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OUR ARMY'S AIR SERVICE                             287

ity of eight thousand miles and a speed of about eighty miles per hour.

What we have retained in the Air Service as a result of the war, then, are merely a few crumbs from the table, which have been rearranged and mixed together and rebaked so as to form a loaf of aviation which may be used as a pattern in the future. If war burst upon us now, we could not equip our aviation in less than a year and a half with airplanes or airships, and we have no specific organization outside of the few paltry squadrons in the Army.

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THE AMERICAN PURSUIT AIRPLANE
(Sixty per cent of an American air force should be pursuit planes, whose mission it is to gain control of the air. This is the first type of pursuit plane made in this country with which our pursuit squadrons will be equipped. It is entirely American-made, with a 300-h.p. engine, developing a speed of about 160 miles an hour. It can climb 20,000 feet in 20 minutes. The plane is armed with .30- and .50-calibre machine-guns and 37mm. cannon)
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The question now is, What shall be done in the future? Congress this year allowed a force fo 1520 officers and 16,00 men for the Air Service, and an appropriation sufficient to equip the air units now in the service with modern airplanes. These, as mentioned above, constitute about three hundred and fifty airplanes with the squadrons. France, for instance, has ten times this number in her army at present, or three thousand airplanes. Practically all the flying personnel in every service advocate the unification of activities under one central control, in order to cut out the overheads that now exist with aviation divided among Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard, Post Office, and all sorts of different places. Such unification would, it is believed, secure an economical administration looking essentially to the development of the air as a

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THE AMERICAN OBSERVATION PLANE
(This will take the place of the now obsolete DH-4's. It has a speed of about 135 miles an hour, and can climb 20,000 feet in 25 minutes. Equipped with a 300-h.p. motor and carries four machine-guns)
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main issue and not as one secondary to something else. It would develop and assist civil and commercial aviation by advice, and landing fields; provide for a proper police of the air; and, above all, develop and maintain a personnel for the Air Service which would give the maximum tactical, scientific, and commercial development. In fact, if the present amounts of money appropriated for the Army and Navy, Post Office, and other branches were lumped, about 30 to 40 per cent, more could be accomplished, it is believed, than is the case at present, and each department of the Government could be given better service than it now has.

Could Aviation Become Our Second Line of Defense?

All military progress has hinged on the development of armament (that is, bringing more fire to bear on the object to be attacked), on mobility or the power to go from one place to another quickly, and on the number of effectives or the strength that could be concentrated at the decisive point.

As to the development of fire, pursuit aviation can concentrate fire in three directions in the air-from above, from the same level, and from underneath. It can attack in front, on the flank, or behind. The old