/THE MOST SINCERE FLATTERY IN AVIATION HISTORY:

/THE TUPOLEV TU-4.

It was famously said of Ginger Rogers that she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. The same comparison might be drawn between the Tupolev Tu-4 and the Boeing B-29, for the Russians did almost everything the Americans did by reverse engineering (the backwards part) and in about half the time (the high-heels part.)

During the 1940s, the United States and the Soviet Union produced aircraft in quantities dwarfing all previous experience. Each nation also produced a bomber with characteristics so advanced that they demanded a national revolution in contemporary engineering, aerodynamics, manufacturing, electronics, material and operation. Each nation spent more on the one bomber than on any previous aviation project. Ironically, but by design, the two monumental efforts produced essentially the same aircraft. In the United States it was the B-29. In the Soviet Union it was the Tu-4 Bull, a virtual carbon copy of the Superfortress.

There were major differences, however, in what each nation received for its expensive investment. The United States obtained the long-range B-29 bomber that forced Japan to its knees. The B-29 then did what no other aircraft in the world could do: deliver a war-winning coup de grace by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Superfortress later became the primary weapon of the Strategic Air Command and was essential in the Korean War before serving in a variety of support roles.

The Soviet Union’s return on investment was equally valuable. The Tupolev Tu-4 took part in no decisive battles. Yet its effect on Soviet aviation was incredibly important. The Tu-4 brought the entire Soviet aircraft industry, from its design bureaus to its most insignificant parts supplier, into the modern airpower age. It laid the foundation for the Soviet Union becoming an aerial super power. The Soviets made remarkable progress in producing nuclear weapons, but without the amazingly rapid production of the Tu-4, the Soviet Union could not have delivered those weapons for many years.

Some attribute an even more important consequence of the Tu-4’s manufacture. The nuclear armed Tu-4 projected a Soviet threat that was countered by the Strategic Air Command. This initiated an era of mutual deterrence that many say did much to prevent the Cold War from turning into a nuclear conflict.

The Boeing B-29

While the operational exploits of the Boeing B-29 are well known, much has been forgotten about the massive size of the project and the many difficulties it encountered over the life of the program. In March 1938, Boeing responded to an Air Corps request for a pressurized B-17 equipped with a tricycle gear, in an era when appropriations were low and things moved slowly. It was not until January 1940 that Air Corps requirements were issued for a “Superbomber” with a speed of 400 mph, a range of 5,333 miles, and a one-ton bomb dropped midway.

The Army Air Corps began to perceive a need for “hemispheric defense” and asked for a Superbomber capable of bombing Germany from the United States and Japan from the Philippine Islands. Hitler’s successes in Europe accelerated the process and seven months later a contract was let for two XB-29s and a static test model. More than 1,600 more were ordered “off the drawing board” before the XB-29’s first flight on 21 September 1942. The famous test pilot, Eddie Allen was at the controls. Sadly, Allen lost his life on 18 February 1943, when the number two prototype crashed on its second flight.

Program estimates vary depending upon what is included, but it is generally stated that the entire B-29 effort cost about $3 billion—more than the Manhattan Project. Huge new plants were built for the three companies that manufactured airframes—Boeing, in Renton and Wichita, Bell in Marietta, and Martin in Omaha. The B-29 was at the time the heaviest bomber ever built, its early maximum gross weight of 124,000 pounds dwarfing that of the B-17 (65,500) Avro Lancaster (70,000) or Heinkel He 177 (68,300).

The enormous cost of the program derived from three main factors. The first was its size, for ultimately 3,943 were built and thousands more were cancelled There were four main factories, three modification centers and the largest sub-contracting program until then in Boeing history for equipment and sub-assemblies.

The second was the complexity of the aircraft, with its new structure, pressurized crew compartments, central fire control system and powerful new Wright R-3350 engines equipped with two superchargers and trouble-prone propellers. The engines were also rushed into development and would plague the B-29s throughout its lifespan with fires and failures. To obtain the required performance, Boeing reduced drag by specifying that the B-29 be built with smooth skin joints and flush riveting. Aerodynamicist George Schairer created a new air foil and opted for a high aspect ratio wing of relatively small area for the B-29s weight. The resultant high wing-loading was offset by the use of huge Fowler flaps that provided additional lift and wing area.

The third factor was the pell-mell speed of the program which saw the first aircraft flown before many of its key systems were designed, much less tested.

The B-29 program was backed by President Roosevelt and Major General Hap Arnold. Arnold saw to it that it received the top personnel available to create and train the tens of thousands of factory workers, aircrews and all the support people necessary so that the B-29 could enter combat as soon as possible. Despite many problems, some of which threatened its cancellation, the B-29 entered combat on June 5, 1944 with a raid on Bangkok. In the next thirteen months it would win the war with Japan and change the course of history forever.

The Soviet Approach to a Superbomber

During the 1930s, the Soviet Union had led the world in the construction and operation of large bombers. The Tupolev bureau designed the four-engine ANT-6 (TB-3) bomber, of which some 800 were built. First flown on 22 December 1930, it was at the time the most advanced heavy bomber in the world. In 1936, a B-17 equivalent, the TB-7 (later Pe-8) flew, but fewer than 100 were built as the Soviet Union turned its attention to smaller aircraft to stem the tide of the 22 June, 1941 German invasion.

The Russians first became aware of the Boeing B-29 when a talkative Eddie Rickenbacker made his controversial June 1943 trip to the Soviet Union. Russia’s later request for the delivery of 120 Lend-Lease B-29s was ignored, but on 29 July 1944, it received an intact example when a B-29 was damaged in a raid on Manchuria and forced to land in Vladivostok. Three more fell into their hands, as the sidebar shows.

**************************************************************************************
SIDEBAR
INTERNED BOEING B-29S

Serial # Name Aircraft Commander Unit Interned at Date

42-6256 Ramp Tramp Capt. H.R. Jarrnell 770th BS/462nd BGH Vladivostok 20 July 1944
42-93829 Cait Paomat II Maj R. McGlinn. 395th BS/40th BGH Crashed 20 Aug 1944
42-6365 Gen. H.H. Arnold Special Capt. W.H. Price 794thBS/468th BGH Vladivostok 11 Nov 1944
42-6358 Ding Hao! 1/Lt W. Micklish 794th BS/468th BGH Vladivostok 21 Nov 1944

The Soviet Union scrupulously upheld its agreements with Japan, interning U.S. aircraft and aircrews making emergency landings in Russian territory. Crews were treated with a primitive rough-hewn hospitality and secretly released through Iran in January, 1945.

The Russians were naturally excited by the interned B-29s and began a careful, systematic test program running from January to July, 1945. Three American bombers had landed at Vladivostok’s Tsentral’naya uglovaya, a Pacific Fleet air base; the fourth had crashed nearby. They were thus under the jurisdiction of Admiral Nikolai G. Kuznetsov, People’s Commissar for Naval Affairs and Commander of the Soviet navy. That summer, the three flyable aircraft flew to the Izmailova airfield outside of Moscow and transferred to the 65th Special Mission Air Regiment. They then came under the purview of Air Marshal Aleksandr Ye Golovanov.

Stalin was distressed that the Soviet Union did not possess a strategic bomber like the B-29, and was very unhappy with Tupolev, whose own strategic bomber “Samolet 64” was not only behind schedule but also lacked sources for essential bombing and navigation equipment.

Golovanov is reputed to have suggested to Stalin that the interned B-29s be copied and placed into production. Stalin apparently leaped at the idea and with uncanny prescience subsequently decreed that it be copied exactly, down to the smallest detail. He saw that any deviation in one part would inevitably lead to deviations in others, and production chaos would ensue. As doctrinaire as the orders were, Stalin could occasionally be persuaded to allow changes that would not imperil the program, as with the installation of the Russian engines and cannon.

On 6 June 1945, Stalin’s orders were promulgated, tasking the Tupolev design bureau to copy the B-29 and put it into production. An extremely detailed instruction placed the weight of responsibility on Tupolev’s shoulders—but also placed the whole of Russian government and industry behind him. His bureau was to break down a B-29 in the reverse order in which Boeing and its subcontractors had assembled it. All parts were to be reverse engineered, and individual elements were to be assigned to the appropriate enterprises for manufacture. Many elements of the aircraft had never been dreamed of, much less built, in the Soviet Union, yet firms were ordered to fulfill the task.

Had the exact same assignment been given to American industry, it would have been immensely difficult. Its assignment to Russian industry made it seemingly impossible for a wide range of reasons, beginning with the Soviet use of the metric system. There were more subtle differences as well. The Soviet aluminum industry could not be converted to mill aluminum sheet to American dimensions. Each aluminum part had to be analyzed for its strength requirements to determine whether a slightly larger (i.e. heavier) or smaller (i.e. lighter) piece of Soviet aluminum could be used. Weight control was essential, and it is to the credit of Soviet engineers that the Tu-4 was kept within one-percent of its designed weight goal.

Dimensions were not the only problem; materials also had to be reversed engineered to determine their composition, with suitable alterations then being made in what had previously been standard Russian techniques. In some areas—plastics, electronics, navigation and radar equipment and most particularly, the fire control system—the complexity and sophistication of the B-29 seemed beyond attainment. Yet Stalin decreed an iron-clad two year deadline for the program. With Stalin, the term “deadline” had a double meaning, and he used the notorious chief of the NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria, to back up his orders with the customary Soviet brutality.

No one knew this better than Tupolev, who had been arrested in 1937 on the absurd charge that he had sold the Messerschmitt Me 110 design to the Germans. He began working in a gulag-like aircraft bureau in Moscow in 1939 and was not released from prisoner-status until 1941 nor fully pardoned until 1955, two years after Stalin’s death. Tupolev thought Stalin’s decision was wrong, believing that his bureau could have created a better aircraft. But he knew Stalin’s decision could not be contested.

A long series of administrative decisions were made, assigning responsibility and accountability, but leaving final control in Tupolev’s hands. Against all odds, given the arcane interactions of the Soviet bureaucracy, what emerged was a model of managerial efficiency, one which was subsequently adapted by the Soviet Union’s successful space program.

Some far seeing decisions were made on the use of the interned aircraft. Appropriately, given Arnold’s patronage of the B-29, the General H. H. Arnold Special was chosen to be disassembled and copied. The Ding Hao was grounded for use as a back-up source of reference. The Ramp Tramp continued to fly for almost a decade, doing some fascinating test work that included air launching the near-supersonic rocket powered Samolet 346 test aircraft. Parts were scavenged from Cait Paomat II.

The General H. H. Arnold Special was carefully broken down into separate assemblies. These were further disassembled, with each of the thousands of pieces–metal, instruments, radios, wiring, motors, ducts, vents, Dzus fasteners, everything– being measured, photographed, weighed and given a detailed written description. All parts were analyzed to determine the material from which they were made. The products of modern American chemistry—plastic, synthetic fabrics, lubricants—were especially challenging.

Draftsmen working around the clock created thousands of engineering drawings, each one including the key transition from American measurement standards to the metric system.

A full-scale mockup of the Tu-4 was available by mid-1946, and Ramp Tramp was used to check out the flight crews which would test the Tu-4 and then establish the required crew training program.

While Tupolev, a master politician, dealt with the key government, party and service officials, his team at the design bureau managed the “routine” of cloning a weapon system. Special teams were assigned responsibility for each and every element removed from the B-29. Tupolev mustered his industry, calling upon scores of designs bureaus, dozens of research institutes and hundreds of factories. Their task was to create duplicates of the parts being removed from the B-29 and establish the manufacturing facilities to produce them in quantity.

The Tupelov design bureau carefully monitored the quality control of the products. There was a natural desire on the part of some suppliers to lobby for their own products or manufacturing techniques but Tupolev demanded conformance to the Boeing sample. Part of this was because he shared Stalin’s belief that a little deviation in one area could lead to a domino effect of sequential changes in many areas. Another part was the fear that Beria might perceive some change, however innocuous, as being treason.

The compulsive nature of Tupelov’s new system propelled the Soviet aviation industry into a new era of thinking, planning, research and execution even as it maintained the two-year schedule Stalin demanded. It was Tupolev’s good fortune that there was a suitable substitute for the B-29s Wright R-3350 engine available, the Shvetsov Ash-73TK. The Soviet aircraft engine industry had licensed Wright products for years, building many adaptations of them. The Ash-73TK offered 2,300 horsepower and while ultimately reliable suffered some of the same teething problems encountered by the R-3350 including induction system fires.
In many ways, the biggest challenge of the B-29 to Tupolev was in its electronic systems, particularly the Central Fire Control System (CFCS) that used General Electric analog computers aim and fire the weapons remotely. The CFCS was vital because the B-29 was pressurized, and large apertures for the guns were out of the question. It was an extremely complex system that called for a host of intricate parts and switches unknown to Soviet industry. Yet the Tupelov team pulled it off, and went on to substitute 23-mm cannon for the American .50 caliber machine guns.

By late 1946, a full-scale mock-up of the Tu-4 was ready, and Ramp Tramp was being used to gather data and check out the flight crews who would test the Tu-4. Not content with duplicating the B-29, Tupelov also began the design and construction of a passenger version, the Tu-70, which flew on November 27, 1946. The first production facility at Plant No. 22 in Kazan was hurriedly outfitted with the necessary templates, machine tools, jigs and other equipment necessary for mass manufacture. Thousands of workers had to be taught new skills—in short, Kazan was much like the Wichita in 1942. Everyone worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. Later, additional production came from Plant 18 in Kuibyshev and Plant 23 in Moscow.
The enormous confluence of effort resulted in the first Tu-4 being rolled out on 28 February 1947, to the delight of the factory workers and to Tupelov’s profound relief. There was plenty of ground testing, and the first flight took place on 19 May, with Nikolay S. Rybko as pilot, A.G. Vasilichenko, copilot and V.N. Seginov as flight engineer. As aircraft came off the production line, they were entered into a 20-plane test program for the state acceptance program.
Stalin must have considered all the effort worth while when he observed the furor caused when the first three Tu-4s flew at the annual Tushino air show on 3 August, 1947, with Air Marshal Golovanov in the lead aircraft. Western observers initially believed—hoped– that the aircraft were the three interned B-29s. But the fact that the Tu-70 passenger version was also in the fly-by forced them to accept the fact that the Soviet Union had done the impossible: reverse engineer and produce flyable B-29 replicas in two short years. Only one of the Tu-70 was built, but just being at Tushino fulfilled its purpose.
Tu-4s gave the Soviet Air Force a strategic air arm that posed a genuine threat to the free world. Estimates vary on the total built from 450 to 1,195, but there were sufficient numbers to project the nuclear threat that Stalin had in mind.
Just as with the B-29 program, the Tu-4 encountered deployment problems. It was a big new aircraft with the inevitable maintenance and logistics headaches. Like the B-29, it was troubled with engine fires, propeller problems, and the failure of the landing gear components. The landing gear problems probably stemmed from an inability to achieve American standards in metallurgy.
But the program swept forward, so that by 1950, more than 270 Tu-4s were deployed in Soviet Long Range Aviation regiments. NATO gave it the code name “Bull”, which was hardly appropriate given the hard truth of the Tu-4 success. By the Korean War, there were sufficient Tu-4s available to put them in the service of the People’s Republic of China. They continued in the testing role, most notably in the first air drop of a Soviet atomic bomb on October 18, 1951.
The “Bull” continued to serve in many roles—anti-shipping, tanker, reconnaissance, missile launcher, drone carrier, engine test bed—until eventually being retired. But its most important contribution by far was providing the springboard to launch the Soviet Union and its successor states to a leading role in air and space.

/
Japan’s Silver Bullet Air Power Blunder World War II

/Churchill described the Soviet Union as a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. The serial Japanese airpower blunders during World War II are more aptly compared to the layers of an onion, one tightly encasing another. The mistakes vary in size and scope from the catastrophic (the attack on the United States) to the banal (inter-service rivalries). Among the manifold errors are two events which the Japanese interpreted as positive and caused them to reply on a silver bullet air force. They were in fact major mistakes, linked by complacence and ineptitude, and just possibly useful in teaching our nation some lessons today.

The first of these linked errors was the conclusion Japan drew from its initial successes in aerial warfare. In China, its fighters ruled the skies and its land-based bombers flew long distances to wreak havoc on helpless cities. The second was the creation of several outstanding new aircraft that the decision makers believed put the ultimate sharp edge on aerial capability.

By September, 1941, these two developments convinced Japanese leaders that the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force (IJNAF) was at a peak. They decided to gamble that a devastating attack on the United States would result in a short, victorious war. As things turned out, the gamble led not to victory but total defeat.

The Preconditions
The seeds of the Japanese plunge into disaster lay in its 1890 Meiji Constitution which placed the Army and later the Navy on a level equal to that of the civil government, with all three reporting to the Emperor. The twentieth century saw an ascendant military culture coerce the civil government to approve its adventures. The almost psychopathic pride in Japan’s military prowess prevented its leaders from understanding just how strong its potential opponents were in terms of population and industrial capacity.

The unwarranted confidence stemmed in great part from Japan’s decisive defeat of Russia in the 1904/05 war. The victory accelerated Japan’s rapid transformation from an isolated nation, beset by internal strife, to a major player in the international arena. This advance was aided by massive infusions of technology from Europe, which provided modern arms for Japan’s Army, Navy and, most particularly, future air forces.

The Japanese were excellent students, able to absorb the information from foreign sources, tailor it to their own needs, and then produce the product—battleships, artillery, aircraft, instruments—indigenously. They did so well that it took only from 1911 to 1936 for their aircraft industry to go from building pseudo-Farman biplanes to creating world class aircraft.

Despite Japan’s growing military might, its leaders felt threatened by the traditional Anglo-American dominance of commerce and natural resources. They tried to strengthen their nation’s industrial base by invading Manchuria and creating the puppet state of Manchuko. The need for further resources induced the Japanese leaders to embark upon one of their greater strategic errors, the 1937 invasion of China. Ironically this venture, so successful at first, taught the Japanese air forces the very lessons that ultimately proved fatal at the political, strategic and tactical levels.

An Unperceived Problem
The early successes also prevented recognition of just how harmful was the rivalry of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF) and the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force. It ranged from the absurdity of not sharing technical information on aircraft being developed for both services to the ultimate travesty of Japanese army radar stations not informing their Navy counterparts about incoming American air raids. The competition began at Imperial General Headquarters and existed at every level until the final day of the war.

