Word: vandenbergers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...knew the combat records of the members of the J.C.S.: himself, General Hoyt Vandenberg, who had commanded the Ninth Air Force in Europe, the Army's General J. Lawton Collins, who had commanded the VII Corps at Normandy. Then he got in a low blow: "I was not associated with Admiral Denfeld during the war. I am not familiar with his experiences . . . [Denfeld, by order of his superiors, spent most of the war in Washington as Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel]. Undoubtedly it was because of this record that he was appointed Chief of Naval Operations...
...true that the Air Force, with its $1.4 billion B-36 program, was "putting all its eggs in one basket?" General Hoyt Vandenberg, Air Force chief, answered with figures. B-36s, he said, comprised only 5% (four groups) of the total of regular military aircraft. The Air Force also had eleven groups of other bombers (about 330 B-29s and B-50s), and some 33 groups of heavy and medium reconnaissance, fighter, troop carrier and other miscellaneous aircraft...
...Said Vandenberg: the nation had to "counterbalance the potential enemy's masses of ground troops . . . No such balancing factor exists other than strategic bombing, including the atomic bomb...
...Force's Secretary W. Stuart Symington backed up Vandenberg, and deplored the whole public airing of the country's military doctrines. "Lightning Joe" Collins denied any Army plot to swallow up the Navy's Marine Corps as had been charged in the Navy's case...
...Force argue that the B-36 was invulnerable ("We know," said General Vandenberg in the same speech, "that no plane or weapon of any kind can be completely invulnerable"). The Air Force, Vandenberg said, held only that the B-36 could get through in sufficient numbers to deliver an initial atomic blow; the threat alone "serves to divert a great portion of any nation's effort to its internal defense." There were better planes than the B-36 on the drawing board and in the works, but until they were ready, the B-36 remained the best bomber...