ARMY & NAVY: Shows

ARMY & NAVY

Last week the Panama Canal was blown up in the imaginations of U. S. Army and Navy men. With the U. S. battle fleet at far-away Hawaii, an enemy fleet was thought to be snoring up the Atlantic Coast to attack Hampton Roads. The U. S. Joint Army and Navy Board, having perfected plans for just such an emergency, proceeded with a rapid, potent mobilization of coast defense units at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.

From Fort Eustis, Va., to Fort Story, near Norfolk, Va., an armament train carried the 52nd Railway Artillery Regiment with 8-inch rifles, 12-inch mortars, ammunition cars. A battalion of the 12th Coast Artillery also mobilized at Fort Story together with submarine minelayers, a searchlight platoon, an ordnance company and weather men. Great 16-inch coast guns were unlimbered in their seaside pits and tilted at the far horizon. Then, as the attacking “fleet” steamed near in the defenders’ fancy, shore guns of all sizes roared, bombs burst in midsea, aircraft towered and circled to observe and report the salvation of Washington, Annapolis, Baltimore.

While the Virginia capes were being defended, bevies of airplanes swooped and wheeled over Langley Field, Va., to demonstrate how they would treat an infantry regiment and wagon train should they have been landed by an invader. The Army Air Corps’ high command issued winged invitations to the press and all flew out from Bolling field to see the show.