Lost Illusion

Despite occasional warnings, the U.S. public has had a comfortable feeling about the nation's Air Force. Its generals boast of its power to devastate any area anywhere in the world. The superiority of U.S. planes is an article of U.S. faith. The U.S.'s "overwhelming" air superiority, the public has been told again & again, is all that has kept the U.N. in Korea.

Last week all these comfortable assumptions were severely jarred. Just back from Korea, the Air Force's Chief of Staff Hoyt S. Vandenberg reported that the U.S. Air Force is in serious trouble. Goaded by the U.N.'s punishment of their supply lines, the Communists are striking back with massive air power of their own. Since September, they have built up their air force to 1,400 Russian-made planes. About 700 of them are MIG-15 jet fighters. "Almost overnight, China has become one of the major air powers of the world," said Vandenberg. "Our control of the air in north west Korea, although by no means lost, is not as firm as it was."

Superior Plane. The details were even gloomier. The MIGs have inflicted punishing losses on daylight raids, have forced U.S. bombers to operate almost entirely at night and singly. "In many respects," Vandenberg admitted, "the MIG can out perform our own F-86--the only airplane in production today capable of challenging the MIG on approximately even terms." Above 25,000 ft., it can outrun and outclimb the F-86, and it can maneuver at supersonic speeds. U.S. pilots claim that with its two 23-mm. and one 37-mm. cannon the MIG is better armed than the F-86 with its eight .50-cal. machine guns.

What Vandenberg did not say is that to match the 700 MIGs, the Air Force has announced the presence of only one F-86 group (about 75 planes) in Korea. And present F-86 production is reportedly barely enough to replace normal losses.

No Man's Air. The MIGs are now based chiefly just across the Yalu in Manchuria. But in recent months, said Vandenberg, the Communists have made a major attempt to repair and defend three airfields 90 miles to the south, near Pyongyang. If they succeed in putting these fields into operation despite U.S. bombing attacks, they will be able to challenge U.N. air supremacy even over the battle line itself.

Attacks on Communist supply lines, which so far have kept the Communist army stalled, would be reduced to only a fraction of their present effectiveness. "In other words," said Vandenberg, "the air space between the Yalu and Pyongyang, in which we had previously been able to operate unhindered, is now a 'no man's air,' and has become the area of decision in the Korean air war." He added ominously: "If [the enemy] wins in the air, the stalemate on the ground is not likely to continue."

Why not bomb the MIGs' Manchurian bases and prevent the buildup--as General Douglas MacArthur had suggested? Vandenberg had given a startling answer at the MacArthur hearings last spring. The answer: the U.S. did not have enough planes to bomb Manchurian bases and still keep its strategic striking force intact to deliver the atomic bomb--"the sole deterrent to war up to this time"; U.S. industry was not producing enough bombers to replace losses in such a bombing campaign.

Who's to Blame? The bitter news that the world's greatest industrial power is not producing enough planes to handle the Russian-supplied Chinese air force naturally prompts the question: Who's to blame? Any discussion of numbers of planes available today leads directly and inescapably to decisions made three years ago, for the simple reason that it takes one to three years to make a plane (e.g., 22 months for a fighter under present conditions). Three years ago, Harry Truman was in the midst of his military economy drive (although he was not cutting nonmilitary Government expenses much). The Air Force asked for 70 groups and Congress voted enough money to get 56 groups as a start. Truman invested in only 48 groups--and he got his way.

In fiscal 1948, the Air Force had only $1.6 billion to spend' for planes, in 1949 less than half as much. (This year, it has $11 billion, but this year's appropriations don't mean a thing to this year's war.) If it had got the money it asked for, the Air Force planned to spend a big slice of it for fighter planes. With the limited money available, it concentrated on B-36s to hold over Russia the threat of retaliation if Russia started atomic war. On that score, the Air Force can hardly be blamed for present deficiencies.

Yet few who read the windy debates of the Air Force's fight against economy dreamed that the U.S. could possibly get in a situation where the Chinese air force would be hard to handle. In spite (or because) of its legions of public-relations officers, the Air Force failed to make the situation clear to the country, and only today is the full meaning of the Truman cuts becoming clear.

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