Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

There is nothing surprising in this because in 1943 at the first Quebec Conference attended by Churchill and Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins produced, "a very high level estimate" that, after the war, Russia would control Europe and, in effect, there was nothing we could do about it and we had better get along with her as best as we can.

That is the military fact as of the E-day, so here we have two great frauds, two great hoaxes; the fact that we can make Europe secure against Russia and if there is a war, land armies there to support the troops we have there and the European armies. That is a complete and unqualified military falsehood and I can prove it out of the mouths of the generals I have just referred to, by the statements I have just made.

I feel this should be the subject of a congressional investigation with these officers put under oath, as well as the fraud in the B-36 picture because it cannot deliver the bomb, and I can prove the facts presented in the article in the magazine the Freeman.

In addition, the fact that we have no air defense, because the 30 percent which the Defense Department proposes that they can create with the most possible money given them, is no adequate defense at all.

I just want to note one other thing:

There is a great moral problem involved with regard to this North Atlantic Pact fraud and that is this: We are urging the peoples of Europe to be aggressive with their armaments. I am speaking of being active in creating their armaments, on the pretense that we can back up their armaments and protect them from Russia, whereas actually our generals know that is not true. As a matter of fact, there is strong evidence that the generals of Europe know it is not true and the peoples of Europe know it is not true and that is why you have this rampant neutralism in Europe.

Mr. SMITH. We have just different testimony on that. General Ridgway sat here last week or 10 days ago and he said that the statement you make is not true.

Major LONG. I now will repeat my statements:

In 1943, the highest authorities in America had already decided that Russia would control Europe after the war. And there is no evidence whatsoever that they have changed their minds.

I am talking about their real minds. Generals Bradley and Collins testified in 1949 that we can never land another army against Russia's bombs.

Mrs. BOLTON. Mr. Chairman, if this is not-I am wondering if this is not a matter that goes to the military affairs committee. Have you testified there?

Major LONG. No; I should like very much to, but it goes to the foreign policy committee because the foreign policy committee determines in large measures the overall policy which these fraudulent pretenses are supporting and if you explode these fraudulent pretenses, this foreign policy fall of its own weight.

This committee is where it really starts because this committee sets the policy.

I will make this statement about General Ridgway's testimony or any other general's testimony.

If they are put under oath and submit to testimony right here, I am sure I can prove they know about these military facts I have stated

about the 1943 high-level estimate, if they are at all competent in their jobs, and they are certainly aware of the public testimony in 1949 of Generals Bradley and Collins, that we can never land another army in Europe against Russia's bombs because it was public testimony before a congressional committee, so I am confident-let me put it this way:

I am confident General Ridgway was not adequately cross-examined. Mr. SMITH. He was asked a lot of questions.

Mrs. BOLTON. This is very interesting, major, and I think it is very fine of you to make such a strong statement. I am sure you are quite convinced of it or you would not make it, and it is of course, something which we need to know.

I am sure of the rest of the committee were here, they would feel as I do, very grateful for your taking the time and trouble to be here. Major LONG. I should also like very much to be afforded the opportunity to present factual military evidence which would prove it. Thank you very, very much.

(The information referred to follows:)

THE B-36 IS A TANKER

EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. FRED E. BUSBEY, OF ILLINOIS, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 1953

Mr. BUSBEY. Mr. Speaker, an article that seems to me to be of great and immediate importance appeared in the March 26, 1951, issue of the Freeman magazine. The author is Hamilton A. Long, who was a major in combat intelligence, United States Air Force, in World War II; serving in the later part of the war with the 306th Fighter Wing, 15th Air Force, in Europe.

This article is well documented, in part from official sources, and deals with an issue of immediate and grave consequences, especially our country's lack of air defense and the inadequacy of our present instrument of strategic bombing, the B-36.

I believe the article deserves to be studied carefully by every Member of Congress, and especially by members of committees charged with the responsibility of considering legislation affecting our national defense.

Mr. Speaker, I desire to insert in the Congressional Record, under leave to extend my remarks, Mr. Long's article, entitled "The B-36 Is a Tanker":

THE B-36 IS A TANKER

(By Hamilton A. Long)

The fallacies and falsities in the propaganda in support of the B-36 need to be exposed. The policy of silence about its inadequacies must end. Official, published Air Force information-if properly correlated and evaluated-reveals the truth: the B-36 is just a tanker. The Kremlin knows. The American people and Congress should know.

