Bombers Sunned

Spring snow-lay spread over North Dakota's black prairies like thick, grey sauce. It hugged the buttes and ran melting off the gables of crouton-like barns. Hay and wheat farmers around Bismarck, North Dakota's capital*, slouched to their chores. Horses rubbed restlessly against their stalls. Spring was coming to North Dakota.

In Bismarck and Mandan, nearby on the Missouri River, there was anxiety. The river ice and slush was packing up just below the cities. Water was rising with threat of flood. In lowlands the Missouri, streaming from the Rocky Mountain watersheds across Montana and draining North Dakota's Little Missouri, Knife and Heart rivers, had spread from its 500-ft. channel over a 6-mi. runway. The cities were in danger. Officials telegraphed President Hoover, pleading that Army bombers be sent to break the ice jam by dropping explosives.

Promptly through official channels went the President's order to do all possible for the ice-threatened communities.

The observation planes began to arrive, and the bombers. There was great fussing and cussing over the delayed arrival of bombs. The warming sun fretted men. It softened the sausage of ice in the river. The ice chittered, crumbled, tumbled down the river, leaving the bombers no work to do. Maj. Gen. James Edmond Fechet, Chief of the Air Corps, detailed three bombers and four observation planes to Fort Lincoln, S. Dak., to wait there for shipments of bombs.

*Population 9,150. Largest city in the state is Fargo, pop. 24,921. More people live in Boston or St. Louis than in all of North Dakota.