1939
CHAPTER TWO: A "PERFECTLY NORMAL" TEST FLIGHT: FDR'S SECRET DEAL WITH FRANCE
By January 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt was doing all he could for the production of American warplanes.
On November 14, 1938, four days after the horrors of Kristallnacht had struck German Jews, FDR not only suspended diplomatic relations with Germany but also convened in the oval office a meeting later said to have "marked a turning point in the history of national defense" (qtd. Huston 79). With General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Chief of the Air Force, and about a dozen other major officials seated around him, Roosevelt did most of the talking. Arguing that the U.S. Air Force was far weaker than the air forces of other leading nations, he announced that he was directing the War Department--as the Department of Defense was then called--to draft a plan for providing 10,000 planes a year for the next two years. Roosevelt wanted planes above all else. "We need a huge air force," he told the group, "so that we do not need to send a huge army to follow that air force" (Huston 80).
Events would prove him wrong on the latter point, and Army officials soon pressed him to "balance" air power with ground forces. But on December 17, the very day on which they stressed this point in a memo to him, FDR out-maneuvered them by putting Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury, in charge of all defense purchasing--including aircraft. On the same day he also authorized Morgenthau to negotiate with Jean Monnet, who had just arrived from France in quest of 1000 planes for delivery within the next seven months (Huston 83). Roosevelt did not wholly get his way. Since even the Air Force needed money for more than planes--needed it for personnel, air bases, and ground support--the president finally agreed to fund them with part of the $300 million he was asking Congress to furnish for expanding the Air Force (Huston 84). But he insisted that $180 million be spent on 3000 new aircraft by the end of 1940, and over the objections of Arnold and the War Department, he also ordered that members of the visiting French Purchasing Commission be allowed to inspect and even fly the very latest planes developed by American engineers (Huston 87).
This particular order helps to explain what happened shortly after noon on Monday, January 23, 1939 at Mines Field, which has since become the Los Angeles International Airport. Here a "perfectly normal" test flight--as Roosevelt later called it-- turned into a flaming disaster.
Minutes before noon on the 23rd, several scores of aviation mechanics were wolfing sandwiches while seated in the parking lot of the North American Aviation Company and watching the takeoff of a secret prototype: the Douglas 7B, a twin-engine attack bomber that was said to combine superb handling with a top speed of 304 mph. As a candidate for purchase by the War Department, the 7B wore a red-white-and-blue Army insignia and a red-and-white striped vertical tailfin. In the forward cockpit hatch sat 35-year-old Johnny Cable, the #2 Douglas test pilot, with a flight engineer named John Parks sitting behind him. Behind both men in the aft fuselage sat a man put there by secret order of President Roosevelt--in cool defiance of public policy and in particular of General Henry "Hap" Arnold, Chief of the Air Force. Taken on board not only to witness the flight but even, perhaps, to press the pilot into testing the limits of what the plane could do, the extra passenger was never meant to be publically identified--but was, inevitably, soon after the plane crossed those limits.
As already noted, FDR wanted to help the French see the very latest in American warplanes. By January of 1939, the French government had long known that its air force lagged far behind Germany's. In mid-January of 1938, Baron Amaury de La Grange, the French Air Minister, came to America in quest of planes. After meeting FDR at the White House, he laid out some grim figures in a talk with Joseph C. Green, U.S. Director of Armaments and Munitions. By the end of '38, La Grange said, Hitler would have 4000 modern planes, and France no more than 300, and it would take two years for French production to catch up with Germany's.1 Given the constraints of the Neutrality Act, however, La Grange could get no planes from America, and in mid-September '38, when Charles Lindbergh met La Grange at the Chantilly house of William Bullitt, U.S. Ambassador to France, La Grange was still lamenting "the desperate state of French aviation" (Paillat 1: 365). Likewise, Prime Minister Daladier could do little more than wring his hands. On the morning of October 1, the day after signing the Munich agreement, he said, "If I had had three or four thousand planes, there would have been no Munich!" (Paillat 1: 365).
