ARMY & NAVY: Wonderful Net

North Carolina in October is a land of quiet towns, paved roads busy with the traffic of harvest time, fields bright with yellow bitterweed, people warmed and sleepy in the last hot suns of fall. Last week the land, the people and the sky of a large part of North Carolina were elements in a Problem. The U.S. Army was at one of its periodic peacetime wars, and civilians for once were principals.

How to defend North Carolina or any other spot in the U.S. from enemy bombs is an Army problem. That the Army does not expect North Carolina or any other State to be presently bombed is beside the Army’s point. For when & if it goes to “defensive war”—whether at home or on foreign soil—it still must protect itself, its occupied areas and the civilian lives and properties thereon.

Bombers can be downed in two ways: by gunfire from the ground or gunfire from defending planes. Antiaircraft gunnery is soundly organized, having within each combat component (of four guns per battery) an effective detection and warning system, based largely on the fact that big planes can nearly always be heard, and in fair weather can be seen, in time to aim the guns. The one large question mark remaining is accuracy, with which the Army was not primarily concerned last week. Pursuit plane defense is not so soundly organized. Bomber speeds of 250 m.p.h. so nearly equal (and in some types exceed) pursuit speeds that defending planes can no longer count on overtaking offensive squadrons. Hence, to be of use, pursuit must be in the air and ready to fight when bombers arrive at a given point. To be there, pursuit must have warning of the approach and course of enemy bombers. How to provide that warning was the object of last week’s game.

In any area worth bombing there are bound to be plenty of civilians. The Army proposed to use civilian eyes & ears. An Army reservation surrounded by civilians, and big enough for a variety of targets and ground defenses, was the Field Artillery’s Fort Bragg, 100 miles inland from the North Carolina coast. Two months ago, Brig. General Fulton Quintus Caius Gardner went to work to sharpen civilian eyes, prick civilian ears in 39 counties and 20,758 square miles around Fort Bragg. In each of 307 eight-mile squares, the cooperating American Legion found farmers, storekeepers, housewives, amateur radiomen, foresters willing to look & listen from 6 to 10 p.m., 4 to 8 a.m. on designated days.

Hooked into a communications circuit to relay their warnings were the lines of 15 local telephone companies (to the vast pride of Carolina Telephone & Telegraph Co.’s C.P. [“Old Man Mac”] McClure, retired, who installed the first telephone in the State). Off shore, Coast Guard cutters bore observers. At Craven County was ebullient Tom Haywood, who won brief fame by inventing a rotary kicking machine for citizens who should kick themselves. At New Bern was Cap’n Tom Daniel, 72, who at 52 insisted on fighting in the last war, came home minus an ear and eye, but did very well with what he had left last week.

On successive nights and mornings, the Air Corps’ Brig. General Arnold N. Krogstad sent Boeing B-17 (“Flying Fortress”) and Douglas B18 bombers flying 180 miles southward from Langley Field, Va., to Fort Bragg. Ordered to fly at 4,000 feet the first night, to accustom the observers, bombers later went up to 18,000, 20,000 and 24,000 feet heights now practicable thanks to a new, secret bomb sight. Without fail, civilian groundlings heard or saw, got warnings to Fort Bragg within three minutes. On a headquarters defense map, lighted in red and green, winking bulbs “tracked” the course of the bombers with astounding accuracy. Indeed, Army airmen were shaken by the knowledge that even at great heights, their craft were seen or heard.

To journalists and radiomen, this looked like complete success for General Gardner’s wonderful net. Publicity was in charge of artillery officers who did not go out of their way to discourage this impression, feeling with the Army at large that the Air Corps has got altogether too many bouquets in recent years. Resentful airmen, aware that they were ordered to fly predetermined courses under conditions which would not obtain in war time, boiled out of their ships with profane explanations. Finally bald, patient General Gardner had to caution newsmen: “Nobody is trying to win a war here.”

The Air Corps got some comfort from the biggest “blackout” yet staged by the U.S. Army. In part of the defense sector, 66 towns were darkened to find out: whether voluntary cooperation by citizens could achieve a blackout efficient enough to baffle night bombers. Answer: No. Inability to darken scattered rural homes and keep cars off highways* in so large an area defeated the blackout. Bombers found their way with ease, theoretically wrecked Fort Bragg.

In fact, Army airmen need not have been greatly distressed. The civilian net worked perfectly in daytime, when bombers would not normally attack. It also worked well at night. But unsolved was a great problem of night-time defense. Unless pursuit pilots and antiaircraft gunners can see their targets, bombers are safe.

The U.S. Army’s 800,000,000 candlepower searchlights are the world’s most powerful. Last week 26 of them, needling the sky above Fort Bragg, seldom found a bomber. Sometimes moonlight diffused the searchlight rays, or clouds blocked them. At dawn, most difficult time of all for ground gunners, searchlights were of no use whatever.

Furthermore, civilian netting in rural and small-town North Carolina did not answer the defense questions of Manhattan, Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Francisco, around which lie vast patchworks of smaller cities, replete with well nigh indispensable lights, ground noises to dull groundling ears, an appalling number of dispersed targets for enemy hunters. Army men neatly turned this fact to their publicity uses. In North Carolina was concentrated all the modern antiaircraft equipment east of the Rocky Mountains. Twenty-four guns, in six batteries, were barely enough to defend the 1½-square mile objective marked off at Fort Bragg.

* To keep skyways clear, the Army arranged for Eastern Airlines to stay out of the defense area at specified periods. One came in anyway, was chased by 9 pursuit planes.