72-Hour War?

(See Cover)

If the theories of the late great Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan are correct and World War II is one more struggle between sea power and land power, as the War went into its seventh week the fighting continued almost entirely in the sphere where the Allies are proportionately strongest--on water. Within seven days three submarines, three freighters, three passenger ships and a battleship went to the bottom.

Admiral Mahan died in 1914, too early to realize that World War I would produce another kind of power, air power. Far swifter, far more plastic, perhaps far deadlier than any weapon previously invented by man, its great potentialities nevertheless remained, after 25 years of development and 1,000 hours of the war that would ultimately prove its potency, almost as untried as the 2,000,000 troops facing each other last week across the Rhine.

War I merely introduced aviation to warfare. Ethiopia and China were little more than proving grounds. So far as is known, the biggest concentrated air bombardment to date occurred when new-type bombs whistled down on Barcelona New Year's Eve, 1938. At various times dozens of Fascist bombers operated in formation over Spain and, according to German accounts, as many as 800 attacked Polish fortifications in concert last month. But to airmen the world over this still remains white-chip stuff.

The airmen's Mahan is General Giulio Douhet, an Italian artilleryman who survived War I to propound the doctrine that air power is the decisive power. The Douhet theory holds that major wars can be won, and won quickly (while ground troops are mobilized as they are on the Western Front), by unrestricted mass destruction poured on civilian populations, their communications and utilities, from thousands of airplanes carrying hundreds of tons of bombs. So far War II has seen:

> At most two dozen British planes attack the German naval bases at Wilhelms-haven, Cuxhaven and Brunsbuettel with only minor success; perhaps half that many attack Helgoland Bight, most of them never to return.

> A small squad of French planes attacked the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen, with possible damage to an aircraft factory.

> Numerous British leaflet raids over German territory, at least one reconnaissance flight reaching Berlin.

> Biggest air attack so far came last week. Late one rainy afternoon, a British naval squadron ran across two or three German vessels "southwest of Norway." They gave pursuit, and chased the German ships all night. Next day a force of German bombers appeared and attacked, echelon after echelon. Germans later claimed ten direct hits, six with heavy bombs, four with medium. The British reported that one shot came close enough to splatter splinters on a cruiser. Two German planes, either crippled or lost, made forced landings in Danish territory, one went down off the Danish coast and one in Norway. Attacking force, according to the British: 50 planes; according to an excited Norwegian fishing boat captain, 150.

> An Allied plane made an hour's reconnaissance flight over Berlin at 21,000 ft., was vainly searched with lights, sought with shrapnel. The Germans at first admitted it. Next day the Nazi semi-official news agency had another story: it was a lost German pilot. If a Nazi flier had been lost over his nation's capital for more than an hour he could have saved ammunition for the artillery, grey hairs for himself by 1) turning on his navigation lights, 2) firing his identification signal from a Very pistol or 3) flying away.

> This week "twelve or 14" German bombers raided the Firth of Forth, with its 2,765-yard bridge, with its huge Rosyth Dockyard, where British warships are refitted. A joint Admiralty and Air Ministry communique admitted that the cruisers Southampton and Edinburgh and the destroyer Mohawk had been hit as they lay moored; 35 sailors were killed or wounded. At least four attacking planes the communique claimed, were downed. To get to Scotland and home again, the raiders had to fly 850 miles.

The most articulate U. S. disciple of Douhetism is Major Al Williams, once (as Navy flyer) a breaker of world's records, now a Gulf Oil salesman and Scripps-Howard columnist who talks against military conservatism at home and abroad as swiftly, daringly, skilfully as he flies.

"I claim," said Al Williams in Manhattan last week, "that the damn war hasn't started. . . . If the issues between England and France on one side, and Germany on the other, are destined to be settled by force, the decision, win or lose, will be reached in a matter of 72 hours--in short, via a true air war."

Few Generals subscribe to the speed and finality of the Douhet-Williams theories, but in substantiation of Al Williams' appraisal of War II Veteran Correspondent Walter Duranty, stationed with the Royal Air Force in France, stated: "The war has not yet progressed beyond the kidding stage."

If this was not war, what would it be like when it came? And--most anxiously people on both sides of the line were asking--who would have the edge? Who would win the terrible war in the air?