This bitter contentiousness was abetted by the effect their respective tutors had on their cultures. The IJAAF, taught by the French and later influenced by the Luftwaffe, concentrated on the indirect support of ground troops. The IJNAF, taught by the British, adopted a more strategic outlook, one influenced by the naval tradition that the fleet with the longest range guns and torpedoes had the advantage. The IJNAF thus assumed the greater share of offensive duties in China where suitable targets were often many miles deep in Chinese territory. It established bases in China from which its long range bombers could operate against the interior. Flying a majority of the missions, especially those which garnered useful publicity for propaganda, strengthened the IJNAF’s position in the budgetary battles.

Like other navies at the time, the Japanese navy was largely controlled by big-gun battleship admirals. They believed that Japan, in the spirit of the Battle of Tushima, would achieve its destiny with a victorious fleet action in Japanese waters against the United States Navy. Eventually, however, some of those leaders, influenced by the more flexible Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, saw how well air power had worked in China and began to demand that long range aircraft become the tip of Japan’s sword. Further, the IJNAF believed that with long range air power, it was conceivable that Japan could acquire its most needed natural resource, oil, by conquests in Southeast Asia. (The Japanese Army would reluctantly acquiesce in this, after receiving a bloody nose in its border conflicts with the Soviet Union.)

Japanese aeronautical engineers strove to meet the IJNAF challenge, trying to balance large bomb loads, armament, armor, fuel and structural strength against speed, altitude and range requirements. The engineers were called on to design aircraft that would meet a new basic tenet of Japanese military philosophy. In it, all future wars were to be short, sharp and victorious, with the Japanese doing all the shooting and bombing. To achieve this, the Japanese air forces wanted aircraft with great speed and range. Bombers were to have large bomb loads, while fighters were to be supremely maneuverable. The engineers achieved these goals, but only by designing aircraft without armor, self-sealing tanks and redundant structural integrity.

Through 1938, the military experience in China, seemed to validate this design philosophy. Despite several instances of determined opposition by the Chinese air force and its Soviet cohorts, the Japanese established an air superiority that permitted them to bomb key targets almost at will. The introduction of excellent aircraft such as the Mitsubishi GM3 bomber and the Mitsubishi A5M fighter (later codenamed Nell and Claude respectively) reinforced this thinking. The IJNAF made the world’s headlines bombing Chinese cities in operations conducted by as many as ninety aircraft over long distances of hundreds of rugged territory.

These and other Japanese aircraft performed so well in great part because they were flown by highly trained crews seasoned by almost daily combat experience. They were backed up by equally well-trained ground crews. This combination of great planes and great crews shaped Japanese thinking about the type and size of the air forces it would need to attack the United States. The Japanese leaders now believed that a major war could be won by a small number of superior aircraft flown by superb crews. From this followed the requirements for aircraft selection, production quantities and pilot training standards, and these in turn paved the way for the failure of Japanese air power in World War II. Perhaps still blinded by the concept of a victorious fleet action in local waters against the Untied States, the leaders did not realize that airplanes alone were not enough, and that air bases, air crews and maintenance personnel were equally essential.

The Japanese leaders decided that an annual production of about 5,000 aircraft designed for offensive operations was sufficient. The superb crews were to be obtained by Spartan training standards that bordered on the sadistic. In his memoirs, the great Japanese ace Saburo Sakai wrote with barely contained emotion about the excessive discipline of pilot training in the IJNAF. He notes that in his pilot training class of about 1,750, only 100 graduated. He also noted that despite being a leading ace with scores of missions, he was not a commissioned offer, and so could be treated as a servant by a new second lieutenant without combat experience. .

By 1939, Japanese ingenuity produced several aircraft which confirmed and enhanced previous planning. These modern types were equal or superior to their foreign counterparts and included the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter, Mitsubishi G4M bomber, Aichi D3A dive bomber, and Nakajima B5N torpedo plane (later respectively the Zeke, Betty, Val and Nan.)

The Zero was for several years the premier carrier fighter in the world. Possessed of reasonable speed (345 mph) and armament (two 20-mm cannon and two machine guns) was extremely maneuverable and had a fantastic range. Without external tanks, it range exceeded 1,000 miles. After its operational debut in 1940, the stellar performance of the Zero caused a further conceptual shift. Instead of Navy fighters being primarily concerned with fleet air defense, preserving the carriers, they were now seen as far-reaching offensive weapons. Their mission was expanded to include destroying enemy air defenses and strafing ships to suppress anti-aircraft fire. The Zero was what would today be called the “silver bullet” of Japanese air power. Its superior performance and its superior pilots seemed to mean that only a relative few would be necessary to defeat any enemy’s air force.

Germany’s victories in 1940 had greatly weakened the European hold on their colonies in Southeast Asia. By the fall of 1941, the Japanese, pressed by their lack of natural resources and American sanctions on imports, decided to seize the oil rich territories they had coveted for so long. The geopolitical factors grew in importance. With Great Britain savaged by German aircraft and submarines, the Japanese discounted its ability to react in the Pacific. Even far more important, Germany seemed to be on the point of disposing of the Soviet Union, relieving the Japanese army of its greatest fear—a Russian invasion of its puppet state, Manchuko.

These misapprehensions stemmed from basic failures within the Imperial Japanese Headquarters that included bad intelligence, the provincial thinking of the military leaders and their inexplicable inability to learn from their experiences in the field. While they had overcome Chinese opposition, they had nonetheless suffered heavy losses from fighters, flak, and the inevitable mishaps inherent in the conduct of extreme-range operations

The Japanese leaders, uninhibited by their inability to defeat China, decided to add the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Australia to their enemy list. They were willing to go to war with a total of about of 3,300 first line aircraft and a pilot pool of about 6,000, of whom some 900 were experts. They hoped this force, so tiny by later war standards, would inflict the decisive defeat would force a demoralized United States to negotiate a peace. Japan would then control of the resources of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was executed with great skill and daring on the part of is aircrews. For the next six months, one Japanese victory followed another to the extent that what was called the “victory disease” inflamed Japanese thinking. The American people did not react as planned, however, and slowly but inexorably, the industrial might of the United States responded in a way undreamed of by all but a few of the Japanese leaders.

Over the next four years, Japan slowly increased the number of aircraft it produced, rising to from about 5,000 in 1941 to just over 28,000 in 1944. Japan’s total aircraft production from 1941 through 1945 was about 66,000, compared to over 300,000 by the United States in the same period.

The expansion of the number of aircraft available for the field was never matched by pilot training with the result that the quality of Japanese pilots declined markedly after 1942. Even more important, the Japanese were never able to establish a realistic logistic and maintenance system to keep more aircraft available for action. A 1940 demand from the field that pilot training be expanded to graduate 15,000 per year was ignored. The Japanese kept their experienced pilots combat continuously, instead of using them to train a large reserve of competent pilots. The fatal attrition of expert pilots in combat made it impossible ever to establish an adequate training program.

In contrast, the United States’s huge pilot training program was continually upgraded by the rotation of combat pilots into instructor position. The Americans entered combat with hundreds of hours of training, many of them in operational aircraft. Japanese pilot training time fell off drastically until at the end of the war pilots might enter combat with less than 100 hours flying time, and only a few in their combat type.

Given that air dominance is even more important to win wars than ever before, we might learn at least two things from the Japanese mistakes highlighted here. The first is that while quality is important in establishing air dominance, one cannot discount quantity, particularly over long periods of time. The second is that while a “silver bullet” air force of a minimum number of superb fighters and bombers, manned by superb crews, might be adequate today, there is no way to what the potential strength of still undetermined enemies might be in a decade

Chamberlin & Levine

The list of aviation heroes America has taken to heart is endless, from the Wright Brothers down to the latest heroes from Iraq. The country has a penchant for adventure lovers, and the smiling, clean living swash-buckling aviator has been embraced almost without exception. Even those with human relations flaws, such as the acerbic Douglas “Wrong-Way” Corrigan, the unapproachable Howard Hughes, the libidinous and bibulous Bert Acosta, or the sometimes unverifiable and often aloof Richard Byrd, were accepted with good humor, valued for what they did rather than for the way they acted.

There were also a few, a very few, who somehow struck the wrong note and alienated the public, so that they never gained the popularity that they obviously sought. Among these you can find foreigners, such as Jules Vedrines and Rene Fonck, but among American flyers the most notable is Charles A. Levine.

Levine was born in North Adams, Mass., in 1897 but grew up working for his father’s scrap metal business in Brooklyn. He set up his own company in 1917 and became a millionaire in his early twenties with a salvage contract for the War Department, buying and disposing of spent shell casings. (It was rumored that he was also an “arms czar” dealing in munitions.) In the mid-1920s, he ventured into aircraft manufacturing and took flying lessons. Although, as with many before him, he lost his money in aviation, he also did some good things, and it is instructive to examine them before looking at some of the many reasons for his unpopularity.

He is most well known, of course, for creating the Columbia Aircraft Corporation and acquiring the beautiful Wright Bellanca WB.2 Columbia aircraft along with the services of its brilliant designer, Giuseppe Bellanca. The Columbia, which debuted in 1926, was in many ways a better looking, better performing aircraft than the Ryan Spirit of St. Louis, and was Charles A. Lindbergh’s first choice for his intended flight across the Atlantic. When the Columbia was offered to Lindbergh for a bargain price of $15,000, he hurried to Levine’s luxurious offices on the 46th floor of the Woolworth Building to buy it. The story of Lindy’s furious disappointment when Levine stipulated that sale was conditioned on the premise that only he could choose the pilot has been often told. Levine intended to use Clarence Chamberlain, who, with Bert Acosta, would set an endurance record of 51 hours 11 minutes and 20 seconds in the Columbia on April 12, 1927. Lindbergh went on to help design and build the Ryan Spirit of St. Louis, winning the Ortieg Prize by flying to Paris from New York on May 20/21, 1927.

The Columbia was kept from starting by one of Levine’s frequent legal problems. Levine had an agreement with Lloyd W. Bertaud to make the flight with Chamberlain. They apparently quarreled, and when Levine threatened to replace Bertaud, the latter got an injunction to prevent the Columbia from making the trans-Atlantic attempt without him. (Bertaud, air mail pilot James D. Hill and Philip Payne lost their lives on September 7, 1927, in the ill-fated trans-Atlantic effort of the Fokker F VIIA Old Glory.)

Disappointed but not discouraged by Lindbergh’s success, Levine determined to use the Columbia’s greater endurance to upstage Lindy by flying from New York to Berlin. He enhanced the publicity by declining to name the “mystery passenger” who would accompany Chamberlain on the flight. On June 4, 1927, Levine solved the mystery by slipping into the seat next to Chamberlain, who then applied power and took off. The surprise was apparently complete, as Levine’s blond wife fainted when she realized what had happened.

As irritating as Levine may have been to one and all, he did not lack courage, for the North Atlantic was as cold and threatening to him as it had been to Lindbergh. Levine occasionally spelled Chamberlain at the controls as they flew non-stop to Eisleben, Germany, about one hundred miles southwest of Berlin, covering the 3,911 miles in 43 hours, 49 minutes and 33 seconds. After being congratulated by the locals, the intrepid pair drank some coffee, put twenty gallons of gasoline into their near empty tanks and took off again, heading once more for Berlin. This time they wound up at Kottbuss, later the home of a Focke-Wulf factory. A third attempt brought them to Tempelhoff Airport, where a crowd of some 10,000 cheering Germans greeted them.

When they returned home they received a ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue, but Levine’s career was already on the skids. The first indication was when President Calvin Coolidge received Chamberlain at the White House, snubbing Levine. The Jewish community was properly outraged, as they were in the midst of celebrating Levine in song and story as “The Greatest Hebrew Ace.” His achievement is still commemorated at an interesting web site, where some of the songs saluting him may be heard.

Chamberlain was as well liked as Levine was disliked, having a modest, genial personality and possessing great flying skills. He held air transport pilot certificate number 130 and would go on to an influential career in aviation, setting more records, acting as a consultant to industry, and forming his own companies, one of which purchased twin-engine Curtiss Condor biplane transports to use as barnstorming airplanes.

Although the peak of Levine’s personal fame had already passed, he had yet to render his greatest service to American aviation. While in Europe he met Alexander Kartveli, Armand Thiebolt and Edmund Chagniard. They tried to sell him on the merits of seven-engine, 100,000 pound gross weight airliner to carry fifty passengers non-stop from New York to Paris. This was a little much even for Levine, but he saw how capable the three men were, and brought them to the United States to be part of his new firm, Columbia Air Lines, Incorporated.

Kartveli would become immortal with his work for Seversky and Republic, while Thiebolt would do equally well for Fokker, General Aviation and Fairchild. Chagniard would have a hand in one of Levine’s products to be mentioned below. Had Levine not invested in them, there might never have been a Republic P-47 or a Fairchild C-119!

Levine’s firm, the little known Columbia Air Liners, would create only three aircraft, one of them the joint product of the three engineers he had brought over. The first of these was the “Uncle Sam” a rather handsome high wing all-metal monoplane, woefully under-powered by Packard 2A-1500 engine. Tremendously overweight, the Uncle Sam cost Levine, whose fortunes were sinking in other areas as well, about $250,000. First tested by the flamboyant Roger Q. Williams, the Uncle Sam was flown less than twenty times (including one flight by Charles “Speed” Holman) before being retired to the Columbia Airliners hangar.

After the Uncle Sam fiasco, Kartveli, Thiebolt and Chagniard all departed for new careers and we come (at last) to the aerial oddity, the Columbia Triad. Designed by Lee Worley, the Triad drew heavily on the aerodynamics of the Columbia. The Triad’s claim to fame was that with relatively little effort it was convertible from a land plane to a sea plane to an “amphibion” as it was termed by the firm. No performance figures were released on the aircraft, which tells you quite a bit about it.

A conventional strut-braced high wing monoplane, well finished in green and cream, the only unusual feature of the land plane version was the Loening-amphibian like placement of the 225 horsepower Wright J5 Whirlwind engine high on the fuselage nose. To change from a sea plane to a land plane, the aircraft was placed on jacks, the float was removed and the landing gear was installed. When the stabilizing wing floats were removed, the aircraft was ready to fly. The amphibian version reportedly had a hydraulically operated retractable gear, but known photographs do not reveal how this operated and the amphibian version may never have gone beyond the brochure stage.

Levine, whatever his faults, was good at brochures. Done in the same green and cream colors as the aircraft, he lyrically asked you to consider yourself “Cruising into an infinity of sky—luxuriously, complacently, speedily—to land in a shaded lagoon of an island in the sea, a wide brown field, a lazy river on the great gray glistening strips of a modern airport… This is the aim and the achievement of the new Columbia ‘Triad’ Amphibion. ..Cruising, as an amphibian, like a great blue goose… Circling as a seaplane, with the grace of a gull…Fleeing, as a land-plane, with a pigeon’s swiftness…”

The final line probably has some Freudian significance in the use of the words “fleeing” and “pigeon,” for Levine spent much of the rest of his life fleeing from pigeons with whom he had done business.

The two Triads were stored in the Columbia Air Liners hangar where the Uncle Sam was already gathering dust. Levine was fourteen months behind on the hangar rental, and the Roosevelt Field management obtained a court order authorizing it to sell the contents of the hangar.

An auction was held on January 19, 1931, with the $250,000 Uncle Sam going for $750, and the Triads and other equipment adding only $2,160 more. These bids were disallowed, and a speculative bid by Paul Gillespie, then a director of the Roosevelt Flying School bought everything for $3,000. Only three weeks later, a fire destroyed the wooden hangars at Roosevelt Field, and all three of the Columbia aircraft were destroyed. It is not known whether Levine had any musical talent or not, but it wouldn’t have been surprising if he had been seen playing a lyre.

Life did not get any better for Levine, as his businesses and his marriage disintegrated, and the one time millionaire was thrown into a life of petty scams. He disappeared from view, receiving some brief notoriety when in 1934 he was found unconscious in the kitchen of a friend. He had turned on five gas jets in an apparent attempt to commit suicide. In 1937 the erstwhile headliner was back in the news, this time in connection with a Federal charge of smuggling some 5000 pounds of tungsten powder from Canada. He was arrested and found guilty, fined $500, and spent eighteen months in jail.

Levine was fell into trouble on a different border in 1942, different border, this time in what would now be considered a worthy cause. He was charged with assisting in the illegal entry of an alien. The alien was Edward Schinek, a German Jew fleeing from Hitler’s Germany and denied entrance into America by the harsh immigration laws of the time.

Levine worked with the alien’s son, Peter Joseph Walter, to smuggle Schinek into Laredo, Texas from Mexico. Walter illegally obtained the birth certificate of an American citizen, Edward Siegel. A letter was supplied by Levine stating that Schinek, (posing as Siegel) was an American businessman and an old acquaintance of his. Schinek’s wife was later smuggled into the United States at San Ysidro, California, carried in a false gasoline tank built into a car.

This time Levine was found guilty, fined $500, and given a 150 day suspended sentence. He could not come up with the money for the fine, however, and once again disappeared from view. It was not until 1952 that the Federal Bureau of Investigation reopened his case, for he had not paid his fine for smuggling tungsten. A tip off from a former business associate (someone Levine was probably hitting up for a loan) allowed the FBI to find him in April, 1956. Levine, shabby and ill kempt, was unable to pay anything. The case was closed in 1958.

At some point in this sad career, Levine met an older woman who kept him for most of his remaining years. He had a brief reunion with his daughter, but later returned to the care of the woman who had picked him off the street. He died on December 18, 1991, at the age of 94, and his obituary in the New York Times noted that he was the first trans-Atlantic air passenger. They meant, of course, by aircraft.

For all his personal woes, Charles A. Levine gave aviation a Triad of good things. The first was the brief shot in the arm he provided with his record setting flight as a passenger in the Columbia. Next, he did the United States an important favor when he brought two top flight engineers, Kartveli and Thiebolt, to this country. Finally, the firm he founded had of course passed out of his control, but “under new management” as Columbia Aircraft, it went on to build Grumman J2F amphibians for the U.S. Navy during World War II. It also created one monoplane version of that basic design, the Columbia XJL-1, which may still be seen at the Pima Air Museum at Tucson, Arizona. Columbia Aircraft was acquired by Commonwealth Aircraft in 1946.

While Levine paid for his moral lapses by living a long, poverty stricken life in relative obscurity, we should probably be grateful for the positive things he did for aviation in his early years.

