Evening star., 1947-11-09
By John A. Giles

by yUnN -. SttGS
The American public, with mem
cries of the days when vast fleets
of planes hammered the enemy into
submission, could be charged with
being extremely bullish on the sub
ject of It's Air Force today.
For, as spokesmen for the Air
Force explain sadly, the public is
inclined to visualize huge fleets
of jet bombers upon the release of
news that the first such craft IS
undergoing taxi tests and sit back
with a smile of satisfaction in the
belief that all is we'll with the
world.
Man for man and plane for plane
our Air Force possibly is equal to
anything in the world today, but
it is not good enough for our own
safety, according to the best aero
nautical opinion.
Plane Strength Declines
During the war America had the
worlds mightiest air armada--more
than 100000 men and 10000 planes,
and backed by an industry capable
of producing $4,000 planes year.
Last spring the Air Force scraped
together what they admitted to be
every operational B-2a, In the
country" for a demonstration of
offensive strength over the East
ern seaboard. OF the 1870 planes Or
dered to participate. % failed to
reach the rendezvous. The re-
mainder, termed futile force by
their commander, Gen. George
Kenney, carried through a program
which caustic onlookers dismissed
as Operation FLOP" Such was the
condition of the Nations airpower.
"If the present rate of disintegra-
ton continues, we will not have
an air force in being but an air
force in memory" Gen. Carl Spaatz,
chief of staff, commented.
At the present time the Air Force
numbers 100000 officers and men
and 9,676 first-line combat aircraft,
including 5,949 in storage and not
Immediately available. In the per-
sonnel picture this is considerable
improvement from the bottom
reached in May, 1947, but the plane
figure is continuing to decline rap
idly because replacementS do not
exceed the backlog of. war-built air
craft becoming obsolete.
B-29s Could Be Used
What has become of the 1855
B-2es we had during the war? A
total of 2,507 of them are in dead
storage and to get them in combat
readiness would require Cd from
three to six months to get the planes
ready to fly, if we had the ground
crews: (2) IL months to train
! the air crews, if we had the air
crews. and 90 another six months
to weld the groups into an adequate
force to counterattack, if the Air
Force had the authority and money.
And Furthermore, the B-29, origi-
mated in the '30s and first built IN
1941, is obsolescent. It's 1,500-mile
radius is insufficient to enable 1t
to reach far-distant targets with
out depending on exposed refueling
bases. Our experts estimate that
we must replace 100 per cent of our
aircraft at least every four and a
half years to remain tactically
strategically and technologically in
advance of other nations. But de-
spite this, our B-29s could tide us
over If they we're brought out of
storage and adequately manned.
AS of August 81, the latest COM
pilation available, the Air Force had
21,34l rated pilots, 6,752 of them
overseas.
Russia Grows Stronger
The pilot-training program, the
core of the Air Force personnel pic
ture, threatened to collapse when a
moratorium was ordered imme-
diately after VI day. This year
pilots are being turned out at the
rate of 1875 year, and in 194s the
department, expects to be training
them at q 1000 annual clip.
The Air Force supports both an
Air Reserve and an Air National
Guard. There has been some criti-
cism from Reserves on what they
term lack. of correlation in their
program, but it is, new and the
kinks probably will be ironed out
in time.
The original Air Reserve training
program called for establishment
of more than 100 detachments in
order to train $4,000 officers and
10000 men yearly. Seventy Of the
detachments had been activated
when. budget cuts forced the dis