The power of an air force is not expressed by the arithmetic of airplanes alone. An air force is made up of all sorts of men, and its power depends on their brains, their ingenuity, their nerve, their training, their physique, the efficiency with which they produce new planes, the cunning with which they disguise and protect factories and airfields. It depends on the amount of refined oil and high-octane gasoline they can get; on the number of miles which happen to lie between borders; on the incidence of fog over a given terrain. Adding up what is known of most of these factors, the margins, evident superiorities, palpable weaknesses of the three belligerent air forces stack up somewhat as follows.

Germany has the greatest Air Force in the world. This is clearly due to the fact that Germany started from scratch. It is easier to build an entirely new model city, than to re-plan an old one; so with an air force. Greatest single boon of the present German Air Force has been the Treaty of Versailles, which decreed that Germany should have no military or naval planes.

Masters of ersatz, Germans devised detours, pretenses, camouflages. They built underground factories; used commercial planes to develop military design; laid out airfields planted in alfalfa, made hangars like barns, dressed greaseballs like hayseeds. Thousands of young Germans joined Deutsche Lujtsport Verband (German Air Sports Society) and proceeded to fly their sports planes up & down Germany in tight military formations. Meanwhile civilians took to gliding and soaring.

Prevented by time and the Versailles Treaty from building a great Navy, Germany realized that to rise and fight again she must count on an air force for its long-range striking force. The two men most directly concerned with building the Air Force were one all the world has heard of, Hermann Goering, and one very few have heard of, Erhard Milch. Though he has kept closest surveillance over the Air Force, Goering has in recent months taken over many outside duties, and the real propeller of the force is now Erhard Milch, Inspector-General of the Air Force.

From 1933 on, Goering, a barrel of explosive black powder, and Milch, a cool steel machine, planned and produced. They built a carefully integrated but decentralized plant, with 1,700 factory units scattered all over Germany, most of them far from the hot French border. They established a military training course so brutally stepped up that only the fittest survive. They designed a simple series of warplanes, sensibly sticking to a few constantly modified basic types.

To all of this Erhard Milch, wartime flier, contributed what is probably the greatest advantage the German Air Force has: rigid standardization. His aviators are as much alike as piston rings, and his piston rings are uniform to the ten-thousandth of an inch. Remotely Jewish, born of a druggist, with experience in bigtime civil aviation, Lieut.-General Milch has such a passion for pattern that when a Berlin squadron leaves its barracks and flies to Koenigsberg, its men are given identical pajamas in identical rooms in identical barracks, and clean their teeth with duplicate brushes bearing their names.

Coldly calculating on war losses up to 100% a month (the British calculate a maximum of 30%) by 1939 Germany was turning out planes at the rate of 1,000 per month, claiming capacity for between 3,000 and 4,000. And the planes they were, building were such sweet ships as tool through aviators' dreams:

> Fundamentally bombardment is the core of air attack. Bombers do the damage; other planes simply find and clear the way. Main requirements of bombers are speed, range, capacity. Germany's Dornier Do. 17 and Heinkel He. 111 combine these talents admirably. The slender Do. 17, equipped with two liquid-cooled, streamlined, inverted-V Daimler-Benz engines, can lug one ton of bombs 1,500 miles at nearly 300 miles an hour; and the Heinkel, produced at Germany's model factory at Oranienburg (where duplicate machinery is set up underground, where workers live like prep-school boys), can carry the same load almost as fast and a little farther--1,600 miles.

Perhaps because they have no precision bombsight to compare with the new U. S. sight, which makes U. S. aviators boast they can drop a bomb in a barrel from 18,000 feet, Germans have emphasized dive bombing which is accurate, but vulnerable to anti-aircraft machine gunning.

> Main mission of single-seater pursuit ships is to fight other planes--to defend against and escort bombers, to protect reconnaissance planes. Prima donna among fighters is Germany's Messerschmitt log, which has flown 464 m. p. h. (stripped and suped-up for the record). It weighs 7,000 pounds, is cheap to produce. Bayerische Flugzeugwerke at Augsburg turns out five per day. Since the Germans maintain that the possible lifetime of a plane at war is about 30 days, there is no use putting it together like a Sheraton cabinet. Lighter (4,900 lbs.) but just about as fast as the Messerschmitt is the Heinkel He.112, as quick on turns as a trout.

