Bombs Away Read online

  The young people were not unlike those clots of boys who hang around the fronts of poolrooms waiting for something to happen. An anarchy of thought and action had in fact settled over the young people of the country. An antidote for the poisons of this idleness and indirection might eventually have been found, some great building program for the betterment of the country (some economic direction or trend to tear away the lethargy). But meanwhile, with one set of certainties gone and no new set established, the country floundered about. Floundered about in fact so convincingly that our enemies considered us to be in a dying condition. Because we were uncertain, we tried to avoid the thought of war and the means of war and the preparation for war. Some of our leaders wished to cut the world in half—to defend this hemisphere against the other—while others thought it would be good business and good thinking to give England the weapon to fight the war for us.

  Perhaps the future will show that we were very fortunate in that we were not being permitted to use either of these methods for the war. Our arguments and disunity might have kept us ineffective or only partly effective until it was too late. But Germany and Japan were bound to blunder sooner or later, and blunder they did. In attacking us they destroyed their greatest ally, our sluggishness, our selfishness, and our disunity.

  The attack on us set in motion the most powerful species drive we know—that of survival. It created direction toward which we could aim all of our vitalities—and we have great vitality. What the Axis could not understand was that the measure of our unrest was the measure of our vitality. The war was dumped into our laps; we could not avoid it, but fortunately for us, we have been given a kind of war we are peculiarly capable of fighting—a war without established technique or method, a kind of war rooted in production in which we surpass. If we ourselves had chosen the kind of war to be fought, we could not have found one more suitable to our national genius. For this is a war of transport, of machines, of mass production, of flexibility, and of inventiveness, and in each of these fields we have been pioneers if not actual inventors.

  With the very techniques required for this war, our people explored a continent and peopled it and developed it, threw rails across it, drove highways north and south, burrowed for metals, and dammed rivers for power. And the energy and versatility and initiative which developed this continent have not died. Perhaps some of our difficulty before the beginning of this war was caused by the aliveness and the versatility and initiative without the goal.

  Even the tactics now used in Europe and in China are not new to us; guerrilla fighting, commando fighting, our fathers learned from the Indians 200 years ago and practiced for 200 years.

  Even the children playing in the vacant lots in America practice the tactics of the guerrilla and the commandos in their games, while speed, mechanics, and motors are almost born with them. In short, this is the kind of war that Americans are probably more capable of fighting and fighting better than any other people in the world.

  The goal has been set now and we have an aim and a direction, and a kind of fierce joy runs through the country. The President set an end in production that was almost beyond reason and that end is being reached. The General Staff designed an army like none in the world and that army is being assembled and trained.

  Ever since the end of the last war our more intelligent gener als have foreseen what power would lie in the hands of the nation with a great and well-trained Air Force. These leaders have advocated the building of a huge Air Force and the training of thousands of pilots. But as always, opposition to change arose against them. They were denied facilities and money and, in one case at least, actual persecution was used.

  It was only when Germany demonstrated so violently in Belgium, in Holland, in Norway, in Crete, how devastating air power could be, that this nation awakened to the fact that we must have a great Air Force. And we find now that what Germany accomplished in eight years, we must surpass in less than two. In many ways this challenge is good for us. We are building the greatest Air Force in the world and we are training, developing, and grouping the most highly selected body of young men in the country to operate it.

  The Air Force Training Commands are not making the mistake of trying to create a great Air Force with inferior products. Indeed, the physical and mental testing of applicants is so rigid that acceptance by the Air Force of a young man is proof that he is far above the normal in intelligence, in health, and in strength.

  The planes are rolling off the assembly line by the thousand now and the men to fly them are being trained by the thousand. Hundreds of new airfields are being marked out all over the country. Into the induction centers every day, come truckloads of young men to begin their training and testing. And because the training has been so rapid and so without precedent, because the Air Force is making its tradition as it goes, a number of myths and stories and misconceptions have gotten loosed in the country.

  “A single-stack steamer was sighted . . .”

  A good example of this kind of myth is the often-repeated statement that the life of an air gunner is twenty minutes. How such a figure could have been arrived at and on what basis and by what comparison is impossible to find out. One might as accurately say that the life of a pedestrian is fifteen minutes or that the life of a man crossing a street is a half hour. It is amazing how these irresponsible statements persist. If a pedestrian gets hit by a car or a gunner gets hit by a bullet his life is over, and if he doesn’t, he is still alive.

  The development of our Air Force has been so rapid and the men who have designed it have been so busy that so far there has not been time to issue in a book the process whereby a young American boy becomes a pilot, a bombardier, a navigator, or a gunner. Young men may be a trifle apprehensive entering on a training the process and technique of which they do not understand. It is the intention of this book to set down in simple terms the nature and mission of a bomber crew and the technique and training of each member of it. For the bomber crew will have a great part in defending this country and in attacking its enemies. It is the greatest team in the world.

  THE BOMBER

  Of all branches of the Service, the Air Force must act with the least precedent, the least tradition. Nearly all tactics and formations of infantry have been tested over ten thousand years. Even tanks, although they operate at a high rate of speed, make use of tactics which were developed first by chariot and then by cavalry.

  But the Air Force has no centuries of trial and error to study; it must feel its way, making its errors and correcting them. The whole technique of aerial fighting has a history of less than twenty years. While to some extent this lack of experience is limiting, in another sense, it allows the Air Force a freedom of action not quite possible in other branches of the Service; for armies, like other organizations, have a tendency to rely on tradition and to hold to traditional techniques after their efficacy has passed. The Air Force must make its way in a new field where there are no precedents, where there are few rules to fall back on. During the last war, military airplanes were used largely for observation. The heroic dog fights which took place over the lines in Europe were usually the result of one plane trying to keep another from seeing what was going on behind the line.

  It was only toward the very end of the war that bombers began to be built and bombing tactics developed. During the period between the two wars, most of the nations of the world experimented expensively with airplanes. The world at large was so tired of war, so sick with war that it hoped it might never have to use these experiments. Of all the nations of the world, only Germany knew what it was going to do and where it was going with its aircraft. Germany, and the dark Aryans of Italy and the yellow Aryans of Japan developed air forces. The purpose was to blast and maim and kill. They knew exactly what they were going to do. They developed plane types for specific purposes and they watched the rest of the world for the uncorrelated experiments which they might devote to their purposes. Thus when the United States Navy developed the
principle of dive-bombing, Germany took the principle and welded it into its air tactics and later used it overwhelmingly on the nations it attacked.

  Japan studied the intricacies of the American supercharger and incorporated it in its Zero fighter. The Axis developed and took and bought and stole the unrelated air inventions of the whole world and gathered them together into a destructive design, and when the Axis struck at Europe with this carefully designed unit of destruction it found Europe unprepared to meet it. The Axis had been practicing with its new weapon in Ethiopia, in Spain, and in China, and the rest of the world took little notice. Wild Ethiopian horsemen had been bombed and machine gunned on the ground to teach young Mussolinis how to use their weapons. The people of Guernica were cut down, Madrid was bombed, Barcelona destroyed, to train the Axis how to use its weapons. China defended itself with a wall of men against a wall of metal. And only after Europe was attacked and half beaten did the people of the world awake to the fact that air power can only be beaten with air power. If the German plan had worked we would have been lost, for the Axis planned to destroy us before our factories could begin turning out planes, before our young men could be trained to operate them. Holland, Belgium, and France were gone—surprised and blasted before they could resist—and then the German bombers struck at England; for the intention was to destroy England as quickly and as completely as France had been destroyed, to wreck the small English Air Force on the ground and to destroy the cities and bring the people to their knees.

  But from England a few Spitfires went up to meet the German bombers which for the first time were challenged. And probably the history of the world for all time to come was changed by those few Spitfires and the young men who flew them. For the first time the Axis had air power against it no matter how inadequate. Those few Spitfires gave us time and gave England time to build the weapon to destroy the Axis—the weapon of air power, faster, bigger, and more numerous than the Axis can provide. At last the world is awake. It knows now that it could not escape the war and that the only way to terminate the war is to destroy the men and the weapons that caused it.

  The weapons of the Air Force and their use are changing and developing very rapidly, but already certain facts that were known to a few of the leaders of our Air Force are becoming generally known. We know now that the champion, that the backbone of air power is the heavy bomber. Pursuit plane, torpedo plane, observation plane have specialized services very necessary and very vital as part of the Air Force, but the puncher is the heavy bomber.

  For a long time we hated the idea of the heavy bomber. It was considered only an offensive weapon designed to carry bomb loads to enemy cities to destroy them. But very recently a new factor has emerged. The Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway have demonstrated that our heavy bomber is our greatest weapon for the defense of our coast against invasion.

  In the short time of its use the heavy bomber has made a tremendous record. It may, in fact, have changed the nature of warfare in the world. In the Coral Sea long-range heavy bombers, land-based, went out to meet the Japanese invasion fleet and broke its back, dispersed its ships. And again at Midway, the long-range bombers found a Japanese fleet and dispersed it before it could near land. These terrible weapons may have changed the nature of navies, may have made capital ships obsolete. From offensive weapons, the long-range bombers have taken their place as our greatest defensive weapon, and we know now that our coast cannot be attacked by invasion fleets as long as we have great numbers of long-range bombers to find the enemy at sea and destroy him before he can make contact with our shores.

  The enormous cruising range of our bombers, together with their capacity for carrying enormous quantities and weights of bombs, have put new emphasis, new responsibility, and new honor on the land-based, long-range bomber. It can patrol and strike thousands of miles at sea and no ship, no matter how protected, can survive the weight of its attack. On the newly formed and trained bomber crews is being placed the first responsibility to the nation, to defend the coasts and to carry the war to the enemy. There can be little question why the Army Air Force is placing such emphasis on the heavy bomber.

