And thanks to willie for invitig me to come and talk. Well, im here today to talk about my favorite Childrens Book author, and thats a man named h. H. Arnold. Here are a couple of his books. Weve got bill bruce and the pioneer iowauateers. Weve got aviators. Weve got bill bruce becomes an ace in world world war i. So, yes, hap arnold was a Childrens Book author as a young major at fort reilly, kansas. He had time to write a half a dozen books for boys in that tradition of books for boys that were so popular in those days back when boys climbed trees and whittled with their pocket knives and had no video games. But young boys were also very interested in aviation which hap was not as a young boy. Nor was he when he was at west point. He graduated in 1907. But when he got the aviation bug, he fell hard. And he fell rather early in the whole, in the whole history of aviation. Some of you may have heard of his flight instructors. A couple of boys from bicycle mechanics from dayton, ohio, name of wilbur and orville wright. But, yes, hap learned to fly from the Wright Brothers and began a career which took him to be, as the subtitle on the book says, the man who invented the u. S. Air force. And his entire career became part of that, of that effort to build Army Aviation into an independent air force. But before i Start Talking about his career, willie mentioned that there were some family interviews in the book, and i depended very heavily on those and, in fact, stole a lot of Great Stories from haps grandson, robert arnold, and were very privileged to have with us today robert arnold. Id like to invite robert up to tell a few stories about haps early life and career. Robert . [applause] thank you, bill. Incidentally, the book bill wrote is just terrific of. Most of by family members have read it by in this time, and ive got positive reviews from everybody, so given the nature of my family, when they all agree on something, you know its pretty good. Im not an historian, im a winemaker from sonoma, california. Bills the historian. But i can tell you a couple stories that i heard around the campfire as a young man. Fortunately, my father loved telling stories, so ive grown up with them, and he also wrote a bunch of them down. My dad was bruce arnold, the middle of the three sons. They were all west point graduates, all became colonels in the u. S. Military. Pop ended up in the air force in missiles and hightech. His name was, actually, William Bruce arnold, but he was known for most of his life as bruce, and heres a background to that story which will tie into what bill was talking about. The first part were going to talk about is 1926 in fort reilly, kansas, which is the place where my grandfather wrote these books, and he actually wrote them because he read some of the books that his sons were reading and thought they were just trash and he could do better. After a while, they took on a life of their own, so there we go. He had been exiled to fort reilly from washington, d. C. On the express orders of the president of the United States. Well talk a little bit more about that later, perhaps. But he made much of his time there in his cavalry post and made his comeback in his career there. The naming part of the story. My father, William Bruce arnoldings was named bill or billy after haps hero which was Billy Mitchell. And at that point a whole generation of army kids were named for Billy Mitchell, so almost everybody in his generation was billy or bill. Even the cavalry kids because the cavalry guys recognized a dynamic leader. So here we are on this cavalry post, and the problem came up at dinner time or whatever when mother would yell out the window billy, come home now. And which billies would show up. So my grandmother had this bright idea and invited her contemporaries over for a bridge party and the usual punch and cookies being prohibition time. So she put out the problem and suggested that they draw cards. So they drew cards for who was going to be bill, billy, william, willie, and when they got down the line after that, they would use middle names. So she was nope as kind of the card sharp of the area, but as pop said, she didnt draw well that day, so he became bruce. [laughter] so well go back a little bit to more about Billy Mitchell. As i said, Billy Mitchell was the hero of my grandfathers life and for that whole generation of folks as well, although he was not stupid about it and understood what mitchells limitations were. He was still his hero. In 1924 the period he had been in washington before he had been sent into exile was the period of the mitchell courtmartial, and im sure most people know about the mitchell courtmartial. Hopefully more than it was just a movie with gary cooper in it. In any case, it was a National Event somewhat like the watergate trials would have been. Everybody was glued to watching newsreels. But in any case, Billy Mitchell and hap arnold were very much Close Friends, and before the courtmartial period starts, on sundays in those days military families would pay calls on each other and leave calling cards, and they would spend most of sunday doing this. The kids would always be left in the car while the parents went in and did the five minute protocol thing. Its a word that does not exist anymore today. One of his Close Friends was the mitchells, so they would go out to virginia, and Billy Mitchell had a large establishment in virginia. Billy mitchell had some independent money which set him apart from most of his contemporaries. And this was the place where the Arnold Family saw the First Electric refrigerator they ever saw in 1924. So Billy Mitchell took them out into the kitchen and showed them this