This point was fully understood by Ambassador Bullitt, who supported the French so warmly that on September 9 he had publically --though inaccurately--called France and America "united in war and peace." Knowing all too well that neither France nor Britain nor both together could match German air power, but knowing also that FDR was constrained by the Neutrality Act, Bullitt and Guy La Chambre--the new French Air Minister-- conceived a plan to have the separate parts of American-designed aircraft assembled in Canada. But since this would require at very least the authorization of FDR, Bullitt returned to Washington to explain his plan to the president, whom he met on the evening of October 13 (Watt 129-30). Five days later, thanks to Bullitt's intervention, FDR received at Hyde Park a secret emissary from Daladier: Jean Monnet, an international financier now best remembered as the architect of the European Common Market (Paillat 1: 366). As noted already, Monnet would soon be negotiating for American planes in Washington, but before he did so, FDR received at Hyde Park on October 21 another emissary--an old Scottish friend named Sir Arthur Murray (not to be confused with the American dancing teacher!). After talking with this visitor, who represented Neville Chamberlain, the president secretly offered the British prime minister "the industrial resources of the American nation" in the event of war with the dictators, and also--in a separate note to the British Air Minister--all the parts and materials needed to make the democracies overwhelmingly superior in the air (Watt 129-30).
Politically speaking, FDR was flying free of all control towers. Since his offer not only violated the Neutrality Act but would have incensed the isolationist majority in Congress and alarmed much of the American public, it had to be kept secret from nearly everyone, including the British Embassy in Washington and the American Embassy in London, where Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy strongly opposed any American involvement in the coming war (Watt 130). But working in secret, FDR did all he could to support the French as well as the British. Shortly after meeting him at Hyde Park on October 18, Monnet told Daladier that American industry could deliver to France both bombers and fighter planes by April of 1939 (Paillat 1: 369). A few days later, Daladier and La Chambre asked Monnet to return to America and order anything up to 1000 planes for delivery by July of 1939, with payment--said Daladier--to be his affair (Paillat 1: 369).
By now Roosevelt believed not just that America should and could furnish planes to Britain and France, but also that America needed many more planes for its own protection as well as projection of authority. Meeting Monnet at the White House on November 14, he echoed what Daladier had said about air power and Munich. If, he said, America had had 5000 planes in the summer of '38 and could immediately build 10,000 more, "Hitler would not have dared to take the stand he did." (Watt 133). But even now, Roosevelt himself could not directly offer the French any American planes. The best he could do was to grant permission for the French to examine three secret prototypes of American warplanes including the Douglas 7B. This appalled Hap Arnold, Chief of the Air Force. When Arnold threatened to resign if FDR did not rescind his permission, the president brought him part way around: the French, Arnold agreed, could see two of the three planes so long as they wouldn't see the Douglas 7B. But in mid-January 1939, FDR overrode Arnold altogether. Daring him to resign, he signed a written order authorizing French aviators not only to examine but to experiment with the 7B (Paillat 1: 371). And since the Procurement Division of the U.S, Treasury worked closely with both the Army and the Navy to buy planes, he routed his order through Treasury Secretary Morgenthau--thereby sidelining Arnold, as noted earlier.
So it was that the men on board the Douglas 7B for its test flight at Mines Field on January 23 included not just the American test pilot and the American engineer but also--tucked into the aft fuselage--a 33-year-old French Air Force Captain named Paul Chemidlin. Since cockpit voice recorders would not come along until nearly 20 years later, we do not know just what Chemidlin may have said to the pilot, Johnny Cable, or what he asked him to do once the plane was in the air. (Reportedly, Cable had been miffed by French criticism of the 7B after an earlier test flight, and wanted to "make the Frenchman eat his words, or in other words, to give the Frenchman a ride" [Huston 88]). But all we know for certain--chiefly from eyewitnesses--is what the pilot did.
