Is my honor to turn him to run this discussion about unknown air missions. [applause] thank you. As pete said, the title of this panel is unknown air missions. Some into this panel but they peaked in 1943 but we move to 1944s we have other debacles to talk about. Were going to look at operation enter horn and operation frantic, the first is sometimes bizarre and attempt to deploy between nine to the china burma india theater and the others and attempt to shuttle bond with the russians that did more to launch the cold war then to end world war ii. Theres a nasty pattern emerging here for the panels they want me to moderate. The last conference i got to sit and rickich Frank Atkinson who talked about the so i feel obligated to say today as i said then, that i want to remind everyone here we did eventually win the war. [laughter] we have to great presenters search date good friends of mine and trevor presenter. First is Tami Davis Biddle besides responsible for the most import parts of the Army War College curriculum, she is also working on a project on americas manpower and mobilization for world war ii that i guarantee is going to win a Pulitzer Prize to set the bar which should be for her. Rhetoric and reality and air warfare, is the seminal work on the interplay of doctrine and practice in the air war in world war two. Alexther panelist, is richie who has graciously decided to take opossum or many tours to show up at this conference. How many of you have been out on a tour with her razor hands . [applause] raise your hands . [applause] looking at the museum letter trend advertising i have come to the conclusion that she is become the intellectual pinup girl of the world were to museum. [laughter] one, imwsuit on that trying to stay out of trouble so i tried to put the word intellectual in there to make it better. [laughter] ok. She is also the convene or for the president ial counselors of the National World war ii museum. So she has a lot to do with the structure and execution of this conference and along with me, im one of her little yellow minions in that respect. Youre all very proud of what we have done. With that let me give the floor to tami, to talk about operation matterhorn. [applause] dr. Biddle im delighted to be here in a roomful of airplanes which makes me happy. It is fun to be here to talk about an Unusual Campaign and to talk about, in particular, the airplane that was at the center of it. The super fortress as an extra ordinary airplane in every possible regard. Forward a leap forward into modernity. The u. S. Army air force at that point, it would become the u. S. Air force later, was thinking about needing a very longrange bomber. This is a 19391940, when theyre not sure what the situation in europe is going to be. So they start to think and being the air force and forward thinkers they are, they jump into the future and make demands that are quite extraordinary and at the helm of all this, his general henry arnold, the chief of the Army Air Forces at that point, also men who interested manechnology also a interested in technology and the future and having air force ultimately become independent of the army. All those things are terribly important so he wants a platform that will make this happen. Is hist becomes the b29 vision for how to have this happen. Of course, he is imagining the future of warfare is going to be heavily reliant on Strategic Bombing. ,e gains a number of backers because the president , in particular is quite interested in this. If youre the head of a democracy but youre always wearing about casualties and more and looking for ways to reduce them if possible. And having a Large Standing Army is very expensive. It can be politically and socially disruptive. So if theres a way to get around it and you happen to have wonderful moats on your quest and east, you might look to technology. That is what the americans did. The air force was really pushing this program. So if you just look at some of the texts you can see what was going on. Ining took up this gamble 1940 and they come as you can see, 1. 5 million manhours and 2. 8 million to produce 10,000 drawings for prototypes. This airplane, because it was so cyclic arnold wanted it in time for the campaign, wanted it in time for the war to be fought. He accelerated and telescoped thing about this airplane, which meant everything was a gamble, everything was a risk. All new technology. It was pushing the outer edge of technology in every conceivable round. And, in fact, they every conceivable realm. They went forward with it and went forward with production orders when it was really only a pile of blueprints and a wooden mockup to support it. Airplanes,ere 1600 b29s ordered before the first one took to the skies. With so much riding on this, and so many new things occurring at the same time, it was truly the 3 million gamble, which was its nickname. Toyou can see, it is going fly further and higher and faster, and carry more bombs further than any airplane has ever done in the past. It had a pressurized cabin. It had the latest in navigational technology. It had guns that could be site converged on a single target, controlled by a computer. Systemly, a fire control that was very, very forwardlooking and beyond anything conceived before, powered by six generators and an electrical system that would include more than one hunter 25 electricors 125 motors and 15,000 feet of wiring. 