Shape of Planes to Come

"If you will glance into the near future you can see a very different picture from the one of today. The bombers will dwarf our present Flying Fortresses. They will carry half a carload of bombs across the Atlantic and fly home without stop. The bomber's skin will have numerous 'blisters,' which in reality will be multiple-gun power turrets controllable from sighting stations. Sights that compensate for almost every possible error encountered in firing on a fast-moving aerial target will control the guns--a sight as revolutionary as our present bomb sight.

"The plane will have 'eyes' that help guide it to its target, or warn and plot the course of interceptor aircraft. It will carry bombs of an entirely different design. It may mount heavy-caliber cannon of an entirely new principle of operation. Fighter planes will have advanced almost beyond recognition in form and in the combat equipment they carry." What made these predictions news this week was their author: not Major de Seversky, writing for the aviation press, but General H. H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces, in a special article for Army Ordnance, one of the most sober-sided of military publications.

General Arnold was giving away no secrets, of course. Many a writer before him has added two & two and concluded that the progress of design inevitably would lead to much bigger planes, with radio detecting and sighting devices and heavy guns remotely operated from a central fire-control position. Whether he expects these superplanes in time for this war, Hap Arnold did not say. But he stated flatly that "planes with surprising developments in heavy aircraft cannon will soon appear on the combat fronts."

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