Americans are looking ahead, Who knows but at some future date they may enter the war on the Allies' side and then the Germans or Russians may attempt to bomb their cities, New York, city of sky-scrapers, is the world's biggest target, A bomb hitting the Woolworth or Empire State Building would cause greater loss of life than the bombardment of a small town by a large fleet of aeroplanes, So it's no wonder that American authorities are anxiously weighing up the possibilities of air attacks on American cities, Is the U.S.A, imjune or vulnerable? It's all a matter of distance, There is not in the air force of any foreign power today a bombing plane that can cover more than 1,500 miles under military conditions,~maintains Fletcher Pratt in the "Saturday Evening Post" New York, Halt the bomber's range must be spent in getting home after a raid, unless the enemy doing the bombing is willing to swap a £100,- 000 aeroplane and a highly trained crew for the amount of damage the machine could do on a single flight, The limit radius of existing bombers is 750 miles, with another 750 miles for the return journey. Their effective, or operating, radius is a good deal less. The bombing pilot must keep considerable reserve of fuel for bursts at full power to dodge attackers, for fighting head winds, to cover errors in navigation and changes of objective.
The fundamental fact that any potential European attacker of the United States has to face is this: no bombing aeroplane can be moved into range of the big American cities without the help of a ship.
Even the Iceland-Greenland route from Europe, the most favourable and the most frequently suggested, will not quite do, Aero-Planes could make the separate hops all right, but they would require a first-class base in Iceland, with storage and repair facilities, probably afloat, off the inhospitable coast of Greenland, Fuel and munitions for Iceland and Greenland would still have to come by ships, So woud supplies for foreign bases in Bermuda, the Bahamas, Newfoundland, or the West Indies, if bomber ranges ever extend far enough to bring the last within striking distance of American industrial areas,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.