The question is this: In a Russo-American war, can the B-36 (or any other bomber, for that matter) make effective delivery of bombs against Russian targets, bombs in such quantity, against so many targets of such basic importance militarily, and so continuously, as to impair gravely Russia's capacity and will to carry on the war?

The critical importance of the question is due partly to the fact that Russia's atomic bombs can prevent the landing of an American Army in Europe. This was admitted by Generals Bradley and Collins, top military officials, in the 1949 hearings of the House Armed Services Committee regarding the B-36, and later confirmed in effect by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. America's atomic bombs can likewise prevent a Russian army from landing in North America.

What about air operations? Air defense techniques now available-to Russia as well as to America--permit blocking of long-range bombers operating without fighter escort, as the distances are too vast for fighters to accompany them. Our

best jet fighters' combat radius is only about 1,000 miles. The lack of fighter escort means that Soviet fighters would control the skies over Russia and the adjacent seas and territories. This dooms our bombers. In Air Force circles, it is axiomatic that "You can't transport anything through the air unless your fighter planes control it"--as Air Force Secretary Symington said in September 1948.

What are these effective air-defense techniques? They are related to the four phases of air defense: detection, trailing, getting into attack position, attacking effectively. The following discussion of these four phases, in this order, will deal primarily with a trans-Arctic mission taking off from bases in the United States; but the factors-especially lack of escort-would be much the same even if the bases were as near Russia as West Germany.

The bases could not be that near, of course, because the Soviet Air Force, aided by local Communist traitors, can destroy all hostile big airbases in Eurasia on the first day of war, and can quickly neutralize, at best, those in the British Isles-reportedly admitted by Britain's military leaders to be indefensible against the V-2 rocket alone and likewise those in Japan. Any big bases in north Africa would be easily and quickly destroyed by air attack and sabotage. The first phase, detection of the bombers, would find the Kremlin aided by spies in the United States who would send word, by clandestine radio and otherwise, of the bombers' takeoff. Once the bombers are over the polar region, perhaps even over Arctic Canada, the Russian air-warning net, including radar, must be expected to begin to operate. If in the nightless summer, which the Kremlin would surely choose for starting the war, daylight conditions would facilitate detection. Highflying bombers' vapor trails are visible to the eye for 100 miles, stretching from horizon to horizon. There and lower, in the cloud or weather area, radar would reveal them.

Just before starting the war, Russia would surely establish numerous eyespotter and radar ground stations (on land or ice) in the Arctic region-even on our side of the North Pole; and perhaps even in the wilds of Arctic Canada. Strings of such stations would, of course, be operating in Russia also, to warn of attack not only from across the Arctic but from the West (Europe-north Africa) and the East (Japan).

The Russians can be expected, furthermore, to adopt the suggestion made by Air Force Gen. George Kenney in 1947, while head of the Air Force Strategic Command. This is to have a string of radar-patrol planes, using the big-bomber type carrying powerful radar. Speaking of patrolling the Alaska-Canada region, Kenney said: "A handful of very long range planes like the new B-36 could do the job with radar search equipment." Highflying planes, paired with lowflying ones, would double the protection. Airborne radar worked well in World War II. These Russian patrol planes would be encountered perhaps over Arctic Canada; certainly over the polar region and long before the Russian coast was approached. Russia now has an effective radar-warning net. As long ago as 1948 Wesley Price reported in the Saturday Evening Post the existence of a steadily operating Russian radar-warning system from the sub-Arctic to the Black Sea. In December 1950, Dr. Vannevar Bush said that in the past 5 years Russia has been building her radar network. Her scientists were in the forefront of scientific development of radar, having produced the first scientific paper on the multicavity magnetron, the heart of radar, according to a reliable report; and she has had years of aid from the Germans, who operated an effective radar-warning system during the war. It is suicidal folly to underrate the Russians in this regard. There is believed to be no reason for assuming that the Arctic conditions producing the northern lights will bar radar work so as to prevent effective radar detection of our bombers. After such timely detection, Russian patrol planes will trail our bombers until radar-equipped interceptor fighters-summoned by radio-arrive. There will be no need for radio silence, of course. Ground stations will aid in this trailing phase, too. The bombers cannot hide or escape.

