The U. S. v. Bombs

To most U.S. citizens, still not fully awake to the threat of Europe's war, the possibility of a bombing attack is as remote and unreal as an invasion from Mars. Yet military men know that such an attack might, become real. They also know that even a minor raid might cause catastrophic mass hysteria. Sixty minutes of hokum in an Orson Welles broadcast three years ago gave them a rough idea of what could happen.

The job of defense against such a bombardment is a function of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Last week, having completed its organization plan, the Air Corps began a careful process of informing the public what it was all about. The object was, without frightening anybody, to teach citizens that if raids should come they must stay where they are, each man going about his own duties while the Air Corps, with organized civilian aid, does its job of repelling attack.

First step of the Army was to reorganize the GHQ Air Force, fighting arm of the Air Corps, into four air districts called Air Forces. The First Air Force covers the Northeast, most vulnerable quarter of the country, the Second the Northwest. The Third has the Southeast, the Fourth the Southwest.

Each Air Force is divided into a bomber command and an interceptor command.

Mission of the bombers is to seek out the air invader at sea or in bases he may have seized, near the Western Hemisphere. The interceptor's job is like that of Britain's Fighter Command: to take the air when raids threaten, knock the enemy's bombers out of the skies. Last week, having assigned four flying major generals to command the Air Forces (Northeast, James E. Chancy; Northwest, John F. Curry; Southeast, Barton K. Yount; Southwest, Jacob E. Fickel), the Army announced its interceptor commanders: four brigadier generals--all slim and wiry, as pursuit pilots should be.

To Long Island's Mitchel Field, to the First Interceptor Command, went big-game-hunting John C. McDonnell. To Fort George Wright, near Spokane, Wash., went the Second Air Force's interceptor commander, long-faced, leathery Carlyle H. Wash, just returned from a month's study of Britain's air defenses. Thin-haired, scholarly Walter H. Frank took charge of the Third Command at Tampa, Fla. The Fourth went to bald, affable Millard F. Harmon, an Army pilot since 1916.

A big part of the job of air defense is organizing the civilian population to warn of the approach of enemy aircraft. Pattern for what civilians could do was set last winter when General Chaney of the First Air Force tested a vast civilian warning net. Few weeks ago the four Air Force commanders got together with Major General Delos C. Emmons, commander of the GHQ Air Force, to study General Chaney's experiment. This week the Army announced that civilian warning systems would be set up in all the Air Force districts.

Meanwhile, in each of the Army's nine Corps Areas, an officer in charge of civil defense has been quietly getting the cooperation of State and city officials in setting up machinery to soothe and control the civilian population if air raids come.

They have furnished patterns for orderly traffic, shelter, thwarting of sabotage, emergency fire fighting, policing during and after bombardment. Britain showed that it is better to prepare early than to meet the awful fact of bombardment with no preparation, and the War Department proposes to profit by British mistakes.

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