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in ample time to attack an enemy fleet approaching the coast. This has been demonstrated by successful maneuvers carried out by our Bombardment Group, particularly in the flight from Langley Field, Virginia, to Bangor, Maine, in eight flying hours, in which all necessary equipment was carried and one-half hour after landing communications had been established and the group was ready to operate. The power to concentrate the Army Air Force on either coast has been fully demonstrated by numerous flights with all types of aircraft and by the successful operation of the day and night Air Mail between New York and San Francisco. 

From the exhaustive tests conducted in the summer of 1921 when the old American battleship "Alamaba" was sunk near Tangier Sound in Chesapeake Bay by a 2000-pound bomb in thirty seconds, and four ex-German warships consisting of a submarine, torpedo boat, cruiser and battleship, the last being the "Ostfriesland", launched in the same year and about the same class in armor and armament as the "Utah", at present one of the battleships composing the Atlantic Fleet, were sunk 75 miles at sea with aerial bombs,-- an attack with 2000-pound bombs lasing just a little more than twenty minutes being sufficient to send the "Ostfriesland" to the bottom; and, in the successful sinking of the "New Jersey" and "Virginia" on September 5, 1923, when from an altitude of more than 11,000 feet, four direct hits out of twenty bombs dropped were obtained on the deck of the "New Jersey", we may safely conclude that an adequate Air Force provides an effective means for offensive use against naval forces and constitutes a positive means of defense of our country and possessions. 

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