This second-phase trailing operation and the third phase-getting the fighters into position to attack-will be aided by the vast distances involved. Note some sample approximate figures en route from Kansas City via the North Pole to Sverdlovsk, in the heart of the Urals industrial region; to the Arctic Circle. 2.000 miles; to the Pole, 1,500 more; another 1,500 to the Russian coast and almost another 1,000 to Sverdlovsk. En route there are possible sites for fighter bases on the big island, Novaya Zemlya-1,500 miles from Sverdlovsk-and on Franz Josef land (islands), 2,000 miles from that city. Farther west, it is 600 miles from Archangel to Moscow and 600 from Murmansk to Leningrad; this

being only the northern strip of Russia, which extends southward for farther vast distances.

For the slowpoke B-36 these distances represent hours upon hours of the threat of momentary destruction. Its average long-range mission speed is about 250 miles per hour, the jet boosters permitting only a few very short bursts of about 400 miles per hour-not half the speed of the supersonic jet fighters. This danger exists when the plane goes into target-then, if it is miraculously spared, when it comes away. Our B-36's, now totaling about 60 and to be increased to no more than 200 or so, would be disastrously outnumbered-perhaps 25 to 1, or even 100 to 1. Contributing to disaster would be the huge size of the Russian defender force, the ease with which high-speed fighters (to intercept the bombers) can be assembled from distant bases at a desired point, and the fact that our few bombers would have to be sent in small mission groups of a dozen or less, in order to avoid putting too many eggs into one basket. The fighters will have ample time to take attack position long before the bombers even reach the Russian coast.

The fallacy, or falsity, formerly propagated by the big bomber bombast boys (Air Force leaders and others), that fighters cannot operate effectively at bombers' high altitude, was exploded in the 1949 hearings. Air Force Generals Spaatz, Kenney, and LeMay admitted that this was a phony argument in behalf of the B-36.

Russian interceptor-fighters are of the finest. Besides their own first-class skill and facilities, the Russians have now been aided for years by German technical and operating personnel and the equipment captured from German factories. They are perhaps far ahead of us. Even our much-touted supersonic plane, the Bell X-1, was nothing but a beefed-up copy of a captured German wartime plane brought to this country in 1945 in an Army C-54 cargo plane, as admitted by our Air Force leaders in 1948 according to reliable press reports. In 1947 General LeMay, now head of our Strategic Air Force admitted: "We are more than 10 years behind Russia in aeronautic research and developments." He had earlier admitted that the Germans were 15 years ahead of us in fundamental research in 1945.

It is absurd to assume that the Soviet fighters cannot take and maintain the attack position regardless of the bombers' altitude or any other factor. Our Air Force's own wartime experience proves that, under these conditions, the unescorted bombers are doomed during the hours upon hours of fighter attack, going in to the target alone-doubly so coming out. A 1945 report of the Air Force Evaluation Board,' for example, concluded that once fighters closed in on a bomber it was as good as gone unless they missed or broke off the attack. The danger to the bomber, it found, was measured primarily by whether fighters would intercept. Once interception was made, the bomber losses were almost directly proportional to the period of sustained fighter attack.

In the engagements on which this report was based, the fighters were equipped merely with guns, whereas the Russian fighters will have rockets far outranging the guns of the bombers, leaving the latter utterly helpless. Even the crude rockets first used by German fighters in 1943 against our unescorted bombers on daylight missions over Germany were deadly. The bomber losses rose until, in one October raid, they were about 20 percent. This disastrous development forced the complete abandonment of unescorted daylight missions, as admitted by the official history of the Air Force."

Vastly improved rockets are now available. In 1949 Gen. J. T. McNarney, then head of the Air Force Materiel Command, announced that there were then available for bomber interception, to be launched from fighter planes, "air-to-air missiles (rockets) which could be launched under their own rocket power at supersonic speeds to targets several miles away. By means of a radar homing device within the missiles they will track down the enemy bombers, even in evasive action, and, by means of proximity fuses, they will be detonated when within lethal range of the enemy bombers."