After taking off and putting the high-winged, tri-cycled geared plane through a series of tricky maneuvers, Cable cut one of the engines to see--or to show Chemidlin-- how well the plane could climb at half power. But at low altitude the plane fell into a steep vertical bank and then rolled into a flat spin--something all but impossible to wriggle out of. Even after restarting the silenced engine and gunning both engines, Cable could not control the plane. So at less than 500 feet he popped out of his hatch and jumped. Below him in the parking lot of the North American Aviation Company, the mechanics who were sitting in their cars and munching their sandwiches while looking up at the sky saw the heavy, spinning plane headed straight for them.
As they fled to safety, the plunging pilot yanked the ripcord of his parachute at less than 200 feet. But it merely trailed behind him like a long white streamer, and his life ended as soon as he hit the ground. Less than 50 feet away the plane landed in a fiery heap that engulfed the engineer, John Parks, who had not bailed out, along with nine of the parked cars. The French captain was luckier. He had never lost consciousness during the whole spinning fall of the plane and the final crash, and just before the wing tanks exploded into flame, he was dragged from the rear of the wreckage by two North American workers named Jimmie Martin and George Hacker. He got away with a broken leg, severe back injuries, and a slight concussion.
Who then was this sole survivor of the fiery crash of this top-secret bomber? Though Douglas officials on the ground identified him simply as a mechanic named Smithin or Schmidt (sources differ), he was admitted to Santa Monica Hospital as "Paul Chemidlin, Paris, France, c/o Douglas Aircraft Corp." He confirmed his nationality by speaking broken English with a heavy French accent but refused to say anything about what he had been doing in the plane, and equally tight-lipped was his "unidentified friend, also apparently French," whom we now know was a French colonel named Jacquin.2 Nevetheless, when the press discovered the identity of the French captain, the Douglas corporation was forced to admit that he was not only a pilot but also a technical adviser to the French Purchasing Mission sent to buy American warplanes. The cat was now wholly out of the bag. News of the French mission infuriated Congressional isolationists, who immediately scheduled hearings.3
What then could FDR say? How much would he be forced to admit or confess? Whatever he said, he had to say something--and did. On the morning of January 27, four days after the 7B crashed and just hours before it was heatedly discussed at a secret session of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, FDR was asked at a press conference if "this Government [had] taken any steps to assist or facilitate France in buying planes in this country." Even though he had already taken dramatic steps to do so, the president calmly answered, "as you put the question, no," but went on to explain that it would be an "excellent thing" for America to sell planes to the French because
most of the airplane factories in this country are, today, idle. Six of the major companies are practically closed up. One of the largest engine companies just the other day laid off 1500 men. For our own program it is very desirable that we facilitate the getting of new orders to start the airplane plants going, especially if those orders can come in very quickly so that they will be substantially completed before our larger program can be authorized and actually under way. The French government did want planes and we told them there was no reason they should not place orders for planes.4
Here is a masterpiece of Rooseveltian equivocation. Having begun by saying --quite misleadingly--that the U.S. Government had taken no steps "to assist or facilitate France" in buying U.S. planes, the president goes on to say not only that it is "very desirable" to "facilitate the getting of new orders" for them but also that "we"--he and his cabinet officers--had encouraged the French to place them. He was equally equivocal in answering a much more specific question about the crash of the 7B. Did the Treasury Secretary, he was asked, issue "orders to permit a representative of the French Air Ministry to fly" in it? Not exactly, said FDR. First of all, "the Treasury and the War Department have said there was no objection to [the French] ordering planes from private companies." Secondly, the plane that crashed "was purely a manufacturer's plane" that was "being flown at the time . . . by the company" and "not yet . . . placed in competition with other planes" nor yet "accepted" by the U.S. army. "In other words," he wound up, "it was a perfectly normal purchase and a perfectly normal testing out of the plane" (Press Conference #521, p. 92).