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines (1965)

In a very happy coincidence, the invention of the airplane and the popularity of the motion picture came about at roughly the same time. The December 17, 1903 flight of the Wright Brothers is accompanied in film history by two famous productions, A Trip to the Moon in 1902 and The Great Train Robbery in 1903. If you are willing to stretch your definitions a bit, A Trip to the Moon might even be construed as an aviation film, but it definitely would not make most people’s ten best—or ten worst–lists.

Picking such a list is entirely subjective of course, being not only a matter of taste, but a matter of background, your age when you first saw the film, your willingness to suspend belief and your willingness not to be too picky over technical details. Further I’ve had the excellent helps of some experts in the field, including the noted author Barrett Tillman (BT), the excellent editor, publisher and distinguished film critic David Hogan (DH), the inimitable Jeopardy player, writer and industry champion, Jeff Rhodes (JR) and noted film expert Lawrence Suid (LS). All the choices stated are my own, however, but I’ll note their insightful comments.

Most of us might confess to being too picky. We get upset when markings are not correct for the period on warplanes, and become downright angry when those blasted three Douglas SBD’s are portrayed once again as Japanese dive bombers.

The strange thing is that we are not so picky on films about other subjects. Most of us can watch a film about medical procedures, court-room protocol or almost any other subjects and never see the many incorrect details which are obvious to the doctors or lawyers watching.

So for purposes of this article, I propose some ground rules for myself in evaluating both the selection and the rationale for selection of the Ten Best and the Ten Worst aviation films ever made. They are:

(1) Consideration of when the film was made.
(2) Not being too stuffy about minor technical errors.
(3) Not letting a saccharine story line get you down, even if June Allyson cries more than she usually does.
(4) Attempting to evaluate the film as a story rather than as merely a medium to show aircraft.
(5) Going with my gut feeling—probably the most important of the five.
(6) Making sure it deals with World War I. Well, just kidding. Maybe.

You’ll note there is no mention of the current blessing or blight, depending upon your point of view, of using computer generated imagery (CGI). We have to admit that it has come a long way, even if the artists doing the task have not yet quite come to terms with such things as turn rates, acceleration, speeds, and so on. There is no question that the 9-G turns at street level in the Pearl Harbor were hard to take. And while we may not be happy with the torturous story line of Flyboys (and could they have picked a worse, more insulting title?) you must admit that seeing Gothas in flight is remarkable even as CGI. And so were the images of the Zeppelin, especially the sequential explosion of its gas bags. So for the purposes of this article, let us forgive them their CGI errors, and bless them for what they offer in images that are otherwise totally unavailable.

There are a number of ways to approach the ranking. One might be by categories, i.e. military aviation films, commercial aviation, general aviation, etc. Another might be by era, or general type, i.e. silent, talking, black and white, color, etc. I’ve chosen to lump all the categories together and list them as follows:

1. Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965)
This good humored romp has it all, with wonderful replicas of both successful and unsuccessful early flying machines, beautiful scenery and a great cast that included Terry Thomas, Sarah Miles and Irina Demick as Brigitte, Ingrid, Marlene, Francoise, Yvette and Betty. Each of Irina’s characters was gorgeous, dutifully surprised and wonderfully willing. Even though the replica aircraft had more reliable power-plants and were better built than the originals, they were still challenging to fly, and conveyed very well just how magnificent flying truly was in the first decade of flight.

2. Twelve O’Clock High (1949)
Written in part by Beirne Lay, Jr., this epic reflects both his love of the U.S. Army Air Forces, and his first hand knowledge of the real events upon which the film was based. Gregory Peck, always a reliable performer, is at his best in this film, which takes advantage of still available B-17s and extensive combat footage to make the flight scenes very realistic. Twelve O’Clock High is of course about leadership and command more than it is about airplanes, and as such it could serve as both a military and a corporate training vehicle today. Mercifully, they did not feel the need to interject the usual mandatory love interest, and the film benefits greatly from this. (DH rightly says that “the
only one that comes close [and it comes pretty close indeed] is Command Decision [Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Charles Bickford, Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, John Hodiak, Cameron Mitchell--wow!])

3. Wings (1927)
Wings was awarded the first Oscar ever given for “best picture” in 1929, a salute to its director William Wellman, a former member of the Lafayette Flying Corps. Wellman had flown in France with the same Tommy Hitchcock who one war later saw a potential for the Merlin engine in the Mustang. Wellman also served briefly after the war with the Army Air Corps. He went to work in Hollywood as a messenger, and quickly worked his way up to director. His reputation and his contacts were enough to persuade the Air Corps to furnish a virtual armada of more than 220 aircraft for the picture. These included Thomas Morse MB3A Scouts, Curtiss P-1 Hawks, Martin MB-2s and de Havilland DH-4s. A few World War I aircraft including a Spad VII, a Fokker D VII and an S.E. 5a also appeared. In contrast to Twelve O’Clock High there was a typical goofy love story of the time, a triangle between Buddy Rogers, Richard Arlen and the inimitable Clara Bow.

Interestingly enough, Wellman, writer F. J. Saunders, Arlen and Rogers were all pilots. I’m told that Clara Bow had other interests. (DH comments that “The love triangle is well played: it’s tongue in cheek and little bit understated, and you just can’t beat Clara Bow. In real life, she was a very frightened, unhappy woman, but remains a luminous screen presence, and a good actress, too.”) (BT notes that in one scene Buddy Rogers is clearly seen flying a Thomas Morse. Wow! It was very unusual for a star to be risked in such a manner.)

4. Hell’s Angels (1930)
Good acting isn’t everything, not if you can marshal the number of genuine World War I aircraft Howard Hughes did to make his extravaganza. He also went to great lengths to make contemporary aircraft look enough like the real thing when flown in formation or lined up for take off. He even made a Jenny over to resemble an Avro 504! Only a relatively small percentage of the film deals with aviation but that little bit is remarkable. The studio work done with the Zeppelin is amazing, better than many special effects today. The monumental dog-fight scenes were used in dozens of other films and are still stolen today for use in documentaries. So despite its many faults (terrible acting, bad story line, not enough flying scenes), Hell’s Angels is an inevitable choice for the top ten. As a side issue, the best part of the recent film The Aviator was that devoted to Hughes’ making Hell’s Angels. (DH says that the dog fight and Zeppelin scenes were great “Plus you get the immortal Harlow (in two-strip Technicolor, no less). She hadn’t yet learned how to act (she mostly strikes poses), but her flesh impact is overpowering. “)

5. Strategic Air Command (1955)
The aerial photography of the Convair B-36 and Boeing B-47 in Strategic Air Command is perhaps the most beautiful ever done. It expertly conveys the majesty of flight as summoned by those two remarkable aircraft. James Stewart is especially good in the scenes where he is purportedly flying the aircraft. His realistic manner, with no drastic movements of the control yoke, no dead-ahead stare, no wandering gaze, tells you he is an experienced pilot. He sits and scans the instruments, making small incremental corrections that show he knows exactly what he is doing. The story and screen play by Beirne Lay is adequate except that it provides an opportunity for the always teary-eyed June Allyson to give her usual irritating impression of a wife who doesn’t get it about her husband’s love of flying. Ranking Strategic Air Command among the top ten rests primarily on its aerial photography and only secondarily on its story of the dedication of the people of the Strategic Air Command.

6. The Blue Max (1966)
What, another World War I movie? Well yes, I grew up on these, and can tell you that nothing was more welcome than arrival of The Blue Max, the first World War I aviation film made in color (to my knowledge.) We owe a lot to Jack Hunter, the author of the novel on which the film was based. Sadly, Jack passed away this year. The replicas built for the film are adequate—let’s face it, seeing any Pfalz in flight is worthwhile. The cinematography is superb. George Peppard plays his usual stone-faced self, but there is Ursula Andress to compensate. The story line had an interesting twist—the aristocrats versus the plebes in a German fighter squadron. As we know, many German fighter pilots were not commissioned, so it must have been Peppard’s personality that brought down Willi von Klugerman’s (Jeremy Kemp) disdain. (DH is, as usual, kinder than I, thinking that “He (Peppard) was always good at projecting haughtiness [see him as the all-but-in-name Howard Hughes, building his aviation empire, in The Carpetbaggers])”

7. Battle of Britain (1968)
The massive effort to gather the requisite number of Hurricanes, Messerschmitts, Spitfires and Heinkels was well worth while, and the special effects were not bad for the time. All of the aficionados knew that the Messerschmitts and Heinkels were ex-Spanish Air Force, powered by Merlin engines, but it didn’t bother anyone. The cast of characters was spectacular, and they had the good taste and good sense to cast Lawrence Olivier as Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding. The plot line was derived from an excellent book of the time The Narrow Margin. Susannah York was thrown in as a good looking, worthwhile addition. The ground scenes were filmed at Duxford contributing to the general realism of the effort. They actually burned down a WW II hangar for the film—that’s getting with the program. (BT adds that “When I was at Duxford in 1991 there was a plaque on the site of the former hangar, saying that it had regrettably been blown up during the filming of a motion picture! One reviewer noted, accurately, that Susie York filled that shirt tail extremely fetchingly.”)

8. The Dam Busters (1954) and 633 Squadron (1964)
These two films are lumped together in eighth place because they represent a time when good, clean patriotic airplane films were made in Great Britain, using real airplanes and fairly good special effects. The number of Lancasters and Mosquitos available to the producers was limited, but in the case of Dam Busters, some good war time film was edited in. I’m sure that those who knew Barnes Wallis in real life laughed a little at Michael Redgraves’ avuncular portrayal of him, but Richard Todd was perfect for the Guy Gibson role. In 633 Squadron, Cliff Roberston did his usual fine job, no doubt enjoying the chance to be around the Mosquito. (BT notes that “At least one or two serial numbers are correct on the Lancs. When did Hollywood ever do that? [Answer: Never-ever.]… Major flail about Guy Gibson’s Dog. [This is too arcane to explain here, but most will understand the allusion.]) (DH adds a comment I wish I’d been smart enough to make, i.e. “The Dam Busters is solid on just about every level, but what most impresses me about it is its determination to show and explain rather complex physics–and make it thrilling.) ( In re 633 Squadron, BT says “They BURNED A MOSSIE! Apparently an airworthy one at that.)

9. The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)
“Where do they get these men” was, I believe, the question asked by Frederic March at the end of the film, and in a way this really defined the film’s message. (DH agrees, commenting: The conclusion of The Bridges at Toko-Ri shocked audiences in 1954, and not simply because a big movie star ends up dead. What’s devastating is the sacrifice made by non-career fliers who rise to the occasion and do great things when called.”) Operating jets off World War II carriers was tricky business at best, and doing it under the conditions prevailing in Korea made it even more difficult. While the movie didn’t portray the accident rate at anything like it was at the time, it conveyed the danger that was ever present, and the courage it took to make the really tough missions. William Holden was doing his angry man routine, but Mickey Rooney more than made up for it with his portrayal of the helicopter pilot.

10. The High and the Mighty (1954)
Another airplane film directed by William Wellman, with the great Ernest Gann doing not only the book on which it was based, but the screen play as well. The result is an airplane disaster film that is represents the best of the genre. It has solid (if dated) acting by a good cast, and a believable ending that even Sully Sullivan would approve of. (BT comments “I used to date a 737 driver. She said all the FOs loved the film because the copilot slugs the pilot and gets away with it.”) (DH says that after many years “The High and the Mighty finally made it to DVD in the last year or so, to great excitement in the movie-buff community.)

And in a worthy coda, BT states that “Best aero flick not mentioned here: Task Force (1949) with Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, a Dauntless, a Wildcat, and some surprisingly good detail.” Barrett is as usual correct, and it also really bothers me to have left out such excellent candidates as “Dive Bomber,” “I Wanted Wings,” “Dawn Patrol” and so many others.

Now let us turn, with relish indeed, to the Ten Worst Aviation Films.

First of all, we can all probably agree that no picture with any airplane in it can be really bad. But on a relative basis, these sort of bump the bottom of the barrel.

1. Top Gun (1986)
While it will offend many, my first choice for worst aviation film ever is Top Gun, starring the man who needed the biggest pillow available to reach the controls, Tom Cruise. I know that many are enamored of this film, and some fighter pilots even suggest that it is a true representation of the cocky fighter pilot spirit, but to me is was an embarrassing waste of time and money. The airplanes are gorgeous, but they are slavered over with the hot spittle of guys who think they are really cute in flying gear, especially when they have neato names. I cannot imagine that anyone of their ilk would be tolerated in any military unit. (I’m now donning protective gear to protect myself from the flying insults.) The irony of it is that Hot Shots the spoof of Top Gun is a far better film. I rest my case on the fact that an avowed fan of Top Gun, a naval aviator who should know better, is also a fan of the Iron Eagle series.

2. Firefox (1982)
Please don’t tell Clint Eastwood that I said this, but it is easily the worst picture he ever made, and it also deals incidentally with aircraft. The plot is familiar, the retired expert recalled to do the one in a million job that only he can do, and the imaginary airplane is not bad. But otherwise it is dull, predictable and without any redeeming actual aerial action.

3. Jet Pilot (1957)
Howard Hughes and John Wayne were undoubtedly both ashamed of this mishmash of ideas. Made over eight years with different airplanes, the end result was an agonizing, predictable bore. There are some pluses including shots of a variety of aircraft such as the Northrop F-89, Lockheed F-84 and others. Reportedly Chuck Yeager did some of the aerobatic flying, which is a plus. But beautiful Janet Leigh was somehow not convincing as a cold but nonetheless seductive Communist pilot/spy.

4. Stealth (2005)
This film gained a great deal of buzz when photos of a “mystery Navy stealth jet fighter” were released on the internet. The mock-up was really quit good and took many people in. The picture itself, however, is amazingly empty of anything but cliché’s.

5. Midway (1976)
Midway is distinguished by having more changes of the airplane in one sortie than any other picture. It is condemned by the completely phony love story that was stapled to it. Coming after 1970’s Tora Tora Tora, it was a real disappointment. Hal Halbrook played the role of code-breaker Commander Joseph Rochefort with such a broad Mark Twain accent that you expected the carriers to be stern wheelers.

6. Memphis Belle (1990)
Probably the worst thing about this movie is the fact the wartime documentary was so good. While it hued generally to the original Memphis Belle the looks and demeanor of the actors were completely foreign to the time. Oddly enough it has been well reviewed, but any comparison of the original and this film sends this one to the bottom of the barrel.

7. Snakes on a Plane (2006)
This one hardly needs explanation, utterly ghastly in all respects. One can only imagine the amount of cocaine consumed in its creation.

8. Lafayette Escadrille (1958)
William Wellman betrayed his heritage with this turkey of a film which was totally unworthy of him. And pairing Tab Hunter with a pretend fighter plane is miscasting of the first water. Even if it’s about World War I aviation, it is still terrible.

9. Iron Eagle (1986) and its incredible three sequels
There are some nice airplanes in these films, quite a variety in fact, but the plot lines are so insulting that they make you dislike the people involved with the airplanes. A terrible waste of film, fuel, and if there had been any, talent.

10. Pearl Harbor (2001)
Despite the fact that there are airplanes in this film, it is probably the worst aviation film ever made, with a startling wrong portrayal of the great Jimmy Doolittle by the loathsome Alec Baldwin being the most unforgivable of many errors. They spent so much money and had such a great opportunity to do something well. Instead they delivered this mish-mash of bad performances, bad ideas and bad computer graphics that condemn the film to the worst ten of any list.

Jeff Rhodes comments that the “All-Time Worst Aviation movie and possibly the worst movie ever made award has to go to Interceptor (1982) – ridiculous plot, even more ridiculous ending. You had a little bit of everything – terrorists sliding down the inside of a refueling boom; fully politically correct crew on a C-5; a C-5 opening the front visor in flight; folding wing F-117s that launch air-to-air missiles and dogfighting. Watching this movie was like watching a trainwreck – you couldn’t keep from NOT watching for fear of missing what was coming next. I have had the good fortune not to see the film so I couldn’t include it on the list, despite its obvious lack of merit.

So there you have it—one man’s opinion, for what its worth, on the ten best and ten worst aviation films ever. I’m sure there are many different opinions out there, so send me your lists and we’ll see.

Curtiss XP-31 in flightRARE BIRD: The Curtiss XP-31
/Have you ever had a friend who was getting to be of a certain age, and you noticed that he or she was beginning to slow down, not taking the stairs two-at-a-time anymore, reluctant to stay out late at night, a little more forgetful than usual? (O.K. this applies to a lot of us, but just go with the analogy.)

Companies, particular aviation companies are afflicted much the same way. They start out young with a burst of enthusiasm, grow large, do great things, and then, bit by bit begin to show signs of aging. Sometimes the aging takes a downward turn toward corporate senility, and sometimes, but more rarely, the company will take a new lease on life and, doing the industrial equivalent of buying a Porsche Carrera and taking on a trophy wife, will have a renaissance.

This Rare Bird, the Curtiss XP-31 Swift, is symbolic of a company getting older and entering a decline; its opponent in an Air Corps fighter competition, the Boeing P-26A, is symbolic of a company in the process of taking a new lease on life.

The mighty Curtiss aviation empire had started with a prize-winning bang, with Glenn H. Curtiss, using experience gained working with the Aerial Experiment Association, and drawing broadly on the Wright Brothers’ format, created pusher biplanes that won the Scientific American Prize and the Gordon Bennett Cup. The Curtiss Aeroplane and Engine Company grew large during World War I, with more than $20,000,000 in contracts and producing 5,221 aircraft (including a single S.E.5a that was billed at $544,716!) Its primary product was the famous JN-4 trainer, but it dabbled in many others things, especially Curtiss’ forte, aircraft engines.

Established firmly as the premier American aviation firm during the immediate post-war years, Curtiss went on to carve out a piece of every aviation market, usually setting records and making history in the process. It built flying boats for the Navy, including the famous NC-4. It continued its trainer line, but branched out into transports, bombers and sport planes, and merchandised them all over the world. The Curtiss company had a great sales organization that took care of its customers’ needs, anticipating their requirements, and trying to fill them. It carefully nurtured its contacts in government buying positions around the world establishing strong relationships with procurement officers everywhere. Now this does not imply corruption—it implies a diligent attention to the customers’ needs that engendered confidence. South American countries and China became steady clients.

