Good News?

From one-legged, Russian-born Alexander de Seversky (Victory through Air Power) came a declaration intended to be heartening: the atomic bomb is just another bomb.

After surveying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the self-chosen priest of omnipotent air power told U.S. newsmen in Tokyo:

P: Much of the effect of the atomic bombs in Japan was due to flimsy construction. In a steel-and-concrete U.S. city, one of the bombs would have done no more damage than a ten-ton TNT bomb.

P:The bomb was a great step, but only a step, in "the science of demolition."

P: Two hundred Superforts with old-style bombs could do as much damage as the atomic bombs had done in Japan.

De Seversky's conclusion was the same one he had reached in every other strategic argument: air power is the answer.

"Of course," de Seversky admitted, "we cannot judge what the future will bring. There may come a time when we can deliver atomic bombs without the use of planes. But under the present set-up we must have control of the air."

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