40,000 partsquired and boeing had to keep track of all those subcontractors. So this was perhaps the most perhapsd most reckless, one would and many did say, reckless project, of the second world war. But it had a lot of backing by important people, including the president , including harry hopkins, including robert levitt. They were all close to the president and all believed in airpower and they pushed this airplane. At the time, as you can imagine, the pride of boeing. Boeing was partnering in taking this great leap into the future. Of the heads of this program was the famous and billy really it test famous and brilliant test pilot Edmund Turney allen who was fabless at his job. He was an unusual man. Job. Bulous at his , anas m. I. T. Trained aerospace engineer, a practitioner of yoga, and a vegetarian. He was a very wiry, little wisp of a man but he flew immense airplanes. The stratasically, liner, the constellation, the coronado, the d. C. Line for boeing. He was in on the shakedown of all this airplanes. In fact, it was hard to get insurance for these new prototypes, big prototypes, if eddie ellen was not at the controls. There were other folks involved, george scher designed a whole harland fowler designed the really revolutionary flaps. There, now what it the time they were religion or air catching flaps for the airplane. So many people who are really the best in the world were involved in this project. But, as you can imagine, with this much new stuff happening all at once, and you are trying to stitch it all together, or weld it into the same machine, youre going to have problems. This is a famous quote, the b29 had as many bugs as the Entomology Department at the smithsonian. It was full of problems because it was being tested as it went into combat, literally. It was going so fast. As the biggest problem the airplaneit had many problems. Had many things that were exciting but all those things that were exciting were also risky and many of them were problems, including the landing gear, and a variety of other things. The biggest problems with the engines. Huge,were very complex, r353 engines that were ir cold and they air cooled and the nicelle openings are not big enough to call the engines and they were prone to engine fires. Engine fires began to appear right away but they were a particular problem in the early test flights in december of 1942 1943 ande of january of 1943. Has anyone been an airplane that was on fire . A few of us out there. You will recall, those who have done it, it is character building. [laughter] but you can hardly fly b29 without having an engine fire. Mostpilots said i got the to engine time i ever had in the b29. Is the wright cyclone engine again. It is forward leaning but problematic. Heres another quote, the sick women should never been destined to power operational aircraft without a long pier to trial and investigation and trial again, that it was so ordered. And it was ordered because they were on such a compressed time schedule they had to move out. This went back to the power the president had in insisting on this program and driving it forward so lots of money, men, materiel, expertise was drawn to this program. And its strategy and Strategic Planning is about tradeoffs. This plane has some interesting applications in terms of the tradeoffs we made in the second world war. This sucks in tremendous amount of money and expertise at crew. And those crews might have been doing other things, particularly in the winter and early spring 1945, when where it desperately in need of riflemen. At the bottomk quote here, you will have a sense of how exciting and how character building it could be to fly this airplane, particularly in its early days. Swallowing a valve was a major problem. These engines would burn very hot. They had magnesium cranked cases. This airplane burned quite hot. It was hard to put these fires out. There were problems with the propellers and losing your propeller is an exciting and to have happen if you are a pilot. Having the engine actually fall out of the airplane is even more exciting. The 18th of february, 1943 eddie ellen climbs into the second prototype and had with him 10 of owings most senior people. The most senior people from boeing. Now they are trying to figure out what is going on. There on a tight time schedule. They cram the rest people into the second prototype. Brace yourself. It is a sad story. One catches fire. It quickly spreads to the wing. Then it goes to the fuselage of the airplane. Eddie allen, being a tremendously calm pilot, tries to make it to the Landing Strip and cannot make it. They know they are in serious trouble. A couple of people, these fabulous boeing engineers, try to bail out, but they are too low. Eddie allen, they crash into the meatpacking plant in downtown seattle. And about are killed 19 people in the factory die as well. Almost huge, unfathomable loss to boeing and this program. A long tourbeen on around the world, he gets the news of this crash and suffers the first of multiple heart attacks he would suffer in the course of the second world war. One thing that one realizes when you study these folks is that they are under tremendous pressure all the time. Those people heart attacks are fathom, especially in days without the kind of cardiac treatment we have today. Arnold absolutely pushed on. He was determined that this airplane was going to fly. Probably that it would hand principally to the far eastern theater. Roosevelt wanted this airplane there. He wanted the bombing of japan. And he wanted something that suld help used Chang Kaishek morale. He was feeling that we had let down the chinese over and over again. That chang concern was getting frustrated with us. B29nk he felt, if the could fly from china, from an area that was safe in china come april be prestigious for Chiang Kaishek in china, it would be Chiang Kaishek it would be prestigious for Chiang Kaishek. That is why they come up with this scheme that becomes matterhorn. For that happens, the airplanes have to fly and have to get to the theater. Arnold looks at the situation in decides we have to get the airplanes going. He sends boeing engineers to the facility producing b29s in kansas and they fight a domestic battle called the battle of kansas. What they do is, when they roll the airplanes off the production line, they take them to the tarmac and make approximately 50 to 55 major changes to the airplane. This is in march, in kansas. His freezing. Subfreezing temperatures, blizzards. Men arese engineers, out there doing it to make this airplane fly. About everyect electrical circuit in the airplane to put a new engine in. An eyechart so i will skip over it quickly. The 20th air force is going to controlled by arnold and the joint chiefs. Want his prized b29s to go to the navy or macarthur and kenny. He probably