Chemidlin's Ride

ARMY & NAVY

Last week C. I. O.'s Pacific Coast leader, Longshoreman Harry Bridges, whom patrioteers have tried to get deported as an alien and a Communist, wired President Roosevelt: "Nazi agents and sympathizers working on planes of the North American Aviation Company ... at Los Angeles, and on planes of the Consolidated Aircraft Company at San Diego, are engaged in wholesale sabotage. . . . Abundant evidence and official records now exist to prove these drastic charges. . . ."

One morning last week a new all-metal, twin-motored monoplane, bright with red, white & blue Air Corps paint, was rolled out on the runway at Los Angeles' Municipal Airport. From a distance grease monkeys and pilots rubbered at her sleek, narrow fuselage, her one-seat pilot cabin, her tricycle landing gear. To trained ears the roar of her motors indicated an unusual concentration of horsepower.

Observers were all eyes at her takeoff, but only a few of them knew that she was the secret entry of famed Planemaker Donald Douglas in a forthcoming competition for light Army bombers. Not even visiting Army fliers had been allowed near the guarded room of the Douglas Aircraft Co. factory where the ship, supposed to have a top speed of 400 m.p.h., had been built.

After cavorting aloft for almost half an hour, the new bomber whipped low over the airport, climbed again to 3,000 feet and soared along at 300 m.p.h. Test Pilot John Cable then apparently cut one motor to try a climb on half power. Instead of climbing the ship went into a spin. John Cable bailed out at 500 feet, pulled the ripcord of his parachute too late, died on the ground. In a parking lot less than 50 feet from his body, the bomber demolished nine automobiles before it stopped.

In the few seconds before flames surrounded the wreck something happened which soon made more news than the crash. Three employes of the nearby plant of North American Aviation saw an injured man in the wreck, dragged him out. The Douglas company identified the passenger as "Smithin, a mechanic." But reporters learned at Santa Monica Hospital that the man with a broken leg, wrenched back and battered head was in fact Captain Paul Chemidlin, a French military observer.

Since Army and Navy make a great pother about secrecy in the design and construction of planes, questions had to be asked in Washington. From Major General Henry H. Arnold, chief of the Air Corps, Chief of Staff Malin Craig and others, the Senate Military Affairs Committee learned: 1) Ambassador-to-France William C. Bullitt months ago asked Douglas to show the French the new plane, was turned down because of Army objections; 2) Mr. Bullitt appealed to Franklin Roosevelt, who reversed the Army decision; 3) General Arnold signed the permit for French inspection of the plane on orders from the White House. Immediate result: preparation of a bill to give military authorities sole discretion in opening U. S. aircraft facilities to foreign purchasers.

Then Franklin Roosevelt, who had received a warning from Harry Bridges, spoke up at press conference. He had learned that France needed U. S. planes. He saw no reason why France shouldn't get the newest types, although practice has been not to permit manufacturers to sell any model of war plane to a foreign country until six months after sale to the U. S. Army has been made. The President reasoned that French orders would set U. S. factories in motion, make them readier to fill domestic orders. Having talked it over with his Cabinet, he had enabled a French military mission now in the U. S. to see various things it wanted, among them, the Douglas bomber.

Also published last week was the news that France has just doubled an order made last year for 100 Curtiss-Wright Pursuit ships of a type already in U. S. Army use, and plans to buy perhaps 400 more planes (reportedly through financing arranged with Franklin Roosevelt's assistance).

Thus the crash of the Douglas bomber proved to be not a spy story but a new chapter in U. S. foreign policy.

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