I would appreciate the group's advice since this is my first post.
In reviewing the literature, I find no criticism of General "Hap" Arnold's failure to protect bombers with escort fighters prior to early 1942. If I missed it, please help me find it.
Arnold prevented escort fighters from keeping up with bombers by prohibiting drop tanks on escort fighters in May 1939. This prevented escort fighters from having the necessary range to keep up with the bombers. Arnold also asserted that bombers could protect themselves. Yet, on page 8 of
Winged Warfare, a tome he wrote with Ira Eaker, Arnold writes that "the only reliable antidote to the enemy bomber is the fighter."1
Arnold added that the bombers needed more range with "leakproof fuel tanks," but mentioned nothing about extending the range of escort fighters sent along to protect the bombers. This may have been because in May 1939, General Arnold prohibited drop tanks on escort fighters. Drop tanks had only one function and that was to increase the range of escort fighters, whose purpose was to defend the bombers so they could reach their targets. But Arnold claimed bombers, prior the disastrous experiences in the summer and fall of 1943, could defend themselves.
Despite Arnold's admission of his bombers' vulnerability to fighters, he failed to spend money to protect them. To Arnold, every dollar spent on a drop tank was one less dollar he could spend on his bombers.
"Bombers in far larger numbers than are available today [January 1941] will be required for wiping out people in sufficient numbers to break the will of a whole nation."2
View attachment 702402
1 H. H. Arnold and Ira C. Eaker,
Winged Warfare, (New York: Harper & Brothers), 1941, p. 8
2
Ibid. p. 134