Evening star., 1942-01-18

concerned, has been 50 disgusting In the
last few years as to make any self
respecting person ashamed of the cloth
he wears"
The Navy maneuvers in the Pacific
several weeks before, during which q
fleet of 146 vessels after a tour of the
Pacific Coast, sailed for Honolulu and
theoretically took the Hawaiian Islands,
Col. Mitchell described as ''the good old
Nays propaganda system" Had any
Of the ships survived attacks by hostile
submarines on the way over, they would
have been destroyed by aircraft hun
dreds Of miles from the Hawaiian coast,
he claimed.
IF the Pacific maneuver showed any
thing conclusively," he declared, ut was
that aircraft acting from land bases can
destroy any surface fleet coming within
that the Hawaiian Islands were not "a
position of decisive influence" in the
control of the Pacific, and its value con-
sisted in being a submarine base Of
operations against enemy craft. The
control position, he declared, was in our
own territory of Alaska and the peninsula
Of Kamchatka opposite.
Col Mitchell deserted handling of the
unsuccessful attempt Of three Navy
flying boats to make q San Francisco
Honolulu flight and termed the flight on
which the dirigible Shenandoah was lost
propaganda mission" to cover up the
adverse publicity of failures In the Pacific
and the Macmillan Arctic expedition.
There had been no warning Of the storm
from the Weather Bureau, then under
the Agriculture Department and designed
to issue reports affecting onions, cab
bages and other crops" he pointed out,
and the impression given the public that
the Shenandoah was a modern ship,
properly constructed. properly operated
and completely equipped was incorrect"
He claimed she was structurally over
weight and had been strained when she
broke away from her mooring mast at
Lakehurst, N. j., in the spring Of the
same year.
Scoffed at "Protection."
Turning to the battleship-airplane
controversy, he derided then-recent
anti-aircraft tests and the claim that
battleships could be protected by anti
aircraft fire, which he described as
absolutely and entirely false"
What is our Navy for?" he demanded.
Presumably it is to control lines of sea
on the high seas. What
Is it actually? 1t is entirely and COM
pletely outpointed by Great Britain in
the Atlantic. What can it do across the
Pacific as at present organized? Nothing
an insular Asiatic power whom
you all know"
Battleships he termed useless" ele-
ments in the defensive armament Of the
United States, claiming more could be
accomplished with half the expenditure
by developing submarines and aircraft.
The Navy, to maintain It's position, he
charged, keeps asking for more aircraft,
which it cannot use legally because the
legal defense of the land is intrusted to
armies.
Taking up the War Department and
claims made for effectiveness of anti
aircraft defense, he claimed that condi-
tions in tests had been prearranged to
lay odds against the air service. Bom-
bardment airplanes spent most Of their
time towing targets, and mot one heavy
bomb has been dropped by the air service
line units in target practice for two
years." he asserted.
"Only about four or five modern sights
are on hand with the bombing groups,
and today I, who know our personnel
better than any living man, can only put
my hand on two perfectly capable bonn
bardment crews to handle our aircraft
in case we are attacked" Col. Mitchell
declared.
Cites Coast Artillery Costs
why are things done this way? The
coast artillery sees that it is bound to be
greatly reduced on account of the fact
that aircraft are a positive coast pro-
lection. The coast artillery now has
about 81 stations. For the 10 years prior
20 1910 about 1000 ooo, 900 was spent on
coast defense-not two millions but two
billions. What good are these coast de-
lenses? None-except those In the i'm
mediate vicinity of large cities, where a
might emerge at close range
and plant few shells in the city. What
would only small part of this tremend,
JUS expenditure mean in the develop
nent of aircraft?"
After giving praise to the men in the
air service, Col. Mitchell closed his state
nent with the following explanation:
"As patriotic American citizen, can
stand by no longer and see these dis
,usting performance by the Navy and
Var Departments at the expense Of the
ives of our people and the delusion Of
he American public.
''The bodies Of my former companions
n the air molder under the soil in
America and Asia, Europe and Africa,
nany-yes, great many-sent there
lirectly by official stupidity. We all may
make mistakes, but the criminal mis-
axes made by armies and navies, when
.ver they have been allowed to handle
leronautics, show their incompetency.
We would not be keeping our trust with
,ur departed comrades were we longer
% conceal these facts.
This, then, is what I have to say on
his subject and hope that every Amer
can will hear It,"