AIR: The Best Planes?

Smoke was still curling over Dieppe (see p. 26) when U.S. fighter pilots in the fray returned to their base in Britain and talked to U.S. correspondents. The New York Herald Tribune’s Geoffrey Parsons Jr., a notably accurate reporter, wrote:

“All the American pilots in this Spitfire squadron were brought up on Curtiss P-40s and Bell Airacobra P-39s. They said they preferred the Airacobras to the P-40s, but they found the British Spitfires infinitely preferable in nearly every way to the Airacobras.

” ‘I’d hate to have taken an Airacobra out there yesterday,’ said one American pilot, who was in the unusual position of being able to compare the fighting qualities of the two planes.

“American reporters have been trying to report these same sentiments about some of the fighter planes America has been sending over here, and they have been prevented from doing so because the censors thought it bad taste to tell American plane manufacturers the truth about their products. Now there is on record the unanimous opinion of American fighter pilots trained in Airacobras and now fighting in Spitfires. They’ll take the Spitfires every time. . . .”

Better than the Truth. This dispatch was a kick in the teeth for Lieut. General Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces, and the man to whom the U.S. people look for accurate reports on the quality of U.S. fighting planes. Only last fortnight, at a press conference called expressly to give Washington correspondents the truth, General Arnold had been asked about a report that U.S. fighter pilots were using British Spitfires in preference to available U.S. fighters. General Arnold called this report “a flat lie.”

At this conference General Arnold said: “I can tell you, without reservations, on the factual record of eight months of war, that the equipment our men are taking into war is good. In fact, a great deal of it is better than good; it is superior in quality and performance.” General Arnold then ran through the list of leading U.S. planes—P-40, Airacobra, Lockheed P-38 and North American P-51 fighters; Fortresses, Liberators, B-25 and B-26 bombers—and left the net impression that all were top-hole.

These words were ink-wet on the newsprint when London dispatches like Geoffrey Parsons’ indictment of U.S. fighters arrived; when other dispatches questioned the quality of the Army’s heavy bombers. People wondered, and they had the right to ask: “Who’s lying?”

General Arnold did not lie. Everything he said about U.S. planes was technically accurate. He had simply fallen into an old Army habit of selecting facts which made his whole picture look a little better than the plain truth. For example, it may well be that U.S. fighter pilots in Britain are training and battling in Spitfires mainly because Britain has plenty of efficient fighter planes, and that the economical thing to do was to put U.S. pilots in those planes. But it is also true (and more revealing) that the U.S. now has no fighter plane, thoroughly proven in combat, which can match the Spitfire.

Less than the Truth. If people generally are confused about U.S. fighters, they can blame a record of overstatement, outright misstatement, and pettifogging pride, which does no credit to General Arnold, the Army, the manufacturers.

The fact is that the pre-war U.S. fighter program was nothing to boast about. Hap Arnold and others responsible for U.S. fighter design sorely misjudged the requirements of war. Notably, the U.S. fighters of 1938, 1939 and 1940 were under-gunned, under-armored. For this fact — and for the resulting combat deficiencies — General Arnold cannot wholly plead the natural innocence of peace. Britain went into the war, in 1939, with two fighters (the Hurricane and Spitfire) which were ahead of any U.S. fighter then in service. Both planes had been designed and developed in the years (roughly 1935-39) when comparable U.S. fighters were being developed. Yet, many months of war later, some of these lessons still had not been translated into U.S. planes.

General Arnold used a payoff phrase in describing these fighters and their improved descendants. He said that they were “medium-altitude fighters.” This meant that they did all right up to a certain altitude (General Arnold allowed them some 16,000 feet), but lagged above that height. But he left the impression that despite this limitation they were thoroughly satisfactory fighters.

A fighter incapable of good performance at high altitudes is like a race horse short of wind. In fact, on fronts where the best German fighters must be matched, such a fighter is no fighter at all. It must be converted to such low-altitude bombing and strafing as the P-40 Tomahawks and Kitty-hawks have been used for in Africa (where, within their altitudes, they have done superlatively well). Spitfires do the real fighter jobs in Africa just as they do in Britain.

The engine in the U.S. “medium-altitude fighters” is what keeps them down. This engine is General Motors’ liquid-cooled Allison— a power plant which has been the subject and victim of more controversy than any other single element in the U.S. fighter picture. According to combat pilots recently back from fighting fronts, the Allison now going into U.S. Army fighters is reliable, efficient, easy to maintain, a good engine within its limits. Its main limit is that it does not deliver enough power above medium altitudes.

One Allison-powered plane—the twin-engined Lockheed P-38— may yet prove in combat that it is an adequate, all-around, high-altitude fighter, with its two Allisons doing what one Allison has not been able to do. Another fighter with an engine similar in general design to the Allison may also prove its worth at higher altitudes — the late-model P-40F with a Packard-made Rolls-Royce Merlin (British) engine instead of the Allison. According to published reports, the Merlin P-40 has shot up to 30,000 feet (on a par with the Spitfire and the Nazi Focke-Wulf 190).

General Arnold last fortnight pinned his hopes on an untried fighter with an entirely different engine: the air-cooled, 2,000-h.p. Republic P-47. Said Hap Arnold: “The P47 now is in production and ready for delivery to combat theaters. . . . It is believed able to outfly and outfight any other known airplane.” But combat will be the only real test of the P-47.

Dead Japs Don’t Lie. General Arnold cited many a glowing fact & figure from the Pacific war to prove the worth of U.S. fighters. This week a correspondent in Australia reported that P-40 squadrons at Darwin had downed 31 Jap bombers, 41 Jap Zeros, and lost only 15 P-40s in the last few months. Apparently the U.S. fighter commander at Darwin, like-General Chennault, is an exceptionally astute leader. Last week the P-40s at Darwin did what theoretically they could not do: bagged a flock of Zeros at 25,000 feet, far above their normal altitude—the official communiqué called it a “brilliant tactical success,” which it must have been.

The answer to such seeming conflicts between criticism and combat records is partly that extra-smart leadership and extra-smart piloting may more than compensate for some of the U.S. fighters’ technical handicaps.

In the Pacific, U.S. planes and pilots have more than held their own. On the European front, where the test is tougher because the opposition is tougher, U.S. fighter planes still have to prove themselves good enough.