AIR: Defense Test on the Mainland

The week’s best test of air defenses on the U.S. mainland was caused by a phony air raid on the relatively unthreatened East Coast.

In San Francisco, where the air-raid warnings sounded in earnest, the first alarm came at night and no Army planes took off. (Said Brigadier General William O. Ryan, Chief of the Fourth Interceptor Command: “You don’t send planes up unless you know what the enemy is doing and where he is going, and you don’t send planes up in the dark unless you know what you are doing.”) But at Mitchel Field, L.I. the alarm came in daylight, and although it was false the air force took off in good faith to defend New York City.

It was half an hour before lunchtime when the first siren screamed; about noon practically the whole Mitchel air fleet was aloft: medium Martin bombers (with machine guns, but no bombs in their racks), mean-looking, olive-drab P-39s and P-40s.

As the planes soared out toward the Atlantic, the ground crews prepared to defend their field. Officers’ families and 150 stenographers were sent out of the post. Since the field has only two gates, men climbed into heavy trucks, prepared to hole through the fence in case the gates were clogged by reinforcements. Gas masks and tin hats were issued, Springfield rifles were passed out. Anti-parachute troops stood by; mechanics formed machine-gun squads. To keep enemy planes from landing, trucks and jeeps were scattered about the runways. Fire equipment was broken out and a chemical unit formed to guard against gas attack.

Mitchel Field had many a plan to defend New York City against attack. But every plan required some knowledge of the size, position and goal of enemy planes. In last week’s alarm, with no such knowledge on hand, a general plan was improvised that included the best features of all. In exactly 20 minutes, Mitchel, its planes in the air, had established its defenses. Even in that short time, a lot of bombing can be done, as proved by the Hickam Field disaster. But it was not bad for a first attempt.