HOKUM WON'T BEAT THE JAPS
Williams, Major Al
Hokum Won't Beat The Japs By MAJOR AL WILLIAMS THE SANEST and best thing the American people can do to hasten the end of the war is to quit underestimating our enemies. However, it isn't the...
...also what its armor protection and structural factors of safety should be...
...Name calling, however, tends toward underestimation of an . opponent, and that's dangerous...
...There's no doubt that our forces, air, sea, and land, are hurting the Jap, but we are a long way from licking him to the point where he will quit...
...However, it isn't the American people who make "the news or interpret the military value of items in the news...
...And we have our own ideas on these subjects too...
...Long Way From Victory Gen...
...Bragging Doesn't Help I'm not saying the, Jap fighter planes are better than ours...
...Billy Mitchell, after returning to this country from a visit to Japan, said the Jap airman is a good pilot and a hard fighter...
...It's this hullabaloo stuff far behind the combat fronts which upsets public psychology...
...Our best military minds deem the Jap a tough, first-class soldier...
...But that is undoubtedly due to the fact that, man for man, training system for training system, the American airman is superior to the Jap airman, and we can far out-produce the Japs...
...We can call him a fanatic and what-not, but he is evidently determined to win or die, and that's the type of military spirit our boys encounter on the combat fronts and in the air against the Jap...
...Be that as it may, they have done a mighty good job of assembling existing aeronautical engineering details which suited them and in turning out first-class fighting aircraft...
...And Mitchell, 20 years ahead of his time, showed his moral courage by saying this despite the general opinion...
...It's simple enough to call the Japs "monkey people," but if we insist upon calling names and let it go at that, okay...
...No one even dreamed, prior to the outbreak of this war, that Jap aeronautical engineers were worth their salt, or able to do more than copy the aircraft and engine designs of foreign engineers...
...If we can whip our advertising propensities, which largely means exaggerating, our victory in the Pacific will come all the sooner...
...One of the most amazing developments in our air war against Japan is the discovery that this—as we recklessly assume—backward aeronautical nation is today building single-seater fighter planes that are topping 350 miles an hour, possessed of a much higher maneuverability than ours, and a rate of climb that is not to be sneezed at...
...Of course American airmen are shooting down the Jap fighters, and apparently greatly in excess of pur losses...
...The Japs have their ideas of what a fighter plane's speed, maneuverability, and rate of climb should be, and how many and what kind of guns it should carry...
Vol. 8 • March 1944 • No. 13
