At graduation he proudly ordered a new uniform with trouser stripes of “glorious Cavalry Yellow.”
A surgeon’s son who fulfilled his father’s dream by graduating from West Point in 1907, Arnold loved the cavalry, drawn by its prestige and his love of riding. Hap Arnold’s career began with disappointment. As one of the world’s first licensed pilots, trained at the Wright brothers’ own flying school and mindful that might requires science, technology, and solid design and planning, Arnold conceived a vision of America as an air power and, simultaneously balancing immediate needs with the necessity of peering into the future, nurtured a tiny, feeble armed service into an aerial armada capable of winning a world war. “Using their brains to help us develop gadgets and devices for our airplanes that are far too difficult for the air force engineers to develop themselves,” Arnold replied.ĭoctrinaire officers might not have thought to look on campus for help winning wars, but for Arnold the leap was logical. “What on earth are you doing with people like that?” Marshall asked.
Some military men thought Arnold was wasting time talking to “longhairs.” Invited by his old friend to lunch with the scientists, General George C. He summoned to the National Academy of Sciences a group of researchers and university administrators, including MIT president Vannevar Bush and California Institute of Technology physicists Robert Millikan and Theodore von Kármán. “In a number of fields the Germans are already ahead of us and they are rapidly cutting down whatever lead we now hold in many others.”Īrnold, on the job little more than a month, took Lindy’s warning to heart. “Germany is undoubtedly the most powerful nation in the world in military aviation and her margin of leadership is increasing with each month that passes,” Lindbergh wrote. Touring Germany, the aviation hero had witnessed the surging Luftwaffe firsthand. In November 1938 Charles Lindbergh wrote urgently to Major General Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold, the new chief of the Army Air Corps. Hap Arnold: The Practical Air Force Visionary | HistoryNet Close
0 kommentar(er)
