AIR: Defense Test on the Mainland

The week's best test of air defenses on the U.S. mainland was caused by a phony air raid on the relatively unthreatened East Coast.

In San Francisco, where the air-raid warnings sounded in earnest, the first alarm came at night and no Army planes took off. (Said Brigadier General William O. Ryan, Chief of the Fourth Interceptor Command: "You don't send planes up unless you know what the enemy is doing and where he is going, and you don't send planes up in the dark unless you know what you are doing.") But at Mitchel Field, L.I. the alarm came in...

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