Books: Crate to Superfort

GLOBAL MISSION (626 pp.)—H. H. Arnold—Harper ($5).

One day in June 1912, at a little airbase near Washington, D.C., 2nd Lieut. Henry Harley ("Hap") Arnold had a conversation that five-star General Arnold still likes to remember. Infantry Captain Billy Mitchell, 32, had just come back from Japan where he had had a look at the Japanese army. Did Lieut. Arnold know that the Japs had a bigger air force than the U.S.—ten planes to the U.S.'s total of four? Captain Mitchell was writing a paper for the War College on the future of military...