  In the earlier days of the Service, young men entering the Air Force wished first to be pilots and second to be pilots of pursuit ships. The speed of the ships and the dramatic gallantry of the action drew the best of our young men to that Service. But the pursuit ship is a short-range, supplementary weapon compared to the bomber. In the Air Force, a new, compact, and exciting organization is growing up—the bomber crew. It’s really a bomber team and it can truly be called a team for it must have those qualities which make a good football team, a good basketball team. It must function as a unit. It must have complete discipline and yet it must delegate its responsibilities. Each member of a bomber crew has a function to perform which must come out of himself. Each member of a bomber crew has two functions—that of command as well as that of obedience. The pilot and the copilot must fly the ship, that is true, but they must take their directions from the navigator, for he knows where they are and where they are going and how to get there. Arriving at the target, the bombardier must take command, for it is he who must drop the bombs on their target, who must destroy the ship or break up the power line or riddle the factory. And all during flight, the engineer commands the engines and sees that they function. The radio man is the voice and ears of the plane, keeping it in contact with its squadron and with its base, and all the time the aerial gunners are charged with the defense of the ship. On the sharpness of their eyes and the accuracy of their aim the safety of the whole crew depends.

  This is truly a team, each member responsible to the whole and the whole responsible to the members. And only with its teamlike quality can the bomber successfully function. Here is no commander with subordinates, but a group of responsible individuals functioning as a unit while each member exercises individual judgment and foresight and care.

  This is the kind of an organization that Americans above all others are best capable of maintaining. The bomber team is truly a democratic organization. No single man can give all the orders to make a bomber effective. The effectiveness of its mission rests on the initiative and judgment of each one of its members. Not everyone on a football team insists on being quarterback. He plays the position he is best fitted to play. The best football team is one where every member plays his own particular game as a part of the team. The best bomber team is the one where each man plays for the success of the mission.

  Thus, because of the foresight of the leaders of our Air Force, a change is coming over the attitude of the young men who are joining. There was a time when a navigator was a pilot who had failed and had taken second choice, when a bombardier was a navigator who had failed and had taken second choice. That is no longer true. A pilot is one kind of man, having one kind of qualities. He might not make a good navigator. A navigator might not make a good pilot nor a good bombardier, while a bombardier requires certain physical and mental traits which are different from those required by either navigator or pilot.

  So that each man will do the work he is best fitted to do, the Air Force has devised a series of tests, mental, manual, and physical, which strongly indicate the position in the bomber each applicant should take.

  America is building two kinds of long-range bombers for its rapidly developing bomber crews, while other kinds of ships are being built and tested. It is probable that the B-17, popularly known as the Flying Fortress, and the B-24, which the British call the Liberator and for which we have no name yet, will be the nucleus and the backbone of the Air Force striking power. Both are four-engined ships capable of great cruising range and of large bomb-carrying capacity, and although they do not look alike at all they seem to be about equal in effective-ness. But such are the loyalties of Americans toward their tools and their weapons that a Flying Fortress crew will spend a night arguing for the Flying Fortress, while a B-24 crew defends its ship with some heat. The B-17, or Flying Fortress, is the best known
and better publicized of the two ships. Its name has struck a responsive chord in the public mind, in spite of the fact that its name does not describe it at all. It is in no sense a fortress, it is an attack ship. Its purpose is to carry the war to an enemy, not to sit still and repel attack. Such has been the appeal of its name that all large bombers are known in the press and in the public mind as Flying Fortresses.

  Boeing B-17 E, commonly known as the Flying Fortress

  The B-17 has long wings and a graceful and serene flight. It is so large that it does not seem to fly very fast. It is a graceful and beautiful ship, capable of great altitude.

  Consolidated B-24, commonly known as the Liberator

  The B-24, on the other hand, is an earnest, deadly-looking ship—pugnacious, stubby. Its wings having a different air foil from that of the B-17 seem short and stubby by comparison. On the ground, sitting on its tricycle landing gear, its tail in the air, it looks like an Anopheles mosquito. Looked at from the side, it seems thick and clumsy, but head on it is lean and streamlined. Its bomb bays slide up its side like the top of a rolled-top desk and it takes the air with a roar of menace. The crews of the B-24 defend it valiantly against the aspersion that the B-17 is better.

  Actually, these two ships seem to be about equal in performance, although they are so different in appearance. The tradition originated by truck drivers is carried out in these ships. They are given names by their crews and the names painted on the sides, Little Eva, Elsie, Alice, are in line with the American trait of establishing a kind of affectionate relationship with his machine, of endowing it with life and with personality. And airplanes do have, in common with boats, certain personal traits—no two fly quite alike, each one has its little quirks and crankinesses, its excellencies and failings.