CAN THE WAR BE WON IN THE AIR?
—
Aviator Urges the Building of 5,000 Aeroplanes.
Can the war be won by overwhelming supremacy in the air? An American aviator who has served in France believes that it might be. Air supremacy means all-round supremacy, he says, and he urges the United States to provide vast squadrons of battleplanes for service at the front.
"It is obvious from facts which have been demonstrated since the beginning of the war that the United States could give effective aid the most quickly to the Allies by furnishing both planes and pilots. We are now manufacturing a satisfactory number of engines for French and English aeroplanes. With our automobile industries turned loose on this work it would be easy for us to make 100 times as many as we are making now. Five thousand planes could be turned out in about four months after the first production.
"We could build aeroplanes as fast as we now produce automobiles. We could assail the German lines with flocks of planes, whose bombs and machine guns and assistance to our friends' artillery would turn and drive the German armies across the Belgian frontier and force them back to their position on the Rhine in one-tenth the time it would take for us to equip, train, and send a sufficient army to do this work.
"Our men have the best temperament of any in the world for flying. They are both daring and accurate. Their courage is unquestionable. We have already proved that our men can fly and fly well. This is brought out by the report that more than 100 German planes have been brought down with a loss of only seven American aviators.
"We could use these men as a nucleus for a gigantic flying corps. Within five months we could assume all the reconnaissance work of the English and French Armies, leaving their reconnaissance pilots free to take up hunting and bombing machines.
"One airman is worth 500 infantrymen. The plane is the only thing besides the artillery which the enemy really sees and feels in modern warfare. The moral influence of a sky black with American aeroplanes would drive the Teutonic forces back to the Rhine.
"We have now in this country 200 airmen who could at once be sent abroad to begin work. The applications for the flying corps of our army are more numerous than for any other single branch of the army. America, which invented the aeroplane, should prove that she can accomplish that most merciful object of quickly finishing the war by the use of her own inventions."
The Weekly Dispatch - Sunday, May 20, 1917
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