could have made contributions but arnold was determined that this would be a longrange Strategic Bomber for japan. They leave from kansas and do this around the world trip to get to their ultimate destination, calcutta. It does not go well. Higher go eastward into and higher temperatures, the airplanes have more and more problems overheating. Airplane orhey lose multiple airplanes, they send more boeing engineers to try and solve the problem. Extraordinary effort taking place to get these plans where they need to go. This is the crazy scheme for matterhorn. Basically, the airplanes were going to be based in india but they were going to forward stage out of changdu. What you can see, if you look at geography, they had to fly everything into the theater and they had to fly it over the himalayas. In order to get enough fuel for a b29 they could just reach the outer edges of japan and a number of other targets. ,n order to be able to do that they had to fly over the himalayas seven times to bring in enough fuel for one raid on japan. Logistically, this was a crazy, crazy scheme. But, again, we were so anxious to start bombing japan that we went forward. That is basically the bottom line of the logistics and fuel. The this starts, under Brigadier GeneralKenneth Wolfe come a did not last very long. The raids were difficult, the logistical situation was almost impossible. ,e was replaced fairly quickly first by saunders, but then by the person increasingly becoming the star, curtis lome. Lome was a problem solver. He was instinctively very good at getting a lot out of airplanes and crews. Before he went out to the theater, he went up to omaha and got thoroughly familiar with the airplane. Of course, he faced the same problems that the first two commanders had faced, the same sorts of issues. Engine fires. Ae gunsight blisters had nasty tendency to pop out. In pressurized airplanes, that is a big problem. It had tragic circumstances in some cases until they figured out how to solve that problem. Ok. A few typical missions. There were not a lot of raids. Typically, once a week was about the best they could do because they had to fly in all of their fuel. They started off very slowly. They were trying to hit airplane factories and steel in particular. When lemay comes in and replaces saunders in late august of 1944, and what he does at that point is basically the same thing the others had done. He works very hard to do as well as he possibly can, solve the problems. The key thing is he never complains. He sends letters back to arnold theng he has problems but things he is trying to do to solve them, which wins arnolds confidence. 100 44, he uses incendiaries. The air force likes the results from that raid. It produces more devastation than the other raids they have been flying, and it sets up a harbinger for the future. Just to end here basically on the operation itself, and i will continue on one other thing. His sums it up lemay basically says no one could have made this operation work. It was so difficult logistically. A couple of things happen. The main thing i would say, the important incendiary raid that becauseged, but also, lemay did so much good work in this theater, it set him up to ultimately replace heywood relieveden hensel was flights out of the marianas. Campaign became the focal point of the air campaign in the far east. In ofwas instrumental course getting that underway and then turning to lowlevel nighttime incendiary raids against japanese cities. Here is a key point. To lemay andarnold back are fascinating. I have never seen so much pressure being placed on a theater commander as was placed on the shoulders of lemay from arnold. That was coming from the president through marshall through arnold to lemay. Huge pressure. Arnold switches from using the introduction dear lemay to dear curt. He says, we are watching very closely. Arnold has his eye very much on lemay. He is deciding this campaign with this key Weapon System is going to be put into the hands happenss lemay, which in basically late december, but is formalized in january of 1945. So, i think i shall wrap up there lest i go way over my time. Forn, thank you so much letting me talk about this fascinating episode from world war ii. [applause] hello. The second of june, 1944, and we are focusing on june and this Conference Although it will run a little bit before and a little bit after, airmen of the air force gathered in italy to year their mission, thinking they were going to do one of those there and back missions to hungary or somewhere and back to italy. To their shock, they saw the line going all the way up into the soviet union. This was a secret mission. Theyhad no idea about it were going to be flying the first ever Shuttle Mission to russia, socalled operation frantic, originally called baseball. You have a base in u. K. , italy, then bases in the soviet union. Jeremy and i tried to find a better one. This comes off u. S. Film, kind of information film. The people who took the pictures to get a second too early. You get the idea. The sort of round shuttle bombing, stop in the soviet rearm,then you refuel, and go back. At the end, only seven shuttle Bombing Missions happened conducted by american aircraft, running between the very beginning to september of 1944. The piece opened earlier. The one base stayed open until after the end of the war, to try and deal with the american pows now trapped behind the soviet lines. The first reason was obvious. If you can get your airbases closer to a target in, for example, eastern germany or further east, central europe, you dont have these dangerous flights, and there are many targets that simply cannot be reached. But it was only sanctioned by roosevelt, and for exactly the same reasons were talking about with matterhorn, starting off with bases in ukraine, getting chummy with the soap with the soviets. With the sort of multilayer ambition. The idea was not new. At United States air force study to the idea even for air force had studied the idea even before pearl harbor. It became an important part of the strategy, ambition. There were problems from the ver