The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1942-01-15
Economic . .
~MhA@hA
National and International Problems
Inseparable from Local Welfare

lSCiIiiiS lllC ISldtlNC C41CSCiNCllCSo VI
i jlandpower, seapower and airpower
Each of these fighting arms has had
brilliant, convincing, and even fanati-
cal partisans.
The master of land warfare was
the great German strategist, Clause
witz. Writing in the days before the
|airplane existed, he argued that the
nation with the largest concentration
of well-equipped ground troops would
be the certain victor in war. The Ger
man Imperial Army of 1914, which
was unquestionably the finest the
world had seen up to then, was largely
developed along Clausewitz's ideas.
All remember how it swept everything
before it and seemed an irresistible
force until American manpower came
to the aid of the faltering allies and
turned the tide of battle.
The most able advocate of seapower
was an Acknowledgment Mahan,
who also wrote before anyone con-
ceived of warfare in the skies. Mahan
believed that seapower would be the
deciding factor in any major war. His
writings greatly impressed Emperor
Wilhelm ii and led to the naval build
ling contest between Germany and
England. The end was victory for the
British after the battle of Jutland,
when the German surface fleet fled
to it's base at Kiel and was immo-
bilized for the duration of the war
| by the British blockade.
The most persuasive supporters of
|airpoWer were the Italian General,
IDouhet, and the American General,
BILLY Mitchell. Douhet wrote that wars
could be won through lavish use of
the air-arm alone, by terroring whole
nations and forcing swift internal col
lapse at home. The tragic case of Nit
chell is well known in this country
he was denoted and finally forced
out of the Army by superior officers
who thought his claims for the air
Iplane were absurd.
The believers in the superiority of
Iairpower to all other forms of attack,
have had their chance to say 81 told
you So since the u. S.-Japanese war
began. When the Oklahoma went
down in Pearl Harbor, it was the first
time in history that ship of the line.
in commission, had been sunk by an
'airpIane. Most stunning blow of all
was the plane sinking of the Prince
Of Wales. This great warship was
one of the very few major fighting
vessels launched-by any nation since
the air bomber attained real range
land attacking capacity. Her archi-
Itects considered her practically invul-
Inerable to air attack. Yet she, along
with the RepuIse, an older but fairly
modern British battleship, were de-
Istroyed and sent to the bottom in a
matter of minutes And aircraft alone
!, were employed by the Japanese in the
battle which resulted in Britain's
darkest day since Dunkirk.
Does this mean that the airpIane
has finally and for all time demon
strated its superiority to landpower
and seapower? The answer, in the
view Of most authorities, is No. Flet-
cher Pratt, the American military ex-
pert, writing in Life recently, said:
None of the major victories of this
!, war could have been accomplished by
airpower alone. Even in Crete the air
victory had to have it's preface in the
form of land invasion Of Greece
which provided the bases from which
'Iairpower could operate.
"The great and graphic lesson of
this war is this
"The old terms-seapower land
power, airpower-have no real and de-
tached meaning. The three are now
merged in what might be termed
Iglobal power, with each service de,
ipcndent upon the other and with air
power absolutely essential to theta
',all."
In other words, landpower or sea
power without strong air support, are
under terrible handicaps. There were,
apparently, no RAF planes on hand
IWhen the Prince of Wales went down.
There were few if any American
planes in the air over Pearl Harbor
when Japan made her attack And, to
look for lesson on far bigger
scale, England was losing the war and
losing it fast until she attained air
supremacy above her Isles.
In the Pacific we will need far more
'IpIanes than we have at present. Japan
has initiated leading German, British
and American types of aircraft with
considerable success, though she has
no gigantic ships of the Flying Fort
rcss type (nor for that matter, has
any other nation, so far as is known)
. Japan'S weakness, according to the
best available evidence, is lack of re-
placement power. 1t is said her air
craft plants can produce only 200 to
500 military craft month. Our pro-
auction is now many times as great,
! and is growing fast. An eventual
American producing capacity of six
or seven thousand planes month, is
confidently predicted. Equally impor-
tant, we have within our own bor-
dcrs all the fuel we need to fly them.
Japan must get her fuel, once her
reserves are used up, by conquest.