American Airpower Comes of Age

AMERICAN AIRPOWER COMES OF AGE
Col Howard A. Rusk, Convalescent Services Division, Office of the Air Surgeon,
Headquarters AAF, later health editor of The New York Times, accompanied
Arnold on this trip as his physician. Captain Shepley, assigned to
Arnold’s office, is not otherwise identified.
6. Lt Col Edward P. “Pop” Kern, CO 1382d Air Base Unit, Mingan.
7. Could have been either the town of Mingan, just east of the mouth of
the Mingan River, or Havre de St. Pierre, 15 miles further east. Most probably
it was the former.
8. Col John N. Stone, Headquarters AAF; Lt Col Harper L. Woodward,
AAF Advisory Council.
9. St. Malo is a port, northwest France on the English Channel, set afire
by retreating German forces in 1944.
10. Orly Field was located in the southeast suburbs and was the main
airport servicing Paris at this time. Lt Gen John K. Cannon, now CG, US
Army Forces in Europe; Maj Gen James M. Bevans, now CG, USAAF in the
Mediterranean Theater; Brig Gen Earl S. Hoag, CG, European Division, ATC.
The Hotel Raphael was a luxury Paris establishment located on Avenue Kleber,
a main artery radiating southwest from Place de l’Etoile.
11. Les Invalides is the celebrated Parisian landmark on the left bank of
the Seine near Pont Alexander III in which many French greats, among them
Napoleon I, are entombed.
12. Col Fred M. Dean was Arnold’s executive officer.
13. It is not clear why Arnold would have recalled at this time the conversation
with his former aide, Maj Smoak, which occurred in the Philippines,
mentioned in chap. 11. This entry confirms Arnold’s continuing use
of the diary, in part at least, as a reminder of tasks to be accomplished upon
his return to Washington.
14. United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe (USSTAF) headquarters
were located at Sainte Germain-en-Laye, a residential suburb west of Paris;
Brig Gen Alvan C. Kinkaid, chief of staff, USSTAF.
15. Most of these airdromes, planned for postwar utilization by American
aircraft, were never constructed. Arnold referred to the fact that, although
negotiations were begun in 1941 with the Portuguese government, it was
August 1944 before an American-operated airfield was opened in the Azores.
16. The US military microfilmed many documents dealing with the GAF
and Germany. The story of their capture, filming, and use is told in Robert
Wolfe, ed., Captured German Documents and Related Records: A National
Archives Conference: Papers and Proceedings of the Conference on Captured
German and Related Records, November 12–13, National Archives Building,
Washington, D.C. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1975).
17. AAF records fail to identify these kills or the disposition of the Me-262s.
18. In 1944, Arnold appointed a Scientific Advisory Board headed by Dr.
Theodore von Kármán of the California Institute of Technology. Arnold
wanted the group, which was composed of leading scientists, to “think
ahead twenty years.” Their report, Where We Stand, was submitted in
August 1945. It became a blueprint for AAF and USAF development and is
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