Attack planes, armed to the ailerons with light bombs and machine guns, hedgehop along at 100 feet, literally hide behind barns or tree-clumps, surprise anti-aircraft batteries, scatter massed infantry, break up artillery emplacements. These are the 1939 version of the 1915 stunt-fighters, but they work methodically, in teams. The U. S. Army, which first developed low-flying attack, uses single-motored planes for the purpose, Germany, as do her enemies, uses two-engine jobs.

> Finally, reconnaissance planes are eyes. They should be fast, but must still be protected on missions when they cannot hide from pursuit in darkness or bad weather. Often obsolescent machines are relegated to reconnaissance patrols. The two-seater Henschel Hs.126 goes 680 miles in about three hours, carries a camera, light bombs, and a machine gun.

Of these and other types of first-line planes Germany now has about 7,000. The 200,000 men, women and children who helped make them, and the 100,000 who will fly and service them are the pets of Nazi Germany. Aircraft workers are given good wages, pleasant working conditions, and a sense of achievement. Aviators are heroes. Their morale is kept high by arbitrarily giving them social prestige, and by inspirational statements from the one man in the Air Force who is too fat to get into a pursuit ship, Hermann Goering: "We tingle," he says, "with eagerness to show our invincibleness in action."

France is in the ruck. She claims more seasoned pilots than either Germany or Britain, and they are doubtless wily, tough fighters, like most Frenchmen. They are typified by their Commander in Chief, short, grinning, gritty, excessively modest Joseph Vuillemin, who survived and won 17 citations in the last war. He developed the system of directing artillery fire by observation, and flew every type of plane on every sort of mission. He is still a flying, fighting leader.

French plane design is often superb, but production is awful. France can turn out only 200 planes a month--a fact which is often blamed on the nationalization of the industry under the Popular Front.

> Most horrible is the bomber known technically as the Amiot 143-M, known to pilots as the plane with the built-in headwind. It has a two-story cabin resembling a Paris pension, and out behind a pipe-like fuselage. It has a low maximum speed (189 m. p. h.) and low range (620 miles). Its record in Spain was terrible. To do justice, however, France has better bombers (but not many) in the Amiot 370 (310 m. p. h., 1,200 mi., 2,000-lb. load), and others.

> Best indication of the condition of France's Air Force is that she has bought from the U. S. planes which this country had already improved upon. One of France's top fighters is the Curtiss P-36, of which she bought 200. Its 275-300 m. p. h. are not enough. Its air-cooled engine, offering considerable wind resistance ("like running for a trolley car with your overcoat open," says Al Williams), does not streamline as neatly as liquid-cooled power-plants. However, the French have repeatedly expressed themselves satisfied with the P-36, and have claimed that it even outfights the Messerschmitt, being more maneuverable.

Britain. Last week in the House of Commons Air Secretary Sir Kingsley Wood laboriously reviewed the war record of the Royal Air Force to date: it flew 1,000,000 miles of reconnaissance and patrol, escorted 100 convoys, sighted submarines on 72 occasions, attacked 34 times, made 1,000-mile flights at high altitudes. In cold figures such as Sir Kingsley cited, the R. A. F. last week had about 6,000 trained pilots, about 3,000 first-line planes. But it had, as well, spirit, ingenuity, determination, and a new plan.

The morale of British fliers is based on an unbroken tradition which goes back to 1918, on the conception of duty, above all on class pride. Elite of the R. A. F. are graduates of Cranwell, which corresponds to the Army's Sandhurst, the Navy's Dartmouth.

In R. A. F. training camps, where the bulk of British fliers are now being trained, boys of 20 and 21 are taught not only to fly, but to fight. Heavyweight Boxer Len Harvey (himself an R. A. F. sergeant) teaches them how to take it on the chin. Psychologists teach them how to make the most of their brains and nerves. Officers teach them to respect the authority of such crackerjack leaders as their Chief of Air Staff, Sir Cyril Newall.

