AIR DEFENCE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 21 February 1925, Page 5

AIR DEFENCE.

AYEAKNESSES IN U.S.A. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. AVASHINGTON, Feb. 19. General Mitchell, assistant chief of the Army Air Force, gave further evidence before the Aircraft Committee of the House of Representatives. He asserted that there was an entire lack of co-ordination between the army and navy forces in Hawaii, which was a strategic point and must be maintained. He said the commanding general and the commanding admiral there would not speak to each other. The defences of Hawaii were now as obsolete as bows and arrows. General Mitchell advocated airplane and submarine bases for Hawaii, hut declared that the Philippines could not he held two weeks against a Japanese attack. Meanwhile reports persist that General Mitchell will be given the choice of resignation from his position of assistant chief of the army air force or his removal owing to his criticism of the heads of the army and the navy. Pacific naval officers, however, have endorsed General Mitchell’s claim for the superiority of aircraft over battleships ,as a result of tests carried out at San Pedro, where five giant seaplanes dropped bombs on a moving target from an altitude of 7300 feet and demonstrated conclusively that the battleship is an easy prey for aircraft, according to Lieutenant-Commander Strong, director of the tests.