Curtiss made headlines building a series of swift, beautiful racing planes that challenged the world and won top prizes, including the Pulitzer and Schneider Cup races. The sleek biplanes, powered by Curtiss engines, set many speed records, and were flown by the aviation giants, including Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, Bert Acosta, Jimmy Doolittle and others. Innovation was the order of the day, with advanced engines and sleek low-drag radiators conformed to the wing surfaces helping streamlining.

The racers led in turn to a classic series of fabric covered wood and metal fighter biplanes, beginning with the sleek Curtiss Hawk P-1of 1923 and continuing on through to the sale of export Hawk III and IV aircraft in the late 1930s. Some of these, such as the beautiful P-6E, captured the imagination of the public and still are featured in paintings and photos of the time.

A line of Falcon observation planes was created and sold, like the fighters, to the Army, Navy and Marines. These were similar in appearance and detail to the Hawks, using the same type of construction, similar airfoils, and maintaining the same reputation for quality and performance.

Yet Curtiss had strong competition in every market. It contested with Boeing for fighters (and Boeing actually sold more fighters than did Curtiss), Martin for bombers and patrol aircraft, Ford for transports and Vought for observation planes. Overseas, there was strong competition from foreign manufacturers. The company’s magnificent Wright engines were also facing stiff competition from Pratt & Whitney.

But as Curtiss got older, it got more conservative, and it began to stretch its aircraft designs. In the economy of the Great Depression, it was often more important to have a lower price than better performance when it came to selling aircraft. As a result, Curtiss designs became successively more obsolete. Each later model of the Hawk or the Falcon had some performance improvement, but only at a minimum level. The Curtiss manufacturing line up began to look more and more old-fashioned, especially when its competition, including the upstart Boeing from Seattle, was producing one new idea after another. Boeing invested the money necessary to build ground-breaking prototypes, beginning with the all-metal Monomail, the YB-9 Death Angel twin-engine bomber and the Model 247 transport. These led directly to the Boeing B-17 series. And, it did not neglect fighters, for it produced a famous transitional aircraft, the Boeing the Boeing P-26 Peashooter—the XP-31’s direct competitor for contracts.

Curtiss was not un-experienced in all-metal aircraft designs, having produced a total of sixty of the successful A-8, A-10 and A-12 Shrike ground aircraft. It carried over some of the successful Shrike ideas to the Swift, including the enclosed cockpit, full-length wing slots that opened automatically at fifteen mph above stall speed, interconnected flaps and a well-braced panted undercarriage. The Swift packed four .30-inch machine guns, two in the nose and two in packages on the fuselage side, heavy armament for the day. Unfortunately in the process of converting Shrike technology to the Swift, the engineers lost control of two important factors: weight and drag.

The Swift was none-the-less sleek looking, and with a Curtiss Conqueror G1V 1570F liquid cooled engine and a Curtiss two-blade ground adjustable engine, Curtiss brochures were written enticingly, mentioning the possibility of speeds in the 260 mph range. (Curtiss liked to sell its engines with its aircraft, much as Junkers and Bristol did) In addition to blazing speed, the Swift was touted to have superb maneuverability, thanks to the combination of slots and flaps.

Ironically, the Army Air Corps was never really very satisfied with the Conqueror engine, which had a history of cooling problems, particularly since the introduction of Prestone coolant. Conquerors were difficult to maintain and expensive to overhaul. Worst of all they were heavy—and the Swift was already overweight. A Board of Officers meeting on May 16, 1932 recommended that a radial engine be installed, creating an unattractive hybrid. The XP-31’s lines had been tailored to an in-line engine, and mounting a 700 horsepower Wright Cyclone only compounded its problems. \

The aircraft was swiftly reconverted back to the Conqueror, but performance was disappointing, with the top speed being only 215 mph, 17 mph slower than its sister-ship biplane the Curtiss XP-6F, and a full 20 mph less than the competing Boeing P-26.
Weight was one culprit, with the empty weights of the Swift and the P-26 being 3,334 pounds and 2,120 pounds respectively. The XP-31 in fact weighed in only 338 pounds less than the much-larger Shrike.

Curtiss had built not wisely, but too well. The Swift was purchased by the Army for $40,000 and soon designated ZXP-31, the Z for “Obsolete.” It was flown for a total of 287 hours before being surveyed for “fair wear and tear” on December 10, 1936. But the failure of the Swift in competition against the Boeing P-26 had alarmed Curtiss, and it brought in a brand new engineer, Donovan R. Berlin from Northrop to put life back into its all-metal fighter programs. Berlin, a great big bear of a man, was extremely likeable, and brought new ideas into the company, designing the very successful Model 75, which led ultimately to both the P-36 and the P-40. However, Berlin could not change the company’s rigid methods, and left the firm to go to the Fisher Body Division of General Motors.

All during this time, Curtiss was in a corporate decline, imperceptible at first, but increasingly obvious as the war hurtled to a climax. The venerable firm was unable to get another fighter into production after the P-40, despite building a long series of prototypes, some quite handsome. The ultimate indignity came when the great Curtiss firm was tasked to build Republic P-47s. The last attempt by Curtiss to sell a fighter was the ill-fated XP-87 Blackhawk all-weather fighter of 1948, which was edged out by the Northrop XP-89.

In the meantime, Boeing was doing quite well, having learned that a company has to stay fit and vital, and that it has to take risks to do so.
-30-
STATISTICS
Wingspan 36 feet
Length 26 feet 3 inches
Height 7 feet 9 inches
Empty Weight 3,334 pounds
Gross Weight 4,143 pounds
Maximum Speed 215 mph
Service Ceiling ` 22,700 feet
Range 396 miles

The fatal take-off.

It used to be that there were weights and balances in relating history. Major events drew more attention, while lesser ones passed into oblivion. No more—YouTube has completely revised the scene, and something as unimportant as the pathetic dweeb wailing over Britney Spears can soak up more hits than major news events. This phenomenon also applies to aviation, and so the entire flying history of one of aviation’s minor engineering monstrosities, the Bonney Gull, may now be viewed anywhere, any time. The entire flight, from short take-off to fatal plunge to the ground, is found on dozens of web-sites, reaching many more people than its illustrious designer and pilot, Leonard Warden Bonney, ever dreamed of.

Born to a wealthy Long Island family in 1885, Bonney seemed to live a charmed life. Instructed in 1910 by Orville Wright himself, he was one of only 119 pilots trained at the famed Simms Station facility where four hours of flight cost $250.

Bonney received the Federation Aeronautique Internationale pilot’s license number 47. He must have been very skilled as he was survived the perils of flying a Wright B Pusher at exhibits around the country. Like others, he traveled by rail from point to point; his plane safely nestled in a railway car, assembling the plane for each show. If weather permitted (i.e. virtual calms) Bonney would perform the amazing turns and dives of the day, and perhaps carry an adventurous passenger for $100 a flight. (Times change many things but not the human quest for distinction. Today, adventurous passengers are putting down $200,000 for a shorter and probably safer flight in Burt Rutan’s SpaceShip II.) Bonney did suffer a major mishap in 1914, when an elevator cable parted on his “French monoplane” (probably a Bleriot, but possibly a Deperdussin). He survived the crash from 1,200 feet.

Early in his career he was associated as a test pilot and instructor pilot with such talented aircraft designers as Charles Healy Day at Sloan Aircraft (later Standard Aircraft) and Alfred Verville at General Aircraft. He was also employed as a pilot, and then general manager of the little known Amas Aircraft Company of Washington, D.C. Sustained employment in aviation was as difficult in those early days as it is now, and between 1913 and 1918 Bonney moved from job to job, often returning to Long Island air fields to serve as an instructor. After the war he worked with the Alexandria Aircraft Company
.
Bonney enjoyed no less than four types of military flying experience during his youth. The first was instructing for the Army at Garden City Field, and the second instructing for the navy at Smith’s Point, both on Long Island. The third and fourth efforts were more impressive

Probably as an extension of his serving as an instructor to the Navy, Bonney was part of the very first American aerial anti-submarine patrol, made on March 27, 1917. A large scale effort was made by the Aerial Reserve Squadron at Mineola, New York, to find the German submarine U-53 (later notorious for its sinking of five American ships). Leonard Bonney flew one of the aircraft involved. The soon to be famous Burt Acosta flew another of the seaplanes, none of which spotted the submarine.

But it was in Mexico during 1914-15, in the service of General Carranza’s government, that Bonney (a) instructed the Mexican pilots in the technique of dropping primitive bombs on enemy warships or (b) actually engaged in the bomb-dropping himself. I’ve not been able to determine exactly what the situation was for official Mexican accounts attribute the actions to the Mexican pilots Bonney helped instruct. However other accounts say that he was not only personally involved, but that he received anti-aircraft fire damaging his aircraft in the first ever dive-bombing attacks. This seems to be pushing the point a bit, but there is a convincing extant photo of Bonney in the cockpit of a neat looking Moisant monoplane, and it is not improbable that he also flew combat missions.

Bonney was thus hard-wired in aircraft design from some masters in the field, engaged in that most taxing and fearsome of all aviation tasks, instructing, and experienced in real combat operations. This makes it all the more imponderable as to why he would elect to throw aside most of what he had learned in an effort to rethink aircraft design in the 1920s and revert to the oldest of man’s intuitive flight efforts, imitating the design of a bird.

Orville Wright, had observed birds and realized that copying their configuration was impractical. Yet Bonney aspired to build an airplane as similar to a sea gull as possible. He observed them in flight, and then in a manner that would inflame PETA today, actually attached weights to them to test their lifting capability. At the same time, he poured all his accumulated experience into some very advanced engineering ideas which probably proved to be fatal.

He began work on the Bonney Gull in 1926, in cooperation with the Kirkham Company in Garden City, New York. Kirkham was the fall-back manufacturer of many during the period, with Charles Kirkham having more than proved his worth with Glenn Curtiss (Curtiss K-12 engine) Cornelius Vanderbilt (Air Yacht), Al Williams (300 mph racer) and many others. His was a niche company, able to manufacture “one-off” aircraft and engines. Some reports said that Bonney had designed the Kirkham 180 hp radial engine selected for the Gull, but this seems unlikely.

In appearance the Bonney Gull resembled an Alexander Bullet in bird-drag. A low-wing, cantilever monoplane with a very neat enclosed two-place cockpit, it was filled with intricate mechanical and hydraulic devices, including a wing-folding mechanism that presaged that of later Grumman fighters. Bonney wanted a VSTOL Gull, and poured his genius into the design of the extraordinarily complex wings. Of aluminum structure, they featured both dihedral and anhedral, and could be moved from their (rather large) normal 10 degree angle of incidence to 45 degrees.

They also incorporated an automatic variable camber mechanism and reportedly variable dihedral, although how this was done is not obvious. The landing run was to be shortened by moving a lever that caused the wings to rotate around the main spar, spilling lift and acting as a brake. The wings had large inboard flaps, with outer “pinions” that could sweep both forward and aft by 20 degrees, serving as ailerons. In the rear, an elevator trim mechanism was fitted to the gull-like rear horizontal surfaces, which reportedly could be dimensionally compressed in flight, reducing their area. Even the landing gear was advanced, with single streamlined struts, independent braking and a faired-in steerable tail wheel. .

Photos taken over Bonney’s lifetime often show him as rather harassed, perhaps even ill. Yet on May 4, 1928, he was photographed in the very trim side-by-side cockpit of his $83,000 experiment, looking relaxed and confident. The previous year a brief hop in the aircraft resulted in a minor crash, but this did not seem to bother him. Bonney followed his early training by taking a flight in another aircraft to “get the feel of the air”, then prepared for his test fight. The film shows him prudently checking control operation before takeoff.

It would be fascinating to know what he was thinking at that point. He had succeeded in building an aircraft resembling a gull, but could not have known if his many untested aerodynamic devices would work.

The YouTube film completes the saga. The Bonney Gull makes a perfectly normal take off and reaches perhaps 100 feet in the air, its swinging pinions keeping it level. It then pitches straight down into the ground with no sign of an attempt to recover.

There was no accurate analysis of the crash. Some speculated that “he moved the wrong lever” which, given his experience, is unlikely. It may be that his devices could not withstand the actual aerodynamic forces encountered. Bonney was fatally injured, thrown fifty feet from the aircraft. In a poignant concluding sentence on the incident, the New York Times reported: “The plane had fallen with wings outspread, almost turned over on its back. The fuselage was broken in half, but the long wings had preserved their formation, and as it laid spread out on the ground it resembled a mangled gull.”

The comment might have given some slight satisfaction to Leonard Bonney.

/WE NEED TO SINK SOME MORE BATTLESHIPS—METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING!

IT HAS BEEN A WONDERFUL THING FOR ME TO BE A PART OF THE AIR FORCE FROM BASIC TRAINING AT LACKLAND IN 1951 THROUGH THE GLORIOUS EXPERIENCE OF FLYING B-47S FOR THE STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND TO THE VIETNAM WAR AND BEYOND.

AND SINCE RETIREMENT I’VE WATCHED THE AIR FORCE GROW INTO A SUPERB FORCE THAT HAS A PROBLEM UNLIKE ANY EVER ENCOUNTERED BEFORE BY ANY SERVICE. A LITTLE LOOK AT HISTORY WILL PROVIDE SOME INSIGHT INTO WHAT THE AVERAGE AMERICAN CURRENTLY THINKS ABOUT THE AIR FORCE—AND WHY. AND FROM THIS PERHAPS WE CAN MAKE SOME INFERENCES ABOUT HOW THE AIR FORCE IS PERCEIVED.

BEFORE WE GET INTO THE HISTORY, LETS LOOK AT THE MAJOR PROBLEM FIRST.

THE GREATEST PROBLEM THAT THE AIR FORCE HAS IS THAT IT IS SIMPLY TOO GOOD AT WHAT IT DOES.
WORSE, IT MAKES BEING TOO GOOD LOOK TOO EASY.

BUT BEING SO GOOD RAISES PROBLEMS.
ONE OF THESE IS THAT THE AVERAGE LAYMAN CANNOT COMPREHEND THE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE BY WHICH THE AIR FORCE IS BETTER THAN ANY RIVAL AIR FORCE IN HISTORY—EVEN OUR OWN AIR FORCES IN THE PAST. THERE IS NO ACCURATE ANALOGY TO THE DEFINITIVE SUPERIORITY OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE TO ALL COMPETING FORCES – IT IS BETTER TRAINED, MORE PROFICIENT, MORE SAFETY CONSCIOUS, MORE EFFECTIVE AND HAS MORE COMBAT EXPERIENCE THAN ANY OTHER ARMED FORCE IN HISTORY.

AND IT IS ALSO MORE COMPASSIONATE, FOR WHEREVER THERE IS A TSUNAMI, AN EARTHQUAKE, A FIRE, A HURRICANE – THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE IS THERE FIRST.

THE DIFFICULTY IS THAT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC JUST ACCEPTS AND EXPECTS THIS. THEY’VE COME TO SEE THE AIR FORCE AS A UTILITY THAT YOU TURN ON AND OFF AS NEEDED, AS SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE AND NON-DEMANDING AS A LIGHT SWITCH.

THE ARMY AND MARINES-GO WAY BEYOND THE PUBLIC’S ATTITUDE. THEY EXPECT THE AIR FORCE TO PERFORM ON CALL AS SUPPORTING FIREPOWER, NOT OPERATING AS A WAY OF WAR UNTO ITSELF.
THIS BASIC PROBLEM OF BEING TOO GOOD IS COMPOUNDED BY A UNIQUE CULTURAL PHENOMENON OF OUR ERA, ONE WHICH ACCIDENTALLY CONDUCTS ASYMMETRIC WARFARE AGAINST THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE.

THAT PHENOMENON IS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
THESE TWO THINGS, THE OVERWHELMING EXCELLENCE OF THE AIR FORCE AND THE PRESENT DAY MALADY OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ARE AT CROSS PURPOSES.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAS INHIBITED THE AIR FORCE FROM LETTING THE PUBLIC KNOW THE EXACT DEGREE OF ITS SUPERB PERFORMANCE.

BECAUSE THE PUBLIC DOES NOT KNOW, THE CONGRESS AND PERHAPS EVEN THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, DON’T NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE JUST HOW GOOD THE AIR FORCE IS—OR HOW MUCH IT NEEDS.

LET ME SAY HERE AND NOW THAT THIS INHIBITION IS NOT SIMPLY A PART OF THE AIR FORCE PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATIONS PROCESS—FAR FROM IT. IT IS INHERENT IN THE ENTIRE AIR FORCE, AND THE ENTIRE AIR FORCE WILL HAVE TO TAKE STEPS TO CORRECT IT.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ALSO AFFECTS US NATIONALLY. THE BRILLIANT VICTORY IN THE 1991 GULF WAR SOMEHOW LEFT A NATIONAL POLITICALLY CORRECT IMPRESSION THAT ALL FUTURE WARS WERE TO BE SHORT AND FOUGHT WITH A MINIMUM OF CASUALTIES.
THIS MEANS NO CASUALTIES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF COURSE, AND AS FEW AS POSSIBLE FOR THE ENEMY.

THAT ROTATING ROAR YOU HEAR IN THE BACKGROUND IS NOT ENGINES RUNNING UP; ITS WARRIORS LIKE WINFIELD SCOTT, U.S. GRANT, CARL SPAATZ, GEORGE PATTON, BILLY MITCHELL AND CURTIS LEMAY TURNING OVER IN THEIR GRAVES.

AND WE SHOULD NEVER FORGET THAT WHILE WE ARE THINKING OF SHORT WARS AND MINIMUM CASUALTIES OUR ENEMY IN THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR THINKS OF CENTURIES-LONG WARS AND OF TOTAL ANNIHILATION OF THE ENEMY—THAT IS, TOTAL ANNIHILIATION OF ALL OF US—INCLUDING THE POLITICAL CORRECT.

IN OTHER WORDS, THE ASYMMETRIC WARFARE IMPOSED BY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAS FORCED THE AIR FORCE TO FIGHT CURRENT WARS IN A MANNER BEST SUITED FOR THE DESPICABLE ENEMY WE ARE CURRENTLY ENGAGING. AT PRESENT, THE AIR FORCE IS PREVENTED FROM FIGHTING WITH ALL OUT AND OVERWHELMING FORCE.

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT THE AIR FORCE CAN DO BEST, OBLITERATE TARGETS– HAS BECOME A LIABILITY BECAUSE COLLATERAL DAMAGE IS POLITICALLY INCORRECT.