brand new miracle invention which was a electric refrigerator, did not require the ice man to show up. And also pulled out an ice tray which absolutely he could make his own ice. This absolutely fascinated the kids, three of them, my dad, his brother hank and his sister lois. And so the parents went back in the other room to sit down and discuss whatever matters they were discussing. At that point my father had the bright idea that they could take the ice cubes out, and they could sell them on the street because ice was something that was sold. So they proceeded to take all the ice out of the refrigerator, they went outside, and they were trying to sell ice cubes to the kids in the neighborhood. At which point someone looked out the front window and noticed these kids doing something and accosting people out there and so went out to see what was happening. My grandparents were deeply embarrassed [laughter] that their children had been heisting ice cubes from the mitchell family, but Billy Mitchell thought it was very, very funny. So thats how that story happened there. My father remembers strategy meetings in the living room during the mitchell courtmartial and at a point there were Death Threats against with him and his sister and brother, so they moved the kids out of washington. That was that kind of period too. Most people dont know that, but this is a serious matter. And not only that, hap testified at the courtmartial which gave him one mark on the wrong side of the ledger. And then after the courtmartial period he himself was testifying to a Congressional Committee about air service budgets, and he arranged for all of the fly bl air service planes on the east coast my grandfather, youre going to resign. You can courtmartial me, and the army was not going to have back to back courtmartials. So thats how they sent him to fort reilly which he writes these books and it continues. Thats the story for today. [applause] thank you. So that really sets the stage for haps career. He was either blessed or cursed with having met Billy Mitchell and having become a disciple of Billy Mitchell, an advocate of air power. Billy mitchells idea was that air power could do more than just shoot down other airplanes and maybe strafe the enemy trenches. He imagined it could reach deep into Enemy Territory and attack and damage and destroy an enemys ability to wage war and his ability to build war machines and, therefore, be an important element in winning wars. And that was, that was Billy Mitchells radical idea, and hap arnold was one of many who bought into that idea, which was, of course, later proven in world world war ii. But at the time in all of our discussion of fort reilly, kansas, is very illustrative of what the army was like in those days. It was a cavalry force, you know . It was the people who went to west point if they got good grades, they became engineers. But most of them wanted to be in the cavalry. Hap wanted to be in the cavalry. That was his dream, to be in the cavalry. So that was the sort of overarching paradigm in the army. The guys who ran the army were old cavalry guys. A guy named general may loan craig who was the chief of staff in the army in the 30s, he famously said i dont want the army to be buying airplanes, because these damn things get obsolete so fast, then youve got to buy nor of them, and more of them, and what good are they . So that was the, that was sort of the uphill climb that hap was, hap was working against and that all of the other officers, young officers of his generation who were advocates of air power had to overcome that. So hap worked his way up. He did not he bit his tongue more often than Billy Mitchell. He didnt wind up with Death Threats or courtmartial and progressed through the ranks and became assistant chief of the u. S. Army air corps. Then in 1938 he became chief of the u. S. Army air corps. And at that time he inherited a force that was probably the seventh or eighth biggest air force in the. Down to 20,000. It was a pretty pathetic thing. Maylon craig was chief of staff, and he insisted that we dont need those texas a m those damn airplanes. That was what he had to deal with. Quince lentally, this is 1938, hap became chief the same week that some gentlemen were having a conference in munich. The president of france was there. Mr. New jersey devil chamber Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain was there, and chancellor adolf hitler. Hitler was sort of stretching his muscles in those days. He had rearmed germany, and he was thinking that he wanted to run europe. Well england and france didnt want germany running europe, but they didnt want another war. So they had this summit conference in munich, and hitler said, okay, guys. Not in those z same words. If youll just give me most of check czechoslovakia, therell be no war. Neville chamberlain went home the same week that hap became chief of the army air corps, and he waved this signed agreement at the airport, and he said we got peace many our time. Well, we all know what happened to that. And it was, it was over the next, the next few years as hap was able to get an audience with an eventually, not initially sympathetic Franklin Roosevelt that the u. S. Army air corps started to get what it needed. When you start out with 1700 mostly obsolete airplanes, then youve got to imagine that anything you get on top of that is going to be state of the art because its new. And so he started building up this u. S. Army air corps, and he started lobbying for more autonomy for the u. S. Army air corps. This leads into this whole idea that this is a man who invented the u. S. Air force. He had, he had a unique ally in a man named George