These Britons want to learn to fly, for they want to beat Adolf Hitler, and they respect the air power he can call up. But Britons encounter two insurmountable difficulties in their learning: the sun shines over Great Britain only one hour in every three; the island is too small and crowded for extended training flights.

To circumvent these difficulties, Sir Kingsley Wood last week announced a vitally new plan: Canada, where are to be found both clear weather and flying room, would become the advanced training centre for military airmen of the whole British Empire. When the machinery was ready, Canada would turn out about 800 skilled airmen every month.

Another difficulty the British have had to overcome--they have done so with amazing rapidity--is their slow rate of plane production. It was in 1936 that Britain finally woke up to the appalling state of her Air Force. At the end of last year Britain was producing only about 200 planes a month, but by last week they had almost achieved a rate of 1,000 per month, bade fair to overtake the German rate soon.

Chief. Concerned with the production of both men and machines, Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Louis Norton Newall was last week one of the hardest working men in Europe. From nine o'clock sharp until dusk each day he conferred with Sir Kingsley Wood, with air counsellors, plane manufacturers, training experts. Most nights he did not get home for dinner, some nights did not get there to sleep.

Born in a Kiplingesque Indian hill station 53 years ago, he first grew interested in aviation while on leave from his regiment, the Gurkha Rifles, in 1911. He spent his whole leave learning to fly, finally earned the Royal Aero Club's Certificate No. 144.

When war broke out he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, and by 1917 was given command of the 41st Bombing Wing, based at Nancy. The Rhineland still remembers him for the punishment his Wing delivered to industrial and military targets in retaliation for Zeppelin and airplane raids on London.

Sir Cyril is the only British high-ranking officer today who has the Albert Medal 1st Class, usually associated with peacetime heroism. One day in 1916 fire broke out in an R.F.C. bomb store containing 2,000 high-explosive bombs. The key could not be found. Cyril Newall and a mechanic climbed on the roof and played a hose through a hole burned by the flames. Newall then led three others into the building, and together they put out the fire.

After the war, he rose in the Royal Air Force, married Olive Tennyson Foster, of Back Bay, Boston, and settled down to a life of thorough work and enthusiastic gardening. Now he is red-faced, grey-haired, tightlipped, taciturn, tough--a model of a gallant airman. The only thing he loves better than a party is a party from which newspapermen are barred. There is, however, one thing he hates more than a reporter--any man who shows off.

Last June Sir Cyril wrote a pregnant sentence which in all candor he would probably admit is the real reason for Great Britain's fighting Germany: "Our responsibility is the defense of a great Empire." Britain does not want to attack; she wants to defend. But if the issue is joined, she must attack or lose, because aerial warfare cannot be won on the defensive. That Sir Cyril and his associates fully realize this is indicated by the nature of the Force they have built:

> At the beginning of this year Britain had about seven bombers for every three pursuit ships; and they are good bombers. The Vickers Wellington can go almost 300 m.p.h., and has ample range to strike at Berlin--3,240 miles. Smaller, just as fast, the Bristol Blenheim (range: 1,125 miles) is one of Great Britain's main standbys. And the mysterious Bristol Beaufort is too fast and too good to be described to the public yet.

> Britain has two magnificent fighters, the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire. These planes are both called interceptors. Their talent is getting up 10,000 feet in 4.8 minutes--to stop bombers. The Spitfire can go over 350 m.p.h. and does its spitting from eight Browning guns. If defensive flying can succeed, these two models can do it.

> The R.A.F. has all sorts of specialty craft--for submarine searches, advanced training, primary training, transport, dive bombing, freight. Some are junk; some are secret and superb.

Blitzkrieg, 72-hour shock, or heartbreaking drawn-out death struggle, who would win the war in the air?

Right now, a major effort involving thousands of planes would probably be an easy German victory. Time, geography, confidence are all on her side. Britain and France are not ready. But Herr Hitler had better hurry. Over the downs of Devon, above Midland fens, and now above the grain-rich plains of Saskatchewan and Alberta, propellers are whirring. Boys who have not yet learned to shave, have learned to ease a throttle forward. More important, assembly lines are getting longer, moving faster in Allied factories. More important still, it takes gas to fly a plane, and Germany has precious little of it and can get precious little more. Al Williams' theory may be screwy, but it is Herr Hitler's best bet.

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