THIS GIVES A FANATICAL ENEMY AN UNDESERVED ADVANTAGE.
IT SICKENED ME TO SEE OUR YOUNG ARMY AND MARINE COMBATANTS FORCED TO FIGHT IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN AS IF IT WERE A STALINGRAD, BATTLING FROM ROOM TO ROOM, WHEN THE AIR FORCE HAD SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM.

ALL THIS IS EXACERBATED BY THE FACT THAT THE RESTRAINT IMPOSED ON THE AIR FORCE BY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS CONFLICTS WITH THE NEEDS OF A MEDIA WHICH MUST GRINDOUT NEWS TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.
AND THAT MEDIA DOES NOT SEE INCREDIBLE EXCELLENCE AS A BIG STORY.

IT IS THE SAD TRUTH THAT AN AIR FORCE MISSION THAT USES SATELLITES, LASERS, GPS AND PRECISION GUIDED MUNITIONS TO PLUNK A SINGLE TERRORIST IN THE DARK OF NIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE DOES NOT HAVE THE MEDIA PIZAZZ OF YET ANOTHER IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE BLOWING UP A YET ANOTHER TRUCK.
NOR WILL IT GET THE MEDIA COVERAGE.
THERE IS A HIDEOUS SLOGAN ATTRIBUTED TO THE MEDIA, TO THE EFFECT THAT “IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS, AND IF IT BURNS IT EARNS.”

I’M NOT SUGGESTING THAT WE ARE FACING A DISLOYAL MEDIA, FAR FROM IT. I AM SUGGESTING THAT WE ARE NOT MAKING THE CASE THE AIR FORCE DESERVES TO MAKE.
THE MEDIA EXPLOITS THE COST OF THE AIR FORCE, BUT NEVER IT’S VALUE.

THAT’S PART ONE, AND MORE OF IT LATER. BUT NOW, I’D LIKE TO GO BACK THROUGH A LITTLE HISTORY TO REMIND US ONCE AGAIN OF THE INCREDIBLE FOUNDATION OF INDIVIDUAL HUMAN GREATNESS UPON WHICH THE AIR FORCE IS BASED. LET’S GO BACK TO THE BEGINING.
IT WAS 1908 AND THE WRIGHT BROTHERS WERE CLOSE TO COMPLETING THE TESTS AT FORT MYER WHICH WOULD SATISFY THE ARMY SIGNAL CORPS’ REQUIREMENTS FOR A MILITARY “FLYING MACHINE.” THE EXPERIMENT WAS MARRED BY A CRASH. FIRST LIEUTENANT THOMAS SELFRIDGE BECAME THE FIRST MAN TO DIE IN A POWERED HEAVIER-THAN-AIR CRAFT. THE INCIDENT ENCAPSULATES THE FUTURE OF THE AIR FORCE: PROGRESS THROUGH PERSONAL SACRIFICE.

LET’S FAST FORWARD EIGHT YEARS TO WHEN THE 1ST AERO SQUADRON WENT TO WAR IN MEXICO, IN TERRAIN AND AGAINST DIFFICULTIES SIMILAR TO THOSE CURRENTLY SEEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THE WAR WAS ALSO AGAINST A BANDIT LEADER WITH PANACHE—PANCHO VILLA. BUT IT WAS FOUGHT WITH TOTALLY INADEQUATE EQUIPMENT, CURTISS JNs THAT BENT AND SHRIVELED UNDER THE CEASELESS DESERT SUN.
NONETHELESS GREAT LEADERS SUCH AS BENNY FOULOIS EMERGED.

FOULOIS’ MEXICAN CAMPAIGN GENERATED A PHENOMENON THAT WOULD RECUR THROUGHOUT OUR HISTORY, AND THAT IS:
THE CONGRESS AND THE PUBLIC LEARNED NOTHING FROM IT.
DURING THE YEAR THAT FOULOIS LABORED IN MEXICO, THE UNITED STATES SPENT $400,000 ON MILITARY AVIATION. GERMANY WAS SPENDING $45 MILLION THE SAME YEAR.

INSTEAD OF TAKING EUROPE’S EXAMPLE, THE FEEBLE AERIAL ASSETS OF THE UNITED STATES WERE ALLOWED TO DISINTEGRATE.WE WOULD ONLY DO THIS THREE MORE TIMES—AFTER WORLD WAR I, AFTER WORLD WAR II AND DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION
–
AND WE STAND IN DANGER OF DOING IT AGAIN IN THE WAKE OF WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE BUDGET PRESSURES THAT WILL ENSUE OVER THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS. IN APRIL 1917 WHEN THE UNITED STATES ENTERED WORLD WAR I ON THE SIDE OF THE ALLIES, OUR ARMY HAD ABOUT 57 AIRPLANES, NONE OF THEM SUITABLE FOR COMBAT. GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE AND GERMANY ALL DEPLOYED EFFICIENT AIR FORCES OF SEVERAL THOUSAND AIRCRAFT EACH. BY 1918 THE RAF HAD 29,000 PLANES IN SERVICE.

BUT IN THE UNITED STATES, BUDGETS, AN INDIFFERENT PRESS AND AN UNINFORMED PUBLIC WERE ALL CONTENT WITH 57 AIRPLANES.
AT LEAST THEY WERE CONTENT UNTIL WAR CAME. THEN THE MONIES WERE UNLEASHED, AND OVER THE FOLLOWING YEAR THE NEW U.S. ARMY AIR SERVICE HAD TO BUY FOREIGN AIRCRAFT TO ENGAGE THE ENEMY.

BUT IT DID NOT HAVE TO BUY TALENT. THERE CAME FORWARD GREAT LEADERS SUCH AS MAJORS CARL “TOOEY” SPAATZ AND HENRY H. ARNOLD. AND, OF COURSE BRIGADIER GENERAL BILLY MITCHELL, A MAVERICK, WHO HAD A VISION FOR THE FUTURE.MITCHELL IMMEDIATELY SAW THAT AERIAL WARFARE WAS NOT DECIDED IN PENNY PACKETS, BUT THAT YOU NEEDED MASS IN AIR POWER JUST AS YOU DID WITH ARTILLERY OR CAVALRY.

UNDER MITCHELL’S LEADERSHIP, GREAT WARRIORS AROSE, EDDIE RICKENBACKER AND FRANK LUKE AMONG THEM. AND UNDER MITCHELL’S LEADERSHIP THERE ROSE THE CONCEPT OF AIR POWER AS A WAR WINNING WEAPON. AFTER THE WAR MITCHELL KNEW THAT CONCEPTS ARE DIFFICULT FOR THE PUBLIC AND THE MEDIA TO GRASP.
SO INSTEAD OF CONCEPTS HE GAVE A DEMONSTRATION. THE NEWLY FLEDGED U.S. ARMY AIR SERVICE CAPTURED THE IMAGINATION OF THE WORLD, WHEN HIS BOMBERS SANK BATTLESHIPS OFF THE COAST OF VIRGINIA.MITCHELL MADE SINKING BATTLESHIPS A METAPHOR FOR AIRPOWER. IT HAD A RESONANCE IN THE PRESS THAT THE PUBLIC UNDERSTOOD.

TODAY WE NEED SOME NEW—IF METAPHORICAL—BATTLESHIPS TO SINK.
CONTROVERSIAL, ARGUMENTATIVE, AND EGOTISTICAL, MITCHELL NONETHELESS WAS THE LEADER AROUND WHOM HIS LOYAL FOLLOWERS CLOSED RANKS EVEN AS HE THREW HIMSELF ON HIS SWORD FOR AIR POWER. THOSE LOYAL FOLLOWERS INCLUDED ARNOLD, SPAATZ, IRA EAKER, ROBERT OLDS, AND OTHERS, OUR FOREFATHERS.
WORKING ON A LAUGHABLE SHOESTRING OF FINANCES, ENDURING PITIFULLY SLOW PROMOTIONS,–ARNOLD TOOK ELEVEN YEARS TO GO FROM CAPTAIN TO MAJOR, AND HE WAS A FAST BURNER—
THESE ABLE LEADERS LAID THE GROUND WORK FOR THE AIRPLANES AND THE EQUIPMENT THAT WOULD BE DESPERATELY NEEDED IN WW II.

IN 1939 WHEN WORLD WAR II BEGAN IN EUROPE, WE DID NOT HAVE THE PRODUCTION CAPACITY, THE TRAINING INFRASTRUCTURE OR THE COMBAT EXPERIENCE WORTHY OF OUR NATION OF 130,000,000. OUR ARMY RANKED 16TH IN THE WORLD, BEHIND RUMANIA.

HAP ARNOLD, AS CHIEF OF THE AIR CORPS, PUT HIMSELF AT TREMENDOUS RISK. HE INDUCED CONTRACTORS TO EXPAND THEIR INDUSTRI/AL PLANTS AND CIVILIAN FLIGHT TRAINING SCHOOLS—ALL WITHOUT AN ASSURED BUDGET FROM CONGRESS.

HE TOOK THAT RISK ON THE BASIS OF HIS STATED PHILOSOPHY, WHICH WAS THAT AIR POWER WAS THE BUSINESS OF EVERY AMERICAN.
WE NEED TO GET THAT IDEA REINFORCED IN TODAY’S PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS. AIR POWER IS THE BUSINESS OF EVERY AMERICAN—BUT THEY’VE BECOME JADED. WE’VE GOT TO “UNJADE” THEM.
NOW ADMITTEDLY SELLING AIR POWER WAS SIMPLER IN THOSE DAYS. THE PRESS WAS A WILLING PARTNER, AND WHEN THE FIRST BOEING B-17 ROLLED OUT IN 1935, WITH ITS PITIFUL ARMAMENT OF FIVE .30 CALIBER MACHINE GUNS, IT WAS PROCLAIMED A “FLYING FORTRESS” AND THUS GATHERED SUSTAINED MOMENTUM IN THE PRESS.
UNITED BEHIND GREAT LEADERS SUCH AS ARNOLD, ANDREWS, EAKER, QUESADA, AND SPAATZ THE MEN AND WOMEN OF “THE GREATEST GENERATION” BUILT THE AIR FORCE’S INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY AND MILITARY INFRASTRUCTURE TO FIGHT A LONG, HARD WAR FOR FREEDOM

– IN THE FLAK-FILLED SKIES OF EUROPE AND ACROSS THE DANGEROUS PACIFIC THEATER, AMERICAN AIR POWER ROARED FORWARD, FOSTERING A NEW GENERATION OF GREAT LEADERS —CURTIS LEMAY, JIMMY DOOLITTLE, GEORGE KENNEY, HOYT VANDENBERG, AND BENJAMIN DAVIS—JUST TO NAME A FEW.

LIKEWISE, NEW HEROES, FORGED IN BATTLE, APPEARED, INCLUDING THE NEARLY 700 WAR ACES SUCH AS RICHARD BONG, TOM MCGUIRE, FRANCIS GABRESKI, HUB ZEMKE AND MANY OTHERS.
THE AIRPOWER THAT MITCHELL HAD ENVISIONED WAS FINALLY ACHIEVED IN 1944, WITH TOTAL AIR SUPERIORITY ESTABLISHED IN BOTH THE PACIFIC AND THE EUROPEAN THEATERS.
THE VICTORY THAT MITCHELL HAD PREDICTED FOR AIR POWER CAME ABOUT IN 1945, WHEN AIR POWER, I REPEAT, AIR POWER, NO APOLOGIES, FORCED JAPAN TO SURRENDER WITHOUT BEING INVADED.
THEN THE UNITED STATES IMMEDIATELY BEGAN AN INCREDIBLE DISARMAMENT, SHEDDING OURSELVES OF OUR WEAPONS IN FRANTIC HASTE.

YET THE SOVIET UNION DID NOT DISARM, BUT INSTEAD EXTENDED ITS SINISTER GOVERNANCE ALL ACROSS EASTERN EUROPE.
THERE WAS ONLY ONE INSTRUMENT BELIEVED ABLE TO STOP THE SOVIET UNION, AND THAT WAS THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE, BORN ON SEPTEMBER 18, 1947.

OF COURSE THIS WASN’T TRUE. THE POST WAR AMERICAN AIR FORCE HAD LITTLE CAPABILITY–BUT FORTUNATELY THE SOVIET UNION DID NOT KNOW THIS.

LED BY THE FIRST SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE, STUART SYMINGTON, AND THE FIRST CHIEF OF STAFF, GENERAL CARL SPAATZ, THE NEWLY FORMED AIR FORCE TOOK ON THE CHALLENGES OF THE POST WAR WORLD

THE AIR FORCE’S FIRST MAJOR TEST WAS WHEN THIRTY SOVIET DIVISIONS BLOCKADED BERLIN, ONLY TO BE DEFEATED BY THE GALLANT BERLIN AIRLIFT.’

INITIATED BY LEMAY, BUT CONDUCTED BRILLIANTLY BY WILLIAM TUNNER, THE BERLIN AIRLIFT WAS AN AMAZING VICTORY FOR AIR POWER.

FROM THIS POINT ON, IN WARS COLD AND HOT, THE AIR FORCE TOOK ITS PLACE AS THE POINT OF THE SPEAR IN THE FIGHT AGAINST COMMUNIST AGGRESSION.

TIMELESS LEADERS SUCH AS VANDENBERG, LEMAY AND BERNARD SCHRIEVER HELPED FORGE THE AIR FORCE INTO THE MOST LETHAL AIR AND SPACE FORCE IN HISTORY. THEY GUIDED THE UNITED STATES INTO ITS CURRENT PREEMINENT POSITION IN SPACE.

LEMAY WAS NOT SUBTLE. HE SENT A B-50, THE LUCKY LADY II, NON STOP AROUND THE WORLD IN 1949, AND COMMENTED THAT IT DEMONSTRATED THAT THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE COULD DROP ATOMIC BOMBS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
THE SOVIET UNION HEARD HIM.

AND NO ONE KNEW BETTER THAN LEMAY AND THESE OTHER LEADERS AS TO HOW MUCH THE AIR FORCE DEPENDED UPON ITS ENLISTED AND NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS TO MAKE THE SERVICE OPERATE. THEY PROVED TIME AND TIME AGAIN THAT THE REAL STRENGTH OF THE AIR FORCE WAS NOT FOUND IN ITS WEAPONS SYSTEMS, BUT IN ITS PEOPLE.
I WON’T DWELL ON THE FRUSTRATIONS OF VIETNAM WHERE OUR SUPERBLY TRAINED AIRMEN, FLYING THE BEST EQUIPMENT IN THE WORLD, WERE HOBBLED BY THE CONCEPTS OF GRADUALISM, MICROMANAGEMENT AND IDIOTIC RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
THERE AMERICAN AIR POWER WAS HELD ON A TIGHT POLITICAL LEASH FROM 1965 UNTIL DECEMBER 19, 1972, WHEN IT WAS FINALLY LET LOOSE IN OPERATION LINEBACKER II.

AIRPOWER DID IN 1972 WHAT GENERAL LEMAY HAD SUGGESTED IT SHOULD DO IN 1965.

AFTER VIETNAM THERE WAS A NEW ERA OF SEEMINGLY ENDLESS CHANGE AS THE AIR FORCE LED THE WAY INTO THE AGE OF COMPUTERS, SPACE, INFORMATION SUPERIORITY, STEALTH, PRECISION AND PERSISTENCE, THE SECOND IN A SERIES OF TRANSFORMATIONS THAT THE AIR FORCE HAS CONDUCTED. THE FIRST OF COURSE WAS THE WIDESPREAD INTRODUCTION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. IT IS TODAY IN THE PROCESS OF A THIRD TRANSFORMATION, WITH THE FUSION OF COMAND AND CONTROL AND INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE AND RECONNAISSNCE.

THE AIR FORCE CONTINUED TO SOAR, RISING TO NEW HEIGHTS WHILE OVERWHELMING IRAQI FORCES IN OPERATIONS DESERT SHIELD AND DESERT STORM.

THE SOVIET UNION READ THE WRITING ON THE WALL AND COLLAPSED ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1991, GOING OUT WITH A WHIMPER AND NOT A NUCLEAR BANG . VICTORY IN THE 46 YEAR OLD COLD WAR WAS WON BY AIR AND SPACE POWER.
THE COLD WAR ENDED, BUT A NEW AND INSIDIOUS ENEMY EMERGED ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. THE AIR FORCE FACED AN UNINTERRUPTED SERIES OF NEW CHALLENGES, ALL OVER THE WORLD.
LETS STOP FOR A MOMENT AND REFLECT UPON THOSE CHALLENGES AND THE CURRENT STATUS OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE.
FIRST OF ALL, THERE IS NO DENYING THAT THERE IS ANOTHER “GREATEST GENERATION” INHERENT IN OUR CURRENT OFFICER AND ENLISTED CORPS. THEY ARE SUPERB.
SIMPLY PUT, THERE HAS NEVER BEEN IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, AN ARMED FORCE WHICH CAN COMPARE TO THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE IN LETHALITY, FLEXIBILITY AND PRECISION.
THIS BEING THE CASE, SOME QUESTIONS ARISE, SUCH AS:
GIVEN THE AIR FORCE’S INVARIABLY ACCOMPLISHED PERFORMANCE, WHY ARE WE HAVING SUCH A HARD TIME DEFENDING THE AIR FORCE BEFORE THE PUBLIC, THE CONGRESS AND OTHER SERVICES?
WHY ARE WE FORCED TO RELY ON 50 YEAR OLD BOMBERS, TANKERS AND HELICOPTERS AND FORTY YEAR OLD FIGHTERS?
WHY DO ENTRENCHED OPPONENTS TO THE ACQUISITION OF NEW AIR FORCE EQUIPMENT USE TERMS SUCH AS – “UNNEEDED, COLD WAR RELICS” IN THEIR CHARGES AGAINST OUR NEW F-22s AND F-35s?
HERE ARE SOME ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS.:

FIRST, THE AIR FORCE IS SIMPLY TOO GOOD, EVEN USING ANCIENT AIRPLANES.
THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC OVERLOOK THE IMPOSSIBLY DIFFICULT THINGS WE DO DAILY AROUND THE WORLD, DAY AND NIGHT.
WE’VE MADE INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT OPERATIONS SUCH AS INFLIGHT REFUELING LOOK ROUTINE. THE SAME IS TRUE OF THE INSERTION OF SPECIAL FORCES AND DRAMATIC SEARCH AND RESCUE EFFORTS.
MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA OF THE COMPLEXITY, THE DANGER, AND THE DIFFICULTY OF SUCH EVENTS. THEY JUST EXPECT THE AIR FORCE TO DO IT.

