Word: vandenbergers
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Protégé. In the Senate, 34-year-old Cabot Lodge was "the boy wonder." Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg took him under his wing (Vandenberg had known his grandfather, and admired the elder Lodge's biography of Alexander Hamilton as the best, up to the time Vandenberg wrote his own). Like Vandenberg, Lodge was labeled an isolationist, but he favored military preparedness, and called for conscription before President Roosevelt did. Domestically, his record was liberal, with a shrewd eye on his constituents. He was one of two Republicans to vote for the Wages and Hours Bill...
...recent years, Lodge has been recognized as one of the ablest men in the Senate. In two important areas of policy -military affairs and foreign affairs-his grasp is especially firm. When Vandenberg fell ill and retired from active leadership, most observers thought the mantle of Republican leadership in foreign policy would fall on Cabot Lodge. But somehow, the mantle never fitted...
...MIGs are now based chiefly just across the Yalu in Manchuria. But in recent months, said Vandenberg, the Communists have made a major attempt to repair and defend three airfields 90 miles to the south, near Pyongyang. If they succeed in putting these fields into operation despite U.S. bombing attacks, they will be able to challenge U.N. air supremacy even over the battle line itself...
Attacks on Communist supply lines, which so far have kept the Communist army stalled, would be reduced to only a fraction of their present effectiveness. "In other words," said Vandenberg, "the air space between the Yalu and Pyongyang, in which we had previously been able to operate unhindered, is now a 'no man's air,' and has become the area of decision in the Korean air war." He added ominously: "If [the enemy] wins in the air, the stalemate on the ground is not likely to continue...
...bomb the MIGs' Manchurian bases and prevent the buildup-as General Douglas MacArthur had suggested? Vandenberg had given a startling answer at the MacArthur hearings last spring. The answer: the U.S. did not have enough planes to bomb Manchurian bases and still keep its strategic striking force intact to deliver the atomic bomb-"the sole deterrent to war up to this time"; U.S. industry was not producing enough bombers to replace losses in such a bombing campaign...