Fired from just beyond a bomber's gun range, rockets even without these devices will be fatal; with these devices they will do their deadly work even when fired from miles away. There are types of homing devices other than the radar type-for example, the thermal variety which seeks heat and heads for the bombers' engines. No effective defense is now available against air-to-air rockets

18th Air Force Tactical Development, 1945; as commented on in an article by Col. Dale O. Smith in AF Air Univeristy Quarterly Review (reprinted in Flying, February 1949). 2 The Army Air Force in World War II: 1949, vol. 2, p. 704.

so equipped; and it is believed that none is likely in the foreseeable future. There is every reason to assume that Russia is ready to use such rockets. The Russians and Germans have been far ahead of us in the rocket field; witness the V-2. Bombers cannot use rockets effectively, moreover, because when fired crosswind (anyway except straight forward or rearward) they weathercockturn into the wind made by the bombers' high speed. Fighters will always attack so as not to be exposed in such front or rear position if bombers are ever armed with rockets. Even the Russian patrol planes could, however, use such rockets effectively against the bombers.

Under these conditions the doom of the bombers is double sealed by the wall of fire they will encounter in key target areas, where shells and rocketsequipped with homing devices and proximity fuses-will be used by ground defenses. Some United States military authorities have conceded that if Germany had had the proximity fuse alone, she could probably have denied the German skies to our bombers in World War II. The Russians have it; just as they have our supersecret self-aiming antiaircraft gun-a sample having been shipped to Russia by the United States Army in 1944, according to a reliable report.

Other grave handicaps will beset the bombers' attempt to make effective delivery. For example, the underground installations of the Russians; effective camouflage (like the undetected German wartime factory with a small forest growing on its room); and lack of photographically made air maps of Russia giving precise locations of target or even of key target areas, like cities. Such maps are essential to effective bombing; especially since the bombers-under deadly attack all the while and very limited in fuel supply-would have no time to cruise around looking for the target.

Bomber attacks in darkness-when and where darkness might exist-would not offer any substantial advantage of added secrecy because the Russian radarwarning net and radar-equipped plans can operate effectively at night, in all weather. In the 1949 hearings, General Kenney stated incorrectly that there was not in existence anywhere a radar-equipped fighter plane capable of operating at night at bomber altitudes (over 40,000 feet). He based this erroneous assumption on the fact that the Air Force had, through gross negligence, failed to develop such a plane of critical importance to national defense-although the Navy then had one in operation, as Navy officers later testified in the same hearings. There is every reason to assume that the Russians, too, then, had one, developed with the aid of the Germans who had effective radar-equipped night fighters in the war; and it is conceded that the Russians now havs such a plane. This makes of controlling significance General Kenney's 1949 testimony that the necessarily unescorted B-36 was then fit only for night missions (ruling out entirely any trans-Artic mission in the nightless summer months) and that "If they get a nightfighter with a search radar that can operate at 40,000 feet, the B-36 will become a tanker." The Navy then had such a plane. The Air Force now has one, as admitted by Air Force Secretary Finletter on January 29, 1951. The Russians certainly have one now. The B-36 is just a tanker.

From the foregoing facts alone, it is obvious that the short-range bombing missions of World War II--for instance, between Britain and Germany-cannot be soundly compared with vastly longer bombing missions in any Soviet-American war. Even during the last war, moreover, the Air Force saying, "Some bombers will always get through," was misleading. It was a half-truth at best because of the unbearably high loss rate for unescorted bombers when the Germans' use of rockets forced abandonment of daylight bomber missions, as we have seen.

3

When General Vandenberg employed this fallacy (some bombers will always get through) in the 1949 hearings, a committee member accused him of telling only half the truth, and brought out the crucial fact of unbearable loss rate, citing the Air Force's own official wartime history. Yet General Vandenberg continues to deal in this misleading half-truth, and in other respects to falsify the picture regarding the vulnerability of our unescorted bombers-as in his article in the Saturday Evening Post of February 17, ironically entitled "The Truth About Our Air Power."

In this article he asserted that the B-36 has the ability to deliver the bomb anywhere in the world, yet made no mention of the key factors which would prevent this. In discussing the B-36, he never so much as mentioned the fighters' air-to-air rockets-equipped with homing devices and proximity fuses-nor even

Record of hearings, House Armed Services Committee; October 1940, p. 464.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »