-flying were drafted too.

Last month the Air Transport Command was set up. It swallowed the Air Force Ferrying Command and the cargo division of the Air Services Command. Its commander is Brigadier General Harold L. George. The Army air-freight service had already begun, in a small way, to work wonders:

> In small part the Ferrying Command has offset the loss of the Burma Road.

> In five months the Air Transport Service has flown 5,000,000 plane-miles, moving equipment and personnel to the Australian Front.

> One Consolidated four-engine Liberator bomber on freight-passenger duty recently spanked across the Atlantic five times in nine days.

> Helpful was a small-plane courier-cargo service newly established by OCD's Civil Air Patrol, shuttling between factories and shipping points.

The big job still lies ahead. What there is of the Air Transport Command is as yet too picayune to play an important part for General Somervell's Services of Supply. The U.S. has still no true cargo planes, built with tail or nose hatches for easy loading and unloading.

Hundred-Tonners. A WPB air-cargo committee has explored the possible construction of 100-ton winged trucks. The Department of Commerce wants 800 all-steel freighters (stainless steel is still at a premium). The Army has contracted for lots of DC-3s, hundreds of 25-ton Curtiss twin-engined troop-toting Commandos.

The nub of the problem is: What can be had in a hurry for the 1942 emergency? The prospect: stepped-up production of proved types (Commandos, DC-3s, 25-ton Douglas DC-4s) while engineers work on bigger & better air freighters for 1943 and later.

Air freighting cannot be a war transportation cureall. Planes--unless they can be built in size and numbers still unforeseen--can only supplement, not replace, sea transport. Bad weather will ground planes, delay schedules. New and elaborate air-freight terminals are needed. Fuel in millions of gallons must be carried abroad and stored. Fresh thousands of pilots must be trained in big-plane flying techniques.

And, of course, enemy fighter craft will eventually take over the villain's role now played by submarines. By then air freight will likely have fighter-plane convoys.

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