RAID DEFENCES

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 247, 20 October 1942, Page 5

RAID DEFENCES

MUST HAVE WARNING

VITAL TO FIGHTERS FRANK U.S. OFFICIAL REPORT

P.A. Cable.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19.

Warning that in the coming months battles may be lost and crushing defeats suffered, the office of War Information, in a 10,000 words report to the public, desigmed to dispel the fog of ccnfusion concerning American planes, says that the truth lies between the two extremes of adverse and favourable criticisms. The report specifically says that the Curtis P40, Bell P39 Airacobra, P51 Mustang standard fighters have many good points but are definitely inferior to foreign types in high altitude combat. Improved types are in production but are not yet battle tested. The chief fault of American fighters is the tardy and incomplete development of the Allison liquid-cooled motor. For daylight precision bombing Flying Fortress B17s and Liberator B24s are unsurpassed. Our medium bombers, the Mitchell B25s and Martin B26s, have no competitors. The latest Navy fighter, divebomber and torpedo types already in action are the best carrier planes in the world. Other types — patrol, reconnaissanee, cargo, transport and fire-spotters — are satisfactory in quality within their own fields. The report stresses that only results in battle provide valid standards of criticism. No full appraisal is possible until more experience is won. The alternate superiority of the United States and Britain in various types gives the United Nations as a team a better choice of weapons than the enemy. The report declares that the United States aircraft industry and services are steadily developing specialised aircraft -of high, and in some cases sensational promise of battle performance. NOTE OF CAUTION. The report gives a caution that the recent air victories, especially in the South-western Pacific, may have re» sulted primarily from specialised tactical situations which will not always be so favourable. It also warns of possible coming defeats, 1 and says: "When we meet reversals and the pull to victory seems to grow long and hard Americans will do well if they indulge to the full their genius for critical self-analysis." While asserting that Ameriea has lagged in developing high altitude fighter planes, the report says that U.S. planes are valuable weapons in Russia and North Africa, where they are needed at relatively low altitudes.

The report points out that in China, where the American Volunteer Group flew P40s, with the aid of an excellent Chinese airraid warning system, they destroyed 218 Japanese planes with a loss of 84 American machines, but in the February raid on Darwin eight out of ten P40s were shot down by the Japanese, mostly because of lack of warning. Likewise, in the Philippines Army craft were hampered because the air-raid warning system was disrupted by fifth colummsts before it had once functioned. Stressing the importance of an adequate warning system to the successful operation of combat planes, the report says: "As the battle of the Philippines wore southward there was often no warning system at all. Furthermore, American fighter pilots lacked technical equipment and de - teetors to prepare for the enemy's approach. Often the first notice came when enemy planes were sighted. If our fighters were already in the air they had a fair chance of getting up and giving battle to the enemy. More often they had to wait for the enemy to come down to them, then slugged it out. The air-raid warning system employed in China by Major- General Chennault's 'Flying Tigers' is one of the finest in the world." The report adds that it must be repeated that all the eredit should not go to pilots and planes. A great part was due to the warning system. HEAVY BOMBERS COMPARED. "Falling back continuously on inadequate fields and inadequate facilities all through the Japanese drive to the South-west Pacific, the P40's performance was decidedly less than standard," the reportf adrnits. "In the vital European theatre appraisal of the P39 and P49 compels the conclusion they are not right for operation under to-day's high altitude tactics. In England two newer fighter types, the twinengjned Lockheed P38 Lightning and the single-engined Republic P47 Thunderbolt, are in production and show great promise as high altitude pursuit planes, yet the public should be warned that neither plane is a complete answer to the fighter proV

blem, and probably no plane ever will be." Discussing the supremacy within their own fields of the Flying Fortress and Liberator bombers, the report disputes the claims of superiority sometimes made for the Lancaster bomber, which carries a heavier bombload because it is desighed to fly lower and carry less gasoline. American planes stripped • for the same job could easily increase their bombload. While American air-cooled engines are generally regarded as world peers, the report says that the only liquid-cooled engine of American design now in mass production and general military use is the Allison. Its development, starting late, was carried out under great difficulties and has not yet caught up with its opposite numbers — Britain's Rolls Royce and Germany's Daimler Benz. GRAVE OMISSION. "In reaching for the ideal air force the United States was hampered by the impossibility of anticipating the specific demands of the war, and had also been hamstrung by disagreement in its own fighting services as to the weight and power to be wielded by air power," the report says. "Despite this, the United States went to war with a well integrated air force, not all distributed with the maximum effect. "The prime speciflcation for United States aeroplanes was the defence of our shores. This more than any other factor explains, our preoccupation with long-range bombers. This practically explains the failure to develop a good interceptor capable of climbing rapidly at short notice. Our entry into the war without such valuable equipment is explicable only by failure to give consideration to the possibiiity of full American participation in aerial warfare overseas. Subsidiary explanations are shortage of development funds in peacetime years and prevalent public faith that the United States could avoid involvement in a foreign war. In the vast revision of ideas of design since the war began in Europe the United States owes a vast debt to the Allies, particularly to the British, and lessons they brought to Ameriea from the battlefields."