WE HAVE TO CHANGE THIS, WE HAVE TO MAKE THE PUBLIC SEE WHAT IS INVOLVED.

A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE PUBLIC’S JADED OUTLOOK IS MODERN PRECISION BOMBING. IT MAY HAVE BEEN A GREAT MISTAKE TO TELEVISE THE RESULTS OF THE BOMBING IN THE 1991 GULF WAR, FOR WHILE THE FIRST BOMBS GOING INTO SADDAM’S WINDOWS MADE PEOPLE GASP, THE FIFTIETH ONE MADE THEM YAWN.
GENERAL HORNER MADE THE POINT THAT WE SUFFERED BECAUSE WE COULD NOT EMBED REPORTERS IN COMBAT COCKPITS.
LET’S FIX THAT, ELECTRONICALLY IN FIGHTERS, IN JUMP SEATS WHERE EVER ELSE WE CAN.
SOME PEOPLE AND SOME AGENCIES HAVE AN INFERIORITY COMPLEX ABOUT THE AIR FORCE’S CAPABILITY.
THIS CAUSES SHORT MEMORIES AND BUDGET ENVY.
WE KNOW THAT THE AIR FORCE IS FULLY INTEGRATED INTO EVERY COMBAT OPERATION BY FURNISHING MOBILITY, AWARENESS, NAVIGATION, COMMUNICATIONS, WEATHER AND FIRE POWER.
YET THIS IS OVERLOOKED BY OUR SISTER SERVICES IN THE BUDGET AND TRANFORMATION AND QDR DEBATES.
THEN THERE ARE PEOPLE OF ILL WILL, IN THE PRESS AND OUT, WHO LOOK EAGERLY TO FIND SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE AIR FORCE.
AND, UNFORTUNATELY, WE DO HAVE FAILINGS.
I TOOK AN UNSCIENTIFIC POLL, ASKING THE SIMPLE QUESTION “WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE AIR FORCE”
MANY RESPONDED AS I EXPECTED, THAT IT WAS THE MOST POWERFUL AND EFFICIENT FORCE THE WORLD HAD EVER SEEN.
ALMOST EVERYONE MADE AN OBVIOUSLY GENUINE TRIBUTE TO THE AIR FORCE’S PROFICIENCY IN WARFARE.

THEY RECOGNIZE THAT THE AIR FORCE IS DOMINANT IN SPACE, AND THAT SPACE WILL BE A BATTLE GROUND IN THE FUTURE. THEY ALSO WANT A MANNED AIR FORCE PRESENCE IN SPACE.
SOME WERE MORE SPECIFIC IN THEIR PRAISE, NOTING SPECIFIC AREAS IN WHICH THE AIR DID NOT GET SUFFICIENT CREDIT: AMONG THESE WERE
(1) THE VICTORIES IN KOSOVO, AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ
(2) THE TREMENDOUS INTERNAL REFORMS THAT IT HAS CONDUCTED IN TRANSFORMING ITSELF – ARGUABLY, ALONE AMONG THE SERVICES.
(3) THE REMARKABLE JOB IT IS DOING IN THE MIDDLE EAST WITH AIR BORNE SENSORS DETECTING IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICES, INTERCEPTING ENEMY COMMUNICATIONS, PROTECTING CONVOYS, AND MED-EVACING THE WOUNDED.

BUT THERE WAS A SIGNIFICANT PERCENTAGE WHO PUT THEIR FINGERS ON WHAT ARE, IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, MINOR BUT GLARING BLEMISHES.
THE TOPICS THAT BOTHERED PEOPLE MOST WERE THESE:
FIRST THE SUPER HIGH COST OF WEAPONRY..
SECOND THE EXTENDED TIME PERIOD REQUIRED TO PROCURE NEW EQUIPMENT, AS IN THE CASE OF THE F-22, AND THE TANKERS.
THIRD: THE ERRONEOUS IDEA THAT THE AIR FORCE IS NOT CONCERNED ENOUGH WITH CLOSE AIR SUPPORT.

THE FACT IS THAT MODERN WEAPONRY IS EXPENSIVE. AND IN REGARD TO THE ACQUISITION PROCESS IT, IS PAINFUL TO REMEMBER THAT THE NORTH AMERICAN P-51 MUSTANG WENT FROM CONTRACT TO ROLL OUT IN 117 DAYS, WHILE THE LOCKHEED P-80’S TIME FROM CONTRACT TO FIRST FLIGHT WAS 143 DAYS. AND IT CAN STILL BE DONE. REMEMBER IN THE GULF WAR, THE GBU-28 BUNKER BUSTER WENT FROM DEMAND TO DROP IN A MERE 26 DAYS.
MANY ALSO FEEL THAT WEAPONS LIKE THE F/A-22 ARE INTENDED FOR A COLD WAR ENEMY THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. SIMILAR QUESTIONS ARE RAISED ABOUT THE F-35.

THIS IS BECAUSE MOST OF THE PUBLIC IS UNBELIEVABLY BLIND TO THE REAL THREAT OF CHINA AS AN EMERGING SUPER POWER THAT POSSESSES AND HAS THREATENED TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
WE HAVENT’ SOLD THE CONCEPT OF FUTURE THREATS AND AS A RESULT THERE IS A REAL DANGER THAT F-22s AND F-35s MAY BE PUT ON BUDGETARY LIFE SUPPORT.
AND HERE IS THE WORST OF ALL, THE FARTHEST FROM THE TRUTH
MANY THINK THAT THE ROLE OF THE AIR FORCE HAS CHANGED FROM BEING PRIMARY IN OPERATION DESERT STORM AND KOSOVO TO BEING SECONDARY TO THE ARMY IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM AND SUBSEQUENTLY.

WE KNOW THIS IS ABSURD, BUT WE HAVEN’T MADE THE ABSURDITY EVIDENT.
A FEW MAINTAIN THAT WE HAVE NOT DEFINED OUR MISSION, THAT DEFINING IT MERELY AS AIR AND SPACE SUPERIORITY IS NO LONGER ENOUGH.
THIS IS THE LAST ITEM AND IT STEMS FROM MEDIA PERSONNEL THAT I KNOW AND RESPECT. THEY STATE THAT THE SERVICES ARE ALL EQUALLY OPEN AND POLITE TO THE MEDIA, BUT THAT THE ARMY, NAVY AND MARINES ARE MORE AGGRESSIVE THAN THE AIR FORCE IN GETTING THEIR STORIES OUT.

THEY SAY THE AIR FORCE SEEMS LESS FORTHCOMING. AS AN EXAMPLE THEY CITE THE RECENT IRAQ WAR WHICH THEY SAY WAS–FROM A PUBLIC PERCEPTION STANDPOINT–AN ALL NAVY, ALL MARINE, ALL ARMY SHOW –
WHAT A TRAVESTY ! WE CONDUCTED THE MOST BRILLIANT AIR CAMPAIGN IN HISTORY, BUT WERE TOO WORRIED ABOUT HOST NATION SENSITIVITIES TO TELL THE STORY AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN TOLD.
AND THEN THEY NOTED THAT THE PUBLIC IS DELUGED WITH PRO-NAVY ENTERTAINMENT VEHICLES, INCLUDING “TOP GUN,” “JAG” AND “A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF THE BLUES.”

THERE IS NO CORRESPONDING AIR FORCE PROGRAMMING AND THERE COULD AND SHOULD BE. JAG EPISODES PROBABLY COST $500,000 EACH—13 A SEASON WOULD BE LESS THAN $7 MILLION—NOT CHICKEN FEED, BUT PRICELESS.

SOME FORMER AIR FORCE PEOPLE RESPONDED TO MY QUESTION, SOME WITH FAMOUS NAMES THAT YOU WOULD RECOGNIZE INSTANTLY.
THEY GENERALLY HAD TWO LINES OF THOUGHT. ONE OF THEM WAS THAT IN TODAY’S AIR FORCE, WITH ITS INEVITABLE DRIFT TOWARD POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, CURTISS LEMAY WOULD NEVER HAVE MADE MAJOR, AND DICK BONG WOULD WASHED OUT OF FLYING SCHOOL. THEY WONDER IF MEN LIKE MOODY SUTER AND OTHERS COULD HAVE MADE THE GREAT CONTRIBUTIONS THEY DID IN TODAY’S P.C. CLIMATE.
AND THERE WAS ANOTHER A CONTINUING REFRAIN, TO THE EFFECT THAT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAD DESTROYED THE OFFICERS’ CLUB ATMOSPHERE, AND THAT THE CAMARADERIE THAT GREW UP IN FRIDAY NIGHT BEER CALLS HAS NOT BEEN REPLACED BY AN EQUIVALENT.
NO ONE ARGUES THAT DRINKING IS GOOD; NO ONE BELIEVES THAT ALCOHOL IS A BENEFIT. BUT THERE IS NONETHELESS THE SENSE THAT SOMETHING IS MISSING IN THE BONDING.

IN GENERAL TERMS, WE NEED TO BE FAR MORE CONSCIOUS OF THE EFFECT THAT THE MEDIA HAS ON THE PUBLIC. WE NEED TO GET EMBEDDED NOT ONLY IN THE LOCAL MEDIA, BUT AT EVERY LEVEL ON UP TO THE VERY TOP EXECUTIVES IN THE NETWORKS.

WE SHOULD PURSUE THE MEDIA WITH A RELENTLESS SALESMANSHIP THAT FORCES OUR STORIES FORWARD – THE NAVY DOES, THE MARINES DO, THE ARMY DOES, SORT OF – WE DON’T, WE SIMPLY DON’T.
IF WE DO, WE CAN BECOME EMBEDDED ONCE MORE IN THE PYSCHE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND THUS INTO THE CONSCIENCE OF THE CONGRESS.

NOW SECURING THE ATTENTION OF THE MEDIA IS MORE DIFFICULT TODAY THAN IT WAS IN GENERAL MITCHELL OR GENERAL ARNOLD’S TIME. YOU CANNOT SELL THE PUBLIC ON THE F/A-22 WITH A NICKNAME, AS WAS DONE WITH THE FLYING FORTRESS.
THIS MEANS THAT THE COMMUNICATION OF THE TRUTH ABOUT THE AIR FORCE HAS TO BECOME AS ADVANCED, AS REFINED AND AS COMPLEX AS CURRENT AIR FORCE TECHNOLOGY. AND IT HAS TO BE COMMUNICATED BY THE AIR FORCE AS AN ENTITY NOT JUST BY PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICES.

THIS EFFORT HAS TO BE ONGOING. WE HAVE TO MAKE THE F/A-22 AS UNDERSTANDABLE TO THE PUBLIC AS THEIR SUVS, AND DO THE SAME WITH EVERY ONE OF OUR PROGRAMS.
IN SHORT WE HAVE TO BECOME AS GOOD AT TELLING THE WORLD ABOUT OURSELVES AS WE ARE AT CONDUCTING AIR AND SPACE WARFARE. WE SHOULD REMEMBER MITCHELL AND HOW HIS SUNKEN BATTLESHIPS BECAME A METAPHOR FOR AIRPOWER.

WE NEED TO SINK SOME NEW BATTLESHIPS—METAPHORICALLY OF COURSE–TO FIX IN THE PUBLIC’S MIND JUST EXACTLY HOW SUPERIOR ITS AIR FORCE IS.

/It was justifiably called “the airlift that saved Israel.

One of the most critical but least celebrated airlifts in history unfolded over a desperate 32 days in the fall of 1973. An armada of Military Airlift Command aircraft carried thousands of tons of materiel over vast distances into the midst of the most ferocious fighting the Middle East had ever witnessed-the 1973 Arab¬Israeli War. MAC airlifters-T-tailed C-141s and C-5As-went in harm’s way, vulnerable to attack from fighters, as they carved a demanding track across the Mediterranean, and to missiles and sabotage, as they were off-loading in Israel.

Though not as famous as the 1948¬-49 Berlin Airlift or as massive as the 1990-¬91 Desert Storm airlift, this 1973 operation was a watershed event. Code-named “Nickel Grass,” it restored a balance of power and helped Israel survive a coordinated, life-threatening Soviet-backed assault from Egypt and Syria. It proved the Air Force concept of global mobility based on jet-powered transport aircraft. The airlift also transformed the image of the C-5 from that of expensive lemon to symbol of US might.

A quarter of a century ago, in summer and fall 1973, the Mideast seethed with tensions. Six years earlier, in June 1967, Israeli forces conquered vast swaths of land controlled by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Cairo and Damascus failed over the years to persuade or force Israel to relinquish its grip on the land and, by 1973, the stalemate had become intolerable. Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Syria’s Hafez al-Assad meticulously planned their 1973 offensive, one they hoped would reverse Israeli gains of the earlier war and put an end to Arab humiliation. The war was set to begin on the holiest of Jewish religious days, Yom Kippur.

Trapped by Complacency

The Arab states had trained well and Moscow had supplied equipment on a colossal scale, including 600 advanced surface-to-air missiles, 300 MiG-21 fighters, 1,200 tanks, and hundreds of thousands of tons of consumable war materiel. On paper, the Arabs held a huge advantage in troops, tanks, artillery, and aircraft. This was offset, in Israeli minds, by the Jewish state’s superior technology, advanced mobilization capability, and interior lines of communication. Despite unmistakable signs of increasing Arab military capability, Israeli leaders remained unworried, even complacent, confident in Israel’s ability to repel any attack.

The Israeli government became unequivocally convinced of impending war just hours before the Arab nations attacked at 2:05 p.m. local time, Oct. 6. Prime Minister Golda Meir, despite her immense popularity, refused to use those precious hours to carry out a pre-emptive attack; she was concerned that the US might withhold critical aid shipments if Washington perceived Israel to be the aggressor.
On the southern front, the onslaught began with a 2,000-cannon barrage across the Suez Canal, the 1967 cease-fire line. Egyptian assault forces swept across the waterway and plunged deep into Israeli-held territory. At the same time, crack Syrian units launched a potent offensive in the Golan Heights. The Arab forces fought with efficiency and cohesion, rolling over or past shocked Israeli defenders. Arab air forces attacked Israeli airfields, radar installations, and missile sites.

Day 4 of the war found Israel’s once-confident military suffering from the effects of the bloodiest mauling of its short, remarkably successful existence. Egypt had taken the famous Bar Lev line, a series of about 30 sand, steel, and concrete bunkers strung across the Sinai to slow an attack until Israeli armor could be brought into play. Egyptian commandos ranged behind Israeli lines, causing havoc. In the north, things looked equally bad. The Syrian attack had not been halted until Oct. 10.

Grievously heavy on both sides were the losses in armored vehicles and combat aircraft. Israeli airpower was hard hit by a combination of mobile SA-6 and the man-portable SA-7 air-defense missiles expertly wielded by the Arabs. The attacking forces were also plentifully supplied with radar-controlled ZSU-23-4 anti-aircraft guns. Israeli estimates of consumption of ammunition and fuel were seen to be totally inadequate. However, it was the high casualty rate that stunned Israel, shocking not only Meir but also the legendary Gen. Moshe Dayan, minister of defense.
The shock was accompanied by sheer disbelief at America’s failure to comprehend that the situation was critical. Voracious consumption of ammunition and huge losses in tanks and aircraft brought Israel to the brink of defeat, forcing the Israelis to think the formerly unthinkable as they pondered their options.

Half a world away, the United States was in a funk, unable or unwilling to act decisively. Washington was in the throes of not only post-Vietnam moralizing on Capitol Hill but also the agony of Watergate, both of which impaired the leadership of President Richard M. Nixon. Four days into the war, Washington was blindsided again by another political disaster-the forced resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew.

Not surprisingly, the initial US reaction to the invasion was one of confusion and contradiction. Leaders tried to strike a balance of the traditional US support of Israel with the need to maintain a still-tenuous superpower détente with the Soviet Union and a desire to avoid a threatened Arab embargo of oil shipments to the West.
Shifting Scenarios
The many shifts in US military planning to aid Israel are well-documented, notably in Flight to Israel, Kenneth L. Patchin’s official MAC history of Operation Nickel Grass. Nixon, in response to a personal plea from Meir, had made the crucial decision Oct. 9 to re-supply Israel. However, four days would pass before the executive office could make a final decision on how the re-supply would be executed.
Initially, planners proposed that Israel be given the responsibility for carrying out the entire airlift. (Israel did use eight of its El Al commercial airliners to carry 5,500 tons of materiel from the US to Israel.) Israel attempted to elicit interest from US commercial carriers, but they refused to enlist in the effort, concerned as they were about the adverse effects Arab reaction would have upon their businesses. MAC’s inquiries with commercial carriers received the same negative response. Then, it was suggested that MAC assist the Israeli flag carrier by flying the material to Lajes, the base on the Portuguese Azores islands in the Atlantic, where it could be picked up by Israeli transports.

The US dithered in this fashion for four days. Then, on Oct. 12, Nixon personally decided that MAC would handle the entire airlift. Tel Aviv’s Lod/Ben-Gurion air complex would be the off-load point.

“Send everything that can fly,” he ordered.
USAF had been preparing right along to take on the challenge. Gen. George S. Brown, USAF Chief of Staff, telephoned Gen. Paul K. Carlton, MAC commander, to begin loading MAC aircraft with materiel but to hold them within the US pending release of a formal order sending them onward. Carlton put his commanders on alert and contacted the heads of other involved commands, including Gen. Jack J. Catton of Air Force Logistics Command. AFLC accorded the same high priority to Nickel Grass, and the results showed immediately. More than 20 sites in the United States were designated to be cargo pick-up points where the US military would assemble materiel for shipment to Israel. Equipment, some directly from war-reserve stocks, began pouring into these sites.

Less than nine hours after Nixon’s decision, MAC had C-141s and C-5s ready to depart. There would be some initial delays, and they would encounter some difficulties en route, but they would be the first of a flood of aircraft into Israel.

The complex nature of Nickel Grass required a flexible chain of command. Within MAC, 21st Air Force, commanded by Maj. Gen. Lester T. Kearney Jr., was designated as the controlling Air Force. The vice commander of 21st, Brig. Gen. Kelton M. Farris, was named MAC mission commander. The prime airlift director was Col. Edward J. Nash.

