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November, 1931
                        U.S. AIR SERVICES
               The Ordnance Show - Air Corps Assisting
                          ROLAND BIRNN
   EACH year the Army Ordnance Association Proving Ground, the meeting taking the shape of a first class and interesting demonstration of the use of the standard [materiel] and the developments therein. This year, on October 8th, was the 13th annual meeting of the Association, with the National Industrial Conference Board and The United Stated Naval Institute participating. Not to mention the Athletic Association of Johns Hopkins University who graciously furnished the bleacher seats at the reserved are on the Main Front.
   Practically all the arms and services participated in demonstration of how they used the [materiel] provided them by the Ordnance Department. While the fast tanks and armored cars and anticraft artillery proved of greatest interest to the Army flyers who attended the show, those who didn't might be most interested in what the Air Corps did there.
   Bolling, Mitchel, and Langley Fields, Fort Crockett and the Aire Corps detachment all sent planes and pilots to handle the various Air Corps events. These reported to Capt. C. B. Deshields, Air Corps, in charge of Air Corps troops at Phillips Field, at the Proving Ground. He in turn was assisted by Lieut. Hugh F. McCaffery and Sergeant Smink, the other two pilots making up the personnel of the detachment of the 49th Bombardment Squadron stationed there. While names are being mentioned it might be fitting to remember those of Maj.-Gen. Samuel Hof, Chief of Ordnance; Lieut. Col. E. M. Shinkle, commanding the Proving Ground and Maj. H. C. Minton, Ordnance Department, the latter the one who handled the microphone on the Signal Corps Public Address system and made the events intelligible to the uninitiated. Also among those present as spectators were Brig.-Gen. B. D. Foulois, Liet.-Col. John H. Howard, Majors B. Q. Jones, WM. Ord Ryan, and Willis Hale who had flown in to witness the various events. 
   The first appearance of Air Corps was at 10:45 A.M. on the Main Front when two Mitchel Field airplanes, Curtiss 0-1-Es, flown by Lieuts. R. O. Cork and F. X. Kelly, flew a simulated reconnaissance mission for the mechanized force which subsequently staged an advance on the paper silhouette enemy. Previous to that there had been exhibited among other things, a 3-inch anti-air-craft gun mounted on a truck capable of a road speed of 50 miles an hour. This gun fires a 12.7-lb. projectile to a maximum range of 14,200 yards. Two rounds were fired from it. This installation was experimental, the whole affair being tested to determine whether or not it will be considered to replace the present trailer type of mount. 
   The advance of the mechanized units against the enemy was covered by the protection of three .50 caliber Brownings, one mounted singly in a truck, the others twin-mounted in another truck and attended by a crew.
   The exhibitions of automotive equipment and their use concluded the morning's show and the crowd dispersed to lunch. Air Corps officers of which there were a goodly number, were lunched by Captain Deshields at his quarters after which the Ordnance Museum was gone through as the opening act of the afternoon's performance. 
   SHORTLY before 2 o'clock three Curtiss Falcon (A-3B) attack planes piloted by Capt. Lotha A. Smith and Lieuts. L. J. Fairbanks and E.V. Robnett, all from the Third Attack Group at Ft. Crockett, Galveston, Texas, appeared on the scene and straffed the cardboard enemy out on the Main Front. Bombs and guns were used in turn. The flash from their wing guns was distinctly visible to the crowd below. These three planes were half a flight, one-sixth a squadron, or one-eighteenth a group in strength, yet these three attack aircraft loosened 30 fragmentation bombs and used 12 machine guns at once against their targets, shooting a total of 2,500 rounds in one fifteen-second pass at the targets. Attack tactics were reversed in this demonstration and the bombs loosed at the first pass, as it was hardly desirable to carry them over the heads of a trusting multitude or, in peacetime operations, at a low altitude over tree tops while demonstrating attack formation flying. This flying was done while the smoke and dust from the bombs blew clear of the range, after which the gunnery was carried out. 
   Shooting no guns and dropping no bombs, the next act proved as noisy as any of the others when two Bolling Field flyers, Lieut. Stanley M. Umstead in a Curtiss Hawk P-1, and Lieut. Robert K. Giovannoli in a Boeing P-12, put on an exhibition of aerobatics in their tiny pursuit planes. Loops, rolls, spins, and inverted flying, the thrills being furnished by sputtering engines as the carburetors ran dry after each inverted dash across the Main Front before the grandstands.
   THEN followed the most interesting part of the military flyer, when bombs with time fuses were dropped at a towed target to simulate an attack by bomb-equipped pursuiters against a formation of attack or bombing planes. Let's explain: Regardless of the dash, verve, or what not of the pursuiter diving with both guns spatting at a tight-flying formation of bombers, he is likely to be in an unhappy state should he get too far within the range of the defending guns of the bombers' gunners. It's cramping elbows to expect more than one three-ship element to dive at one time on an enemy formation; call it a formation of nine bombers. That means six fixed guns going at the nine bombers but thirty-six flexible guns of equal range going from the bombers at the attacking pursuit. It ain't right; something must be done.
   It was. Last year, if you will remember, the Air Corps Tactical School students did a bit of aerial bombing with a captive balloon as a target. Lieut. G.A. McHenry made a hole-in-one and the balloon burned. It proved possible against balloons, then why not against enemy bombers? But supposed the bombs missed and the pursuiters were over friendly territory? Time fuses was the answer, set to explode after falling 
   
 

Transcription Notes:
accent on materiel times 2