If ever such a bare-faced misstatement of the facts could have ignited a pair of trousers, the president's pants should have burst at once into flame. At a secret session of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs held just two hours after the president's press conference, questions arising from his statements about the plane nearly provoked a fistfight between Morgenthau and Harry H. Woodring, Secretary of War (a position that later became Secretary of Defense). After Morgenthau echoed the president's claim that American airplane factories needed foreign orders, Woodring vehemently disputed the point, arguing that U.S. factories could not even meet foreign orders already on hand while also getting ready to arm America itself. In other words, in spite of what the president had just told the press, the War Department hardly raised "no objection" to French purchase of U.S. warplanes. Furthermore, even though Douglas officials still refused to comment on the cause of the crash or the reason why the French captain was on the plane, the senators wanted to know what demands he might have made on the pilot and whether those demands might have led the pilot to take a fatal risk: a deeply alarming question. The senators also learned just how perfectly abnormal was the presence of the French captain on the Douglas test plane--and how little the War Department approved of it.
A few weeks earlier, on a visit to Washington, Ambassador Bullitt had asked this department to let French officials examine the newest American warplanes, particularly the Douglas light bomber. Since this plane embodied military secrets developed with tax dollars, and since it included what was said to be the world's best bomb sight, a new type of radio, and a new altimeter, the War Department had said no: Air Corps regulations do not allow foreign powers access to experimental planes. But Bullitt, the senators learned, had talked both FDR and Morgenthau into supporting the French mission, and FDR himself had directed Secretary Woodring to issue the needed permission in the name of General "Hap" Arnold even though both men strongly opposed it. So even though Woodring and Morgenthau nearly came to blows over the French mission, it prevailed. By the time of the hearing Douglas had already agreed to deliver 60 planes to France by August 1, and France had also ordered 100 pursuit planes from Curtiss.5 In the following month, the British ordered 650 frontline military aircraft from American companies at a cost of 25 million dollars, and soon after, the French signed contracts worth 60 million dollars for 615 American warplanes (Crouch 430). In spite of the fiery crash of January 23, 7478 units of the Douglas 7B were eventually built, and they were flown not only by the USA and France but also Britain, Russia, and various other U.S. allies. Long before Pearl Harbor, then, and many months before Britain and France declared war against Germany, the United States was already part of the war to come.
Nevertheless, its commitment was challenged by a pro-Hitler rally held in New York just a few weeks after Roosevelt calmly told a press conference why an officially neutral America was selling planes to the French. On February 20, an estimated crowd of 22,000 gathered in Madison Square Garden to hear a speech by Fritz Julius Kuhn, leader of the German American Bund, an organization of German-born Americans that sought to make the Nazi party look good--as well as to keep America out of the war. But since the rally included three thousand members of the Bund's militia, the Ordnungsdienst, its stance was nakedly aggressive, especially when its militants got into fistfights with those who had come to heckle Kuhn. (At one point, an unemployed plumber who tried to rush the stage was promptly beaten and stripped of his pants.) And Kuhn himself was just as combative. Backed by swastikas alternating with American flags and by a gigantic portrait of George Washington shown standing under the Nazi eagle (and thus recast as an arch-fascist), Kuhn was introduced as the man they all loved "for the enemies he has made" and acclaimed--like Hitler-- with a fusillade of straight-arm salutes. Kuhn then demonized Roosevelt as the agent of a Bolshevik-Jewish conspiracy, father not of a New Deal but a "Jew Deal." In making this charge, Kuhn threw red meat to the many members of the Christian Front in his audience: people roused by the Detroit-based "radio priest" named Charles Coughlin, whose magazine Social Justice had earlier called for a "crusade against the anti-Christian forces of the red revolution."6 (Perlstein 40). Tying reds to Jews, Kuhn simply echoed and amplified the message loudly proclaimed by rally banners such as "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian Americans."
Yet in spite of its appeal to such Americans--to the large number of Christians in America who hated both Communists and Jews--the rally proved to be only a peak from which the German American Bund rapidly descended. Shortly after the rally, Kuhn was arrested by Thomas Dewey, New York District Attorney, for embezzling $14,000 from the Bund, and was later sent to prison for tax evasion as well as embezzlement. In the wake of Kuhn's arrest, the Bund itself slowly expired until breathing its last on December 8, 1941, when--one day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--the U.S. declared war on Germany as well as Japan. But our story of what happened in 1939 must now return from America to Europe, where--fresh from seizing Czechoslovakia-- Hitler was setting his sights on Poland.
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