We’ll Hold Your Coat

The threat of an oil embargo frightened US allies. With a single exception, they all denied landing and overflight rights to the emergency MAC flights. The exception was Portugal, which, after hard bargaining, essentially agreed to look the other way as traffic mushroomed at Lajes Field. Daily departure flights grew from one to 40 over a few days. This was a crucial agreement for MAC, which could not have conducted the airlift the way it did without staging through Lajes.

When Nixon flashed the decision Oct. 12, top American officials instantly applied pressure for immediate results. MAC’s complex machinery sprang into action, but it took some hours to establish a steady, regulated flow of aircraft and crews. Initial flights were delayed because of high winds at Lajes, generating White House fury that supplies had not magically reached Israel.

Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Carlton about this, saying, “We’ll have to get them moving, or we’ll lose our jobs.”

Carlton knew the airlift business. He knew that he had an adequate number of aircraft, crews, and required equipment. The fleet consisted of 268 C-141s and 77 C-5As, and Carlton knew that he could sustain a steady flow of three C-141s every two hours and four C-5s every four hours-indefinitely. He also knew that MAC could orchestrate the operation, establishing a rational flow of aircraft matching the cargo to be carried with off-loading equipment at the destination. In his plan, MAC would essentially become a conduit through which materiel would flow in a well-adjusted stream.
At first, however, he could not convey either his concept or his confidence to the White House, State Department, or Pentagon.

Carlton had already begun to expedite things, taking extraordinary actions in the interest of saving time. These steps included waiving crew rest requirements, weight limitations, daily utilization restrictions, and routine maintenance demands. He had to fight a continuing change of orders streaming out of the White House and State and Defense departments. There was continuing pressure to enlist the help of commercial airlines, despite their universal reluctance. At one point, late in the game, officials threatened to remove MAC entirely from the operation.
Even so, Carlton was confident he could establish a flow that not only would let MAC handle the initial requirement of 4,000 tons of materiel but also continue to handle all of MAC’s other assignments. He asked for patience, stating that “once this flow starts, it [the materiel] is going to come like a bushel basket of oranges just being dumped.”
The average distance from US departure points to Lajes was 3,297 miles. It was another 3,163 miles from Lajes to Lod/Ben-Gurion. The route varied from eastern departure points (McGuire AFB, N.J.; Dover AFB, Del.; and Charleston AFB, S.C.) to Lajes, but from Lajes onward it was precise. Aircraft flew to Gibraltar at the southern tip of Spain and then followed a narrow path over the Mediterranean to Tel Aviv.

The route was deliberately placed along the center of the Mediterranean Sea on the Flight Information Region boundary line dividing the airspace of the hostile African states to the south and that of the “friendly” European states to the north.

Fighters All the Way

The threat of Arab interception was real, and the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet acted as protector until the transports came within about 200 miles of Israel. There Israeli air force fighters took over. Although threats were made by radio, and several unidentified fighters were seen, no overt hostile action was taken.

Neither Lajes nor Lod possessed adequate aerial port facilities. Carlton called for establishment of Airlift Control Elements at both places, accurately estimating the number of personnel and the equipment that each would require. (More than 1,300 people would work at Lajes, seriously taxing all the facilities.) Other ALCEs were established at points within the US where aerial port facilities were not sufficient to handle the rush.
The initial missions to Israel were delayed as a result of 50-knot crosswinds at Lajes. Scheduled to be the first aircraft at Lod was a C-5 carrying the ALCE team, headed by Col. Donald R. Strobaugh. However, it encountered engine trouble and had to return to Lajes, where Strobaugh and his team transferred to a C-141.

The first C-5 (Tail No. 00461) to land at Lod touched down at 22:01 Zulu. It carried 97 tons of 105 mm howitzer shells, and it arrived at a time when Israeli forces were down to their last supplies of ammunition. Another 829 tons would be delivered in the next 24 hours. Even as Israeli workers unloaded those first cargo airplanes, huge formations of Israeli and Egyptian armor, maneuvering just 100 miles to the southwest, were locked in a desperate tank battle that would prove to be the largest clash of armor since the World War II Battle of Kursk.

Carlton was only too aware of the C-5′s vulnerability to ground attack. Whenever possible, the Air Force would have only a single C-5 on the ground at any one time.
The first C-141 (Tail No. 60177) to arrive at Lod landed at 23:16 Zulu. The aircraft carried more ammunition but, more importantly, it delivered Strobaugh and his ALCE crew. The group ultimately numbered 55, all of whom worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. They were given three 40K loaders as well as locally improvised unloading gear.

The arriving MAC airplanes were greeted ecstatically by the Israelis. The crews received red-carpet treatment. Israel put in place a system to expedite cargo handling; materiel unloaded from the transports usually were at the front in Syria in about three hours and in the Sinai in less than 10 hours.

The original 4,000-ton airlift requirement grew daily. After the first day, USAF set the daily flow requirement at four C-5s and 12 C-141s. After Oct. 21, it raised the aircraft flow level to six C-5s and 17 C-141s and maintained it there until Oct. 30, when the demand began to drop.
The continuous flow of aircraft on the long flights was tough on the aircrews, but MAC was judicious in its positioning of relief crews for the C-141 and using augmented crews on the C-5. A special pool of navigators was created for the vital but tedious task of navigating the Mediterranean.

To the Offensive

Because it eliminated the need to husband ammunition and other consumable items, the continuous flood of US war materiel enabled Israeli forces to go on the offensive in the latter stages of the war. In the north, Israel’s ground forces recovered all territory that had been lost and began to march on Damascus. In the Sinai, tank forces led by Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon smashed back across the Suez, encircled the Egyptian Third Army on the western side of the canal, and threatened Ismailia, Suez City, and even Cairo itself.
Egypt and Syria, which had previously rejected the idea of a negotiated settlement, now felt compelled on Oct. 22 to agree to the arrangement hammered out by Washington and Moscow with the goal of preventing the total destruction of the trapped Egyptian army. Israel was reluctant to comply immediately, wishing to gain as much as possible before a cease-fire.

The Soviet Union, faced with Israel’s continuing offensive, raised the stakes. Moscow declared to the United States that, if the US could not bring Israel to heel, it would take unilateral action to dictate a settlement. On Oct. 24, the United States, in order to intensify the image of risk in Soviet minds and keep Soviet forces out of the crisis, responded by taking its armed forces to a worldwide DEFCON III alert, implying readiness for nuclear operations, if necessary.

Fortunately, after several abortive efforts, an effective cease-fire finally took hold Oct. 28.
Israel suffered 10,800 killed and wounded-a traumatic loss for a nation of some 3 million persons-plus 100 aircraft and 800 tanks. The Arab nations suffered 17,000 killed or wounded and 8,000 prisoners, and lost 500 aircraft and 1,800 tanks.

The airlift officially ended Nov. 14. By then, the Air Force had delivered 22,395 tons of cargo-145 missions by C-5 Galaxy and 422 missions by C-141 Starlifter. The C-5s delivered about 48 percent of the tonnage but consumed 24 percent less fuel than the C-141s. Included in the gross cargo tonnage was a total of 2,264.5 tons of “outsize” materiel, equipment that could be delivered only by a C-5. Among these items were M-60 tanks, 155 mm howitzers, ground radar systems, mobile tractor units, CH-53 helicopters, and A-4E components.

The airlift had been a key to the victory. It had not only brought about the timely resupply of the flagging Israeli force but also provided a series of deadly new weapons put to good use in the latter part of the war. These included Maverick and TOW anti-tank weapons and extensive new electronic countermeasures equipment that warded off successful attacks on Israeli fighters. Reflecting on the operation’s vital contribution to the war effort, Reader’s Digest would call it “The Airlift That Saved Israel.”
Both US transport types distinguished themselves by performing reliably and economically. The C-5A had an 81 percent reliability while the C-141 registered a 93 percent reliability. No accidents occurred. The abort rate of all planned flights came in under 2 percent.

The airlift taught the Air Force many lessons, large and small. One was that Lajes was a godsend-one that the US best not take for granted in a future emergency. The Air Force established an immediate requirement for aerial refueling to become standard practice in MAC so that its airlifters could operate without forward bases, if necessary. Another lesson was that commercial airlines, on their own, could not be expected to volunteer their services and aircraft. This meant that access to commercial lift in the future would have to be met by activating the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, as in fact it was during the Gulf War. Nickel Grass also led to the consolidation of all airlift aircraft under Military Airlift Command and its designation as a specified command on Feb. 1, 1977.

Finally, the C-5 proved to be the finest military airlift aircraft in history, not the expensive military mistake as it had been portrayed in the media. Its ability to carry huge amounts of cargo economically, carry outsize pieces of equipment, and refuel in flight fully justified the expense of the program.

“For generations to come,” said Golda Meir not long after the war’s end, “all will be told of the miracle of the immense planes from the United States bringing in the material that meant life for our people.”

Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first United States nuclear test of a fusion device, in which a major part of the explosive yield came from nuclear fusion. It was detonated on November 1, 1952 by the United States at 11.6709°N 162.1980°E on Enewetak, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, as part of Operation Ivy.

On November 1, 1952, the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, popularly called the “hydrogen bomb.” The experiment took place on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific and immediately generated a controversy from leftists that resonates today. It was immediately said that if we detonated a hydrogen bomb, the Soviet Union would follow. What they didn’t say was that if we didn’t develop a hydrogen bomb, the Soviet Union would anyway, and we’d have been left at the deterrent starting gate.

Nuclear weapons were the means by which the United States first halted the aggression planned by Soviet Union. The Communist leaders knew that in any exchange, they themselves—not just their troops or their citizens—would be killed by the overwhelming response that the Strategic Air Command could make. As a result, they did not make the first strike that their policy clearly called for. Over time, as weapons became more sophisticated, and ICBMS and SLBMS were added to the mix, the Soviet Union kept pace—but only at the expense of the destruction of its economy and the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day, 1991.

The United States faced the Soviet Union down on the basis of its massive strength. Today the United States is faced with another aggressor, the Islamic terrorists who promise to detonate a nuclear weapon in New York, D.C. and or Los Angeles as soon as they are capable of it. In return, we do not call out the nations that actively support the terrorists (Iran, Syria) nor those that passively support the terrorists: most of the Islamic world, but including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and others. Why does the United States not call them out? Because it is poorly led, uncertain, and too concerned about oil supplies and other legal and illegal commercial connections. So instead of actively identifying these nations as hostile, and announcing our intention of overwhelming them with our strength, we instead choose to pursue a route of individual assassinations, trying to stop the flood of Islamic terrorist hatred by killing one leader at a time using UCAVs and missiles. While seemingly effective, there are dozens, hundreds, even thousands of replacements for every one we kill. We will bankrupt ourselves on the way to our economic collapse, just as the Soviet Union did.

The leaders of the countries who oppose not only have no fear of us; they are contemptuous of us as they accept our money. Saudi Arabia, the nation we saved after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and sat perched on its border, treats us as stumbling idiots while financing Wahhabi schools that preach hatred against us throughout our country. It does so only because it knows that the United States no longer has the will power to exercise its military might. The United States mumbles about “human rights” everywhere but does not dare to mention a country where human rights are ignored for half its population—Saudi Arabia.

Hydrogen bombs have never been used in combat, and I hope they never will be. But as we watch the Muslim world go nuclear—Pakistan now, Iran and Syria soon, the rest to quickly follow—we should realize that the very weapons we refuse to use as a threat today will be used against us in reality tomorrow.

The citizens of the United States should rise up and demand leadership that will forcefully and effectively defend our nation now and in the future. And you can do that today only with massive airpower, totally new weapons and the back up option of using nuclear weapons if we choose to do so.

Boeing B-47 on final appraoch

Calling the Boeing B-47 “the most significant multi-jet aircraft of all time” might be attributed to the bias of an old B-47 pilot, were it not for the incontrovertible facts of the situation.

The Boeing Company took a gigantic gamble to create the B-47. It combined an advanced planform, with wings and horizontal surfaces swept back 35 degree, new and relatively untried jet engines placed in pods beneath and forward of the wings, a bicycle landing gear, and new electronics. Its success was enormous, with more than 2,000 being built.

That success was conferred upon the aircraft which followed, including the B-52, the KC-135 and the 367-80. All of the subsequent Boeing transports, from the 707 to the 787, owe a massive debt to the B-47 for its revolutionary planform, its nurturing of the company’s financial basis and its outstanding subsonic performance. The multi-jet designs of many other manufacturers—including such sadly missed names as Douglas and Convair—owe a similar debt.

We are so accustomed to the swept-wing podded-engine layout that it is difficult to recall the utter wonder with which the B-47 was greeted when it made its first flight on December 17, 1947. It was so radical that even some of is own designers and builders, watching as it nosed toward its takeoff position at Boeing Field, wondered if in fact it would really fly. This is not a myth–it was told to me personally by one of its principal engineers.

To be fair, it must be noted that there are a large number of former B-47 crewmembers, pilots and radar observers alike, who hate the airplane. There were many reasons to do so. It was uncomfortable to fly on the very long missions, some of which exceeded twenty-four hours. It was in certain situations a dangerous aircraft, killing many a fine young crew in accidents, particularly on high gross weight takeoffs. In 1957, no less than 24 B-47s were lost in major accidents, killing 43 crew members. A loss rate like that today would not only cause a Congressional outcry–it would cut our bomber fleet by 1/5th.

The mission of the B-47 was demanding. It was to fly, alone, or in small cells of three or more aircraft, deep into the Soviet Union and destroy it with nuclear weapons. This hazardous undertaking was fortunately never required, and the B-47 in fact never dropped a bomb in anger. (It did serve briefly in the Vietnam War as an intelligence gathering aircraft.) Nevertheless, the B-47it served its primary purpose by deterring (a euphemism—the real term is “frightening”) the Soviet Union.

It did so by placing extraordinarily demands on the crews who flew and maintained it. The confining, restrictive nature of Alert duty, where crews were sequestered in monastic seclusion so that they could race to their airplanes and take off on a strike mission, took its toll of careers and marriages. Alert duty came often and for long periods, and was during the early years performed under primitive conditions.

In addition, B-47 units frequently deployed overseas for long periods of time, and this made life very difficult for families. There were good reasons not to like B-47 duty, particularly for hot young fighter pilots who graduated from flying school intent on becoming an ace and were instead placed in the back seat of a Stratojet.

But most people who flew the B-47 admire and respect it. It provided the United States with an unimaginable degree of power that was very obvious to the Soviet Union. By doing it quelled Soviet aggressive measures and helped maintain the uneasy peace between the two nations.

The B-47 came into being in a remarkably short time period, suffered delays as a result of the inevitable problems that ensued, and then swiftly equipped an expanding Strategic Air Command. Then just as it had expanded its numbers to become America’s premier strategic bomber, Robert McNamara ordered that the B-47s be withdrawn from service to save money for B-52s and missiles.
Just as they had suddenly appeared, forty-five to a wing, they disappeared, flown to Davis Monthan Air Force Base, and from there taxied to oblivion.

After a relatively short interval, during which salvageable parts were removed, they were towed to a huge guillotine that cut them to pieces and started their transformation back into aluminum ingots.

A total of 2,032 B-47s were built, 1,373 by Boeing, 274 by Douglas and 385 by Lockheed. For most of the twenty year interval between its first flight on December 17, 1947 and its last official Air Force flight on December 29, 1967, it reigned supreme as a bomber. For those of us that flew it, this is the way we will always remember it.

The Navy used an NB-47E as test bed for the General Electric TF-34 engine. The last NB-47E flight was in the summer of 1975.

For the record, the very last flight of a B-47 took place on June 17, 1986, when a restored B-47E made a precarious gear-down flight from the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake, California to Castle Air Force Base, California, to become a static display exhibit at the fine museum there.

The Beginnings
During World War II, the Wright Field Bomber and Fighter Project Offices grew from one-man bands into large operations that routinely flew everything in the Army Air Forces’ inventory, tested foreign equipment and planned future developments. There was increasing interest in turbine engines, prompted by the success of both Great Britain and Germany. In 1943, the Army informally asked several manufacturers to put forward multi-jet bombers. The industry responded with a series of designs that displayed more than anything the lack of familiarity with the potential of the jet engine. This was followed in 1944 by a preliminary set of specifications, which called for a top speed of more than 500 miles per hour, a range of up to 3,000 miles and a service ceiling of 40,000 feet. By December, 1944, four firms responded—Boeing, North American, Martin and Convair. All of the paper designs would change over time, long before any metal was cut.

As might be expected, Boeing drew heavily on its past experience for its first offering, the Model 424, which was, in essence, a B-29 with four jet engines paired in nacelles under the wing, the design closely resembling a later competitor, the Convair XB-46.

A more advanced proposal followed, the Model 432, which retained the straight wings of the B-29, but placed the engines above the fuselage center section, with huge air intakes located beside the cockpit.

At this point fortune smiled upon Boeing. Its chief aerodynamicist, George Schairer, was a member of the Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) (later Scientific Advisory Board) that the famous Dr. Theodore von Kármán had established at the request of General of the Army Henry H. Arnold. Schairer and Kármán among others were part of Operation Lusty, which was tasked to gather up data on German advances in aeronautics, rocketry and nuclear science. In a heretofore secret German scientific institute at Volkenrode, (near Braunschweig) Schairer found an enormous amount of scientific data, drawings and papers dumped into a well. From these it was easy to confirm that there were great advantages in a swept wing for high speed flight, and Schairer immediately wrote Boeing, directing that the proposed jet bomber project be given swept wings. He specified twenty-nine degrees of sweep in his letter, but this was later changed to thirty-five degrees. (North American would similarly benefit from these findings, and the XP-86 would emerge with thirty-five degrees of sweepback.)

The next Boeing proposal was the Model 448, which retained much of the rotund’s Model 432’s layout, but featured thin swept wings of a high aspect ratio. The configuration of the wings meant that the undercarriage and all fuel had to be carried in the fuselage as was done in the next of the series, Model 450-1-1. To reduce interference, the engines were suspended in pods that placed them forward of the leading edge of the thin wings. This arrangement also permitted a lighter wing structure.

Although the successful conclusion of World War II seemed to lessen the urgency for a jet bomber, a mock-up inspection was held in Seattle in April, 1946. Boeing was awarded a $10,000,000 contract to build two prototypes. The sum seems laughably small today, but it was immensely important to Boeing at a time when literally hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts had been cancelled, and its work force was drawing down at an incredible rate.