Marshall, general George Marshall, who was the guy who took over from maylon craig. In another one of these weird coincidences of history, marshall took other from craig in september of 1939, which is on the very same week that hitler who was going to be satisfied with czechoslovakia and needed no more territory blitzkrieged into poland and started world war two, the war that Neville Chamberlain insisted would never happen because we have peace in our time. So George Marshall took over as chief of staff of the u. S. Army, became hap arnolds boss. Well, when hap went down the hall to they didnt have a bent gone pentagon then, but they had the army building, and when he went down the hall to introduce himself to the new chief of staff, it wasnt the fist time theyd met. No, they had actually been friends for some time. Hap first met general george mar shell when they were on maneuvers in the philippines. This was before hap became a flier, when he was an infantryman. George marshall was still an infantryman. They were on maneuvers in the philippines, and hap came across this other lieutenant. I guess marshall was a First Lieutenant at the time, hap was still a second lieu tempt. But lieutenant. But both very, very young, wet behind the ears officers. And hap watched in this guy, and he watched his he was with pencil and paper working out the maneuvers and planning how his group was going to operate in the next phase of the exercise, and hap was really impressed by that. That night, well, a couple of nights later when the exercises were over hap went home and he said to roberts grandmother, i met a guy on maneuvers, and one day i bet you in this guy is going to be chief of staff. So same day that world war ii started, he did become chief of staff. And George Marshall became one of americas greatest military administrators and also later famous for the Marshall Plan that rebuilt europe after world war ii. But the two of of them being friends and robert talked a little bit earlier about all the connections that were made during careers, marshall became the key to haps treatment of an autonomous dream of an Autonomous Force within the army, an autonomous air force. And that came into being in june of 1941, of half a year before pearl harbor. And it became the United States army air forces, thats forces plural because there were 16 numbered air forces. And hap became the chief of that and becauseautonomous it was autonomous, this earned hap a seat on the joint chiefs of staff. So for the first time, the joint chiefs of staff which is actually a newlycreated organization because they recognized the need for coordination between these various services that had been army and navy had been at each others throats for centuries at that time. So you had, you had the army, the navy and the u. S. Army air forces. Those z three seats on the those three seats on the joint chiefs. And that was part of hap lobbying marshall. So what happened with this u. S. Army air forces that used to be the u. S. Army air corps . Well, in six years hap built this thing up. He built it up from 1700 obsolete airplanes, most of which had to be thrown away, to 17,000 airplanes. It didnt stop there, it didnt stop at 34,000. Within six years it was nearing 80,000. 20,000 men mushroomed to 2. 4 million. Hap arnold built the Largest Air Force in the world. And its the Largest Air Force in World History so what did he do with air force . Well, he did a lot of things. He final hi had a chance to exercise Billy Mitchells theory that if you get enough longrange bombers, you can reach into the enemys heartland, you can take out his armament factories, you can take out his transportation network, you can destroy his oil wells, his oil refineryies and after that you could go after his synthetic petrochemical industry which the germans had a state of the art one. Hap arnold took it out. A little story that id like to tell about, anecdotal, about air power in world war ii. There was in this june of 1944 this at the point where the u. S. Army air forces were reaching the sort of the ap ap to gee of ap gee of their power, the allies finally decided that they were ready to invade europe. So on a day that was, that even has its own letter, dday, they invaded normandy. And they were fighting the germans. They were fighting, they were fighting a country which in 1939 had been the most, had possessed the most powerful armed force in the world, had possessed the most advanced, most competent, most deadly accurate air force in the world. It was the most powerful air force in the world, 1940. They almost and if it hadnt have been for stupid mistakes, they almost destroyed the royal air force, Britains Royal Air force. Those were the two most significant air forces in the world in 1940. Now push has come to shove, and hap arnolds u. S. Army air forces are, have gone to war with the luft waf that. June 1944, operation overlord, the normandy invasion. P there were 10,000 airplanes in the sky that day. Half dozen of them were from the left waf that. That was the net result of not only of the u. S. Army air forces fighters who attacked oneonone, but also the strategic forces, the 8th air force and the 15th air force that had gone of after aircraft production in a very, very big way. They just didnt have the power to face this force, and the punchline of this anecdote is that since that day the day that has its own letter since that day no u. S. Ground force has ever gone to war beneath skies that were controlled by a force other than the u. S. Air force. They have haps legacy from that, from this effort is that the United States has controlled the air in every war that it has fought since then. So lest