Air War

With prodigious swoops and rushes, great flocks of Army airplanes sped westward across the land last week. A hostile army had seized San Francisco, was rapidly invading northern California, repel them, huge bombers roared cross-country from Langley Field, Va. Tiny pursuit planes streaked away from Selfridge Field Mich. Attack planes skimmed off from Fort Crockett, Tex. At Mather Field, Sacramento, these squadrons converged with others from Seattle and San Diego to form an air force of nearly 200 battle planes, the largest gathered together in the U. S. since the War.

Reconnaissance began at once. Small groups took the air to learn the countryside, to spot enemy encampments. Next day larger squadrons rose out of Mather Field to smash Southern Pacific R. R. yards, to destroy bridges and warehouses and ammunition dumps, to hop over fields and fences, highways and houses, to harass the invaders with bomb and bullet.

So commenced the Army's biggest tactical air maneuvers on the Pacific Coast. The problem: expulsion of an enemy entirely by aircraft. For three weeks the first provisional wing of the Army Air Corps--the same squadrons and men that would be immediately concentrated in event of real war--would fight its invisible foe by day, would transform Mather Field into a gigantic metal rookery at sundown.

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