George Martin was Boeing’s Project Engineer for the B-47 and focused from the start on two major challenges: the aerodynamics of the swept wings, and on the jet engines themselves. To husband funds for these two unknowns, he chose to use readily available elements wherever possible, including parts of the B-29 landing gear, a low pressure hydraulic system, and the old fashioned 28 volt D.C. electrical system. (Oddly enough, Martin was not certain initially that the risky B-47 represented Boeing’s future, believing that the B-54 (later the B-50) was the real “bread and butter” product of the firm.)

The configuration of the B-47 demanded new and more sophisticated structural methods, to deal with such phenomena as the incredibly flexible nature of the wings, which could deflect up to 17-1/2 feet in flight. Flying a B-47 in turbulence was daunting. If you looked to left or right you could see the wings and the podded engines doing a dance not unlike that of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge just before it disintegrated, an undulating, rolling flex that made you wonder how (or if) they would stay on.

The thin wing also created a problem, in that it was also flexible chord-wise, and at speeds above 425 knots indicated, the ailerons acted as a tab, twisting the wings rather than inducing a bank. At 456 knots, the ailerons were totally ineffective, and the control wheel could not be budged from side to side. The author flew the B-47 at the 4925th Test Group (Nuclear) at Kirtland Air Force Base in the early 1960s, and flying the B-47 at fifty feet or less above the desert at 456 knots would whiten the reddest knuckles. The wings would be locked solid, and if any sort of emergency occurred, the only recourse you had was to chop the throttles, pull back on the control column, and let the airspeed bleed off until you had aileron control again.

The bicycle landing gear, first tested on Martin’s B-26 “Middle River Stump Jumper” and used on the Martin XB-48, required that you land and take off in a fixed attitude, without the customary flare or rotation of conventional aircraft. This was a little difficult to adapt to, but after a few flights, you became accustomed to it.

The General Electric J47 engines used in production B-47s grew in power from an initial 5,200 lbs of thrust to 7,200 pounds in the later, water injected versions. They were reasonably reliable for the time, but were very slow to accelerate and had to be handled carefully both on takeoff and landing. On a hot day, especially at higher field elevations, the B-47’s slow acceleration often made it seem doubtful that it would lift off before you ran out runway. But, as long as the calculated speeds were reached at the calculated points—and as long as the calculations were correct—it would lift off right at the last moment.

The B-47 was very clean, even with the huge Fowler flaps extended, so an approach chute was installed to make the long, flat landing approaches easier. When deployed, the approach chute allowed you to carry more power on the engines. In the event of a go-around, a throttle application gave quick acceleration, and the approach chute could be jettisoned if necessary. The airplane also employed a brake chute, and had anti-skid brakes which were very advanced for the time. The fixed-attitude landing technique required that you land on the rear truck first. If a pilot landed on the front wheels, the airplane would bounce, and this could lead to a porpoise-like series of lunges that tended to increase rather than decrease. When you became proficient in the airplane you could save another pilot’s bad landing by deploying the brake parachute at exactly the right time; the bouncing aircraft would seem to catch its breath as the parachute took hold, then settle gracefully to the runway on all four wheels. (This was not something to do if you were not sure of yourself. Done at the wrong time, you could vastly compound your problems.)

After herding around a ten man crew in a B-50, the B-47’s small three-man crew was a relief. The Aircraft Commander sat in in the front seat of the tandem cockpit, with the pilot in the rear, both under a superb bubble canopy. The pilot’s seat rotated so that he could operate the only defensive armament, the two 20-mm cannons mounted in a turret at the end of the fuselage. Down in the black compartment of the nose, the Radar Observer acted as navigator and bombardier. Everyone kept busy on a mission, which in SAC ranged from as few as six hours to (rarely) longer than twenty-four.

Boeing tankers permitted the extended range. The piston engine powered Boeing KC-97 was slow, and refueling was difficult and not as productive as it should have been. Initially, the tanker could maintain a speed convenient for the bomber, which would be at a relatively low gross weight. As fuel transferred, the situation changed, for the increasingly heavy B-47 had to fly faster to stay above its stall speed. The KC-97 would begin a descent to keep its speed above the B-47’s stall speed. Further the B-47 used fuel in its descent, refueling and climb back to altitude, so its net gain was much less than would be the case using a jet tanker. The advent of the jet powered KC-135 made things much better, for its speed, altitude and wake were compatible, as it has proved to be with the B-47’s successor, the B-52 for forty years and more.

The Competition

With the jet engine clearly the path to the future, the competition for the new United States Air Force’s primary bomber was extremely important, yet Boeing’s daring leap forward made it essentially no contest. The relatively state-of-the-art North American secured a production contract for its smaller, four-engine B-45 Tornado, which did its most important work in its reconnaissance versions. Convair’s entry, the slimly elegant XB-46, was handicapped by its straight wing and the fact that Convair was already under contract to produce large numbers of the huge B-36. Only one was built. Martin’s entry was the XB-48, also a straight wing aircraft with its six engines grouped in sets of three in huge, drag-inducing nacelles. Northrop’s XB-35 piston-engine flying wing nominally entered the competition later when modified to YB-49 status and fitted with eight jet engines. Lacking the computers that could sense the requirement for control inputs to dampen oscillations and maintain a stable bombing platform they were not available for another two decades), the YB-49 was relegated—for a time—to the reconnaissance role. None of the competition possessed either the performance or the potential of the B-47.

The Air Force eased into the B-47, recognizing that with all of the unknowns embodied in the radical design, there would be difficulties to overcome. Ten B-47As were purchased. These, built at Boeing’s mammoth Wichita plant, were essentially test aircraft, and did not have an in-flight refueling capability. A few were used by the 306th Bomb Wing at MacDill AFB to introduce SAC to its new weapon, beginning in May, 1951. This was forty-one months after the first flight, giving an indication of the development problems that had to be overcome.

Despite the ongoing troubles, in November, 1949, the Air Force made an initial order for eighty-seven B-47Bs. These had an in-flight refueling capability, but thanks to a terrible decision made by the Air Force to save weight, they lacked ejection seats. It is difficult to explain to a layman just how important an ejection seat is to the psychology of a crew member. No one ever wants to use it, but as you fly you are comforted by the fact that if all else fails, it is there as a last resort. A total of 399 B models were built, and many of these were later equippped with ejection seats and brought up to the B-47E configuration.

The Cold War was punctuated by many crises—the expansion of the Soviet system of satellite states, the Berlin Airlift and the Korean War among them—and these all accelerated rearmament in the United States. This was reflected in the massive growth in the Strategic Air Command, which went from a rag tag collection of 556 bombers in 1948 (35 B-36, 35 B-50, 486 B-29) to 1,895 in 1956 (247 B/RB 36, 97 B-52, 254 RB-47, 1,306 B-47). B-47 strength would peak in 1958, when there were 1,367 B-47s and 176 RB-47s on strength.
The most produced version was the B-47E, of which 1,341 were built. The increase in numbers was matched by an increase in proficiency as the standards imposed by Curt LeMay percolated down to every unit. There was an increase in readiness, as well, with half the force ultimately being on a fifteen minute alert. This meant that the aircraft was “cocked” (already fueled, loaded with bombs, pre-flighted, inspected and ready to start engines) and could launch within fifteen minutes. The alert was necessary to counter the growing intercontinental ballistic missile threat from the Soviet Union. It wore our air and ground crews to a frazzle.

The primary example of the type, the B-47E had a top speed of 527 knots and a cruise speed of 434 knots. The range, because of in-flight refueling was of course unlimited, but crew endurance was pretty well exhausted at the end of a twenty-four hour flight. I recall just finishing one twenty-four mission, debriefing and falling into bed into a deep slumber, when the Alert siren went off—back to Castle Air Force Base for another mission. Fortunately, they recognized the problem and split our crew up to fly with other rested crews, otherwise we might well have slept through the entire mission.

Even a standard mission of six to eight hours was tiring, because you stayed busy the entire time, and it was difficult to get out of the seat and stretch—many people just stayed in the seat from take-off to landing.
There were many variants of the aircraft, but none were more demanding of their crews than those RB and EB versions which carried a pressurized compartment in the bomb bay to accommodate three Electronic Warfar Officers—known as “Ravens” or, more familiarly, “Crows.” The EWOs—all heroes in my book– were jammed into a tiny compartment that was less than four feet high and crowded with electronic gear. They were equipped with ejection seats—but there were no ejection hatches. Steel blades on the seat’s platform were designed to punch a hole through the fuselage floor, through which the ejections would fire. Successful ejection was improbable.

Nonetheless, the Crows carried on, flying long missions, essentially trapped in their capsule, performing vitally important work in interpreting Soviet electronic intelligence. Their worked presaged the incredible assets found today in the AWACS, JointSTARS, Rivet Joint, U-2 and other intelligence gathering aircraft.

Operational Problems
The radical design of the B-47 naturally endowed it with problems. This coupled with the inexorable demands to carry more weight resulted in structural difficulties. The aircraft’s original maximum 125,000 pound gross weight was ultimately increased to 230,000 pounds for taxi, with a maximum in-flight weight of 225,958 pounds—almost double. This placed a severe demand on the structure, which ultimately was limited to two positive “Gs” at maximum gross weight. No negative Gs were allowed. This meant that as maneuverable as the aircraft was, it had to be handled carefully even when new bomb delivery techniques were required.

The growth in Soviet anti-aircraft missile capability dictated a change from the B-47s high altitude mission. Tactics were evolved for two separate maneuvers. One, called LABS for Low Altitude Bombing System, involved the aircraft attacking on the deck, pulling up in a half loop and releasing the bomb at about the 45 degree point, arcing it out for as far as eight miles with considerable accuracy. The pilot continued the half-loop, rolling out at the top in an Immelmann turn—all without exceeding the G limits.

The second technique was called the “pop-up” and required the B-47 to fly low over the ground, then pull up rapidly to 18,000 feet, release its weapon, then turn away while dropping back down to ground level.

These maneuvers, and the intensive use of the aircraft in low-level flight (it was not unusual to fly eighty-hours per month as a crew member) resulted in a series of six crashes between March 13 and April 15, 1958 that rocked SAC and severely threatened B-47 air crew morale. A fleet-wide investigation revealed severe fatigue problems that ranged from fatigue in the lower wing skin to failure of the “milk bottle pin,” the main fitting that secured the wing to the fuselage. There followed a nightmare of fixes, new problems, new fixes and additional problems. Boeing, Lockheed and Douglas (the latter two companies also having built B-47s) eventually contained the problem, but at enormous expense. The alternative was to ground the fleet permanently, as would happen to the Royal Air Force’s Vickers Valiant in 1964.

Besides these very real problems, there were many rumors that circulated about the B-47 that were not so difficult to resolve. One of these was the infamous “coffin corner” where high speed stall and low speed stall were within a few knots of each other. It was possible to fly into the coffin corner if you took the aircraft above the best altitude for its current weight, but it was not something that occurred routinely, or that you could wander into casually. The requirement for precise speed control was another story that was often heard, and it was true. If you allowed your speed on approach to build up by an extra few knots, you added several hundred feet to your landing distance. However, it was easy to control the airspeed of the B-47 to exactly what you wished by minute adjustment to the throttle settings. If you wanted 140 knots on the gauge, and you were at 142, you simply throttled back slightly. And in a cross-wind, you could use asymmetric power on the one and six engines to keep you right on an ILS (Instrument Landing System) approach.

The entire fabric of the B-47 fleet was held together by the unremitting effort of the maintenance personnel who labored day and night to keep them flying. In the early 1950s, at Castle Air Force Base, I was struck by the fact that two of these beautiful $3 million dollar airplanes were supported by hard-working mechanics who had to share a $100 box of tools between them because hand tools were in short supply. As the aircraft aged, it became ever more difficult, but somehow, when takeoff time rolled around, the airplanes were ready.

Times have changed. Bombers are no longer procured by the thousands. Only twenty-one Northrop Grumman B-2A Spirits were purchased, and that number was reached only by equipping the static test article. No new bomber is expected to enter the fleet until sometime after 2037, and even then the number built will be very small. Never again will anyone experience the thrill and the pride that the B-47 crews did on a unit mission, when all of the aircraft in the wing, along with their tankers, would be started and serially wind their way around the taxiways to the run-up area and then onto the runway, doing minimum interval takeoffs (MITO). The B-47s, their wings drooping, their outrigger gear touching the ground, would moan and grown as they went into position and applied full power, waiting only fifteen seconds before following the preceding aircraft into the air. You could feel the vibration, hear the roar of engines, but see very little as water injection would darken the exhaust that drooped onto the runway obscuring visibility. The author recalls one of these takeoffs which had another hazard—off the end of the runway black smoke was rising from where an aircraft had crashed. Still the takeoffs went on, one after the other, through the exhaust and the through the smoke. It was another time—and it was a privilege to serve then, as it is now.

SIDEBAR 1: PERSONALITIES
As with every great airplane, the history of the B-47 was dominated by personalities at every level. At the very top, the nation owes a debt to General Curtis E. LeMay, the greatest combat air commander of all time, who whipped the Strategic Air Command into shape. He had the vision to look into the future and see that the tanker and the B-47 would provide an incomparable weapon system.

Boeing was fortunate to have its finely tuned engineering and management teams combine to create the B-47 at a rock-bottom price under the overall leadership of the famed William Allen. George Schairer was the chief aerodynamicist, and George Martin was the project manager. They were backed by Ed Wells and the rest of the company in an extremely demanding program that could have failed at many points. Schairer is the individual who had pushed Boeing to invest in its huge wind-tunnel, and this gave the company a tremendous advantage over its rivals.
Robert Robbins and Scott Osler made the first flight, and Robbins still speaks with affection and respect of the aircraft. Osler, unfortunately, was the first man to die in a B-47, losing his life to an unfortunate accident with a malfunctioning canopy.

Major (later Brigadier General) Guy Townsend, one of the most exacting test pilots in the business, as well as one of the most personable and far-seeing officers, stage managed the acceptance of the radical aircraft into the United States Air Force. It was Townsend who suggested the application of the ribbon-style approach chute to use on landing approach. At one point he induced a reluctant Major General K. B. Wolfe (the man who had introduced the B-29 to the USAAF) to fly in the airplane, and in that one flight convinced him to order the aircraft.

And mention should be made of the hardy Air Force instructor pilots at McConnell Air Force Base, Wichita Kansas, who taught thousands of young pilots how to fly this demanding aircraft.

SIDEBAR TWO: TAKEOFFS AND LANDINGS

For someone used to flying a Boeing B-50, the B-47 was a delight. The technique for takeoffs and landings were quite different, and reflected the jet engines of the era, with their comparatively low thrust and slow acceleration. The bicycle gear took some adjustment, but within a few hours, you could taxi the aircraft to the exact center of the runway, with the aft truck very near the beginning of the overrun area, for you wanted as much runway ahead of you as possible. Power was brought up on all six engines, and stabilized at 100 percent. Brakes were released, and water injection begun. The engine instruments were closely monitored, for if there was going to be trouble, you wanted to know about it as soon as possible. Prior to flight, the takeoff run had been calculated for the predicted temperatures and pressure altitude, and these were monitored prior to takeoff to be sure they were still applicable. There was no difficulty in controlling the aircraft during the takeoff, the rudder providing plenty of authority. Acceleration was pre-computed and monitored closely; if you were not accelerating properly, it was time to abort. There was no “rotation” you simply lifted off (if all was well) at the pre-computed unstick speed (around 155 knots at a typical takeoff weight), and as soon as a positive climb was established, the gear was retracted. Initial climb speed was unstick speed plus twenty. At 300 feet you could begin flap retraction, according to a previously calculated schedule. When the flaps were up you established a 310 knot climb airspeed.

What is not covered in the above is that often you rolled out to the runway in the blazing sun, with cockpit temperatures reaching well above 100, and you would be sweating so hard that the oxygen mask would slip on your face and the helmet slide down. One of the great boons of the B-47 was its air conditioner, and on climb out there would be a sudden refreshing blast of ice cold air that quickly chilled you down. Once established in flight, the aircraft’s temperature was quite comfortable for the pilots, but less so for the navigator.

The approach and landing were also refreshingly different from a piston-engine bomber. In the B-50, you might return to base to find yourself in a stack of ten or fifteen aircraft, and forced to orbit around a navigation aid descending in 1,000 foot increments as aircraft below you were cleared to land. The B-47’s thirst for fuel precluded this, so descents from altitude were made at high speed—6,000 feet per minute—and you were picked up by approach control and vectored in for an instrument approach, or cleared for a visual approach. . Landing the B-47 required a long flat approach, and careful management of speed. The “best flare” speed was based on aircraft weight, of course, and you entered the local pattern at “best flare” plus 30 knots. (For example, at a landing weight of 115,000 pounds, with flaps down, the best flare speed would be 137 mph with a touchdown speed of 128 mph.) The downwind leg was about two miles out (in a no-wind situation). Landing gear was down, the approach parachute was deployed and flaps were set for landing. You began the turn to base about forty-five seconds after passing the approach end of the runway, using about 30 degrees of bank, and of course varying this to compensate for any wind. The initial rate of descent was about 400 feet per minute. The turn was continued into the base, where you rolled wings level briefly to check for traffic, reduced your airspeed to best-flare plus twenty knots, and rolled in again for your final approach. When lined up on final, rate of descent maintained at 400 feet per minute, with a speed of best flare plus ten. As you crossed the numbers, you wanted to be at best flare speed, you reduced power further, slowed to touchdown speed, touched down, popped the brake chute, and then applied the anti-skid brakes.

Again, this rather clinical approach does not consider cross winds, turbulence, fatigue and the other normal factors that make landings interesting. But the B-47 was under normal circumstances not a difficult aircraft to land.

Suggested Readings:

B-47 Stratojet: Boeing’s Brilliant Bomber, by Jan Tegler, the Walter J. Boyne Military Aircraft Series, McGraw Hill, New York, 2000

Boeing B-47 Stratojet by Lindsay Peacock, Osprey Air Combat series, Osprey Publishing Company, United Kingdom.

B-47 Stratojet by Alwyn T. Lloyd, Detail & Scale, Volume 18,
TAB Books, Inc. PA, 1986

The B-47 Stratojet Association has a great website at http://www.b-47.com/