Multi Engine Bombers
NBS-l, NBS-2, NBS-3, & LB-1
Page 3
Bombers Against Battleships
After the war, a return to “normalcy” was expected, and the nation turned to domestic problems. However, any return to the conservative military habits of the past was resisted by those who saw in new weapons a need for a complete re-organization of America’s defense establishment.
Foremost in the campaign for greater emphasis on aviation was Brigadier General William Mitchell (1879-1936), Assistant Chief of Air Service, and wartime commander of AEF combat planes. General Mitchell’s life and arguments are studied in detail elsewhere (see Bibliography), but bomber history here requires a summary of his position.
Mitchell said that air bombardment would become the most important instrument of warfare. Instead of a tedious wearing down of hostile land forces, bombers would strike immediately at enemy industrial centers, destroying the enemy’s ability and will to make war before his armies need be defeated.
For a nation surrounded by the sea, bombers could replace battleships, and with the aid of submarines, cause surface fleets to “disappear” as a major military force. If air power was to play this role, it must be freed from the dominance of ground commanders, and have its own leadership, doctrine, and equipment. The organization most suitable for this purpose was a unified department of defense, with a department of air co-equal with the Army and Navy.
Greatest resistance to these views came from those who held Mahan’s theory of sea power as the basis of national strength, and so Mitchell aimed his attack at sixteen expensive 16-inch gun capital ships then being built as part of a naval race with Britain and Japan. His bombers could sink any battleship afloat, he insisted, and offered to prove it by actual test. Then he struck at the big ships, “1,000 bombardment airplanes can be built and operated for the price of one battleship.” Irritated by Mitchell’s appeal to an economy-minded public, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels had offered to stand bareheaded on a battleship deck while bombers tried to hit it. That offer was not accepted, but target ships were provided.
The tests were carried out in July 1921, on captured German ships. Attacking with Martins from Langley Field, Virginia, the airmen first sank a destroyer with 300-pound bombs, then a cruiser with 600-pound bombs, and finally climaxed the demonstration by sinking the 22,800-ton battleship Ostfriesland with six new 2,000-pound bombs, then the largest available.
There was no agreement on the experiment’s significance; a joint Army and Navy board report signed by General Pershing concluded that the “battleship was still the backbone of the fleet and the bulwark of the nation’s sea defense,” while Mitchell’s own report flatly contradicted this position, asserting that bombers alone could accomplish the defense of our coasts. In Congress, Senator William E. Borah questioned the necessity of the expensive battleship building program, while a bill was introduced providing for conversion of two forthcoming battlecruisers into aircraft carriers.
In the midst of this debate, the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments was held. At the suggestion of the United States, an agreement was made to limit battleship construction; many ships on hand or on order were to be scrapped and the size of future ships limited. As a result, the United States halted work on eleven capital ships, converted two others to aircraft carriers, and scrapped some prewar battleships, including three sunk in more bombing tests in 1923. The Washington Treaty of 1922 began a 15-year holiday in battleship building, and Japanese Navy aircraft in December 1941 would demonstrate the ability of bombers to destroy these giant ships.
But those who thought the end of the battleship race would result in more funds for bombers were disappointed. With Europe and Asia apparently pacified by diplomacy, there was little interest in armaments – not even in substituting economy-sized wood-frame airplanes for costly steel dreadnoughts. Air Service appropriations dropped from 35.1 million in fiscal 1921 to 12.6 million in fiscal 1924.
Bomber Design from 1921 to 1924
Glenn L. Martin didn't profit from his bomber's exploits in 1921, however, because proprietary rights to military designs were then held by the government, which could assign production to the company offering the lowest bid. Trying to spread limited funds further, the Army purchased more bombers by inviting competitive bids from prospective contractors. Martin offered to build more NBS-ls for $23,925 each, but was underbid by his competitors.
Instead, on June 28, 1921, Curtiss received a contract for 50 NBS-ls at a price of $17,490 each, while another 35 were ordered from the LWF Engineering Company, and 25 more from Aeromarine. Tests on the first Curtiss ship began September 11, 1922, and showed characteristics similar to its predecessors. Curtiss officials admitted a loss of $300,000 on that NBS-l contract, which did keep their work force together during this period of cut-throat competition. But the money lost by LWF and Aeromarine to complete their contracts forced those firms out of business.
All eight Army bombing squadrons of this period used the NBS-l: the 11th, 20th, 49th, and 96th with the 2nd Bomb Group at Langley Field, Virginia (today the oldest USAF base in service), the 23rd and 72nd with the 5th Composite Group in Hawaii, the 25th with the 6th Composite Group in the Canal Zone, and the 28th with the 4th Composite Group in the Philippines. They remained in service until replaced by Keystone bombers in 1928-29.
Liberty engines from the wartime stockpile were used on these planes, as well as on the long-range bomber projects of the Air Service. The first project was the three-
engine LWF H-l Owl, a private venture designed by Raoul Hoffman for mail or bombing work. A Caproni-like layout included a center plywood nacelle for a crew of three and the center Liberty, with booms running back from the outboard engines to triple rudders. The center nacelle was equipped only for carrying mail when the Army purchased the Owl on April 16, 1920, and began tests at Mitchel Field on May 22.
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