ARMY & NAVY: War Games

ARMY & NAVY

Many a U. S. Army and Navy brasshat has publicly echoed the fervid words of his present Commander-in-Chief, “I hate war.” Few would deny that they love to play at war, particularly when they may pick their own playgrounds and seasons. Last week two of 1937’s three major U. S. war games were in full roar.

At sea, the mightiest force of naval vessels ever engaged in maneuvers under the U. S. flag fought for the capture of Hawaii and control of the Pacific.

In the air, the General Headquarters Air Force—430 officers, 2,500 men, 244 planes, divided into attacking and defending armadas, had begun to bomb the horned toads and rattlesnakes off the desert bed of Muroc Dry Salt Lake in inland California.

On land, come August, the 4th Army, consisting of the troops in the 7th and 9th Corps Areas (7th—Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas and most of Missouri; 9th—Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada. California, the Territory of Alaska, most of Wyoming and part of Arizona) will attack, counterattack, fire off blanks and gas shells into each other’s faces and test a theory that a division should consist of 13,000 men instead of 22,000 now that the U. S. armyis becoming mechanized & motorized.

Last major Pacific sea games saw the capture of Hawaii in February 1932. Marines and infantry landed on Oahu. Unofficially, because referee findings must clear through the Navy Department, this year’s defending Black fleet seemed to have won due to its air superiority over attacking Whites. Fortunately for Admiral Arthur Japy Hepburn, Commander-in-Chief of the U. S. fleet and chief umpire in the Hawaiian games, the sinking of his flagship the Pennsylvania by a submarine was only simulated. Unfortunately for Lieut. Commander John F. Gillon and his mechanic, Glen Beal, the fatal plunge of their plane into the sea was not simulated. Two other planes cracked up off Maui early in May, two landplanes flopped into the shallows off French Frigate Shoal, other crashes were rumored, none fatal.

Reassembled this week in the harbor of Honolulu and at Pearl Harbor, the U. S. fleet currently sails for California. To their bases at San Diego and Long Beach are ordered 42 destroyers, 20 submarines, 12 minesweepers, three destroyer tenders, three submarine tenders, one rescue vessel, one repair ship, four oil-carriers, two storeships, the hospital ship, and three auxiliaries. To San Francisco for the May 28 dedication of the Golden Gate Bridge go the fleet’s ten battleships, four aircraft carriers, 14 heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, and four plane guard destroyers.

Refining the devastating White Spanish technique at the blasting of the Basque “Holy City” of Guernica (TIME, May 10), Major General Frank Maxwell Andrews commanding the Muroc air war, had spotted an outline of Greater Los Angeles on the desert with circles and triangles representing such legitimate combatant bomb targets as munitions plants, railheads, bridges. First blood last week went to Brigadier General Gerald C. Brant’s attacking force which theoretically blasted the Douglas Aircraft factory at Culver City to bits.

Left behind at Langley Field, Va. when the GHQ Air Force flew to California, four of the Army’s four-engined Boeing “flying fortresses” made a surprise Sunday flight of 1,700 mi., north to Augusta, Me., inland to Rochester, N. Y. and return, with empty bomb racks but full machine-gun crews and equipment, in 10 hr. 35 min.