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Seaplanes were then flying the oceans, but the North Atlantic was a route to be flown regularly only by veteran pilots. It was deserted by aircraft in the winter. Lord Lothian's whisper was more than the cautious enunciation of a secret. It indicated an awareness of how Billy-Mitchellesque most people would have considered Britain's plan: the regular delivery of military aircraft across the Atlantic, come hell or foul weather, by airmen whose experience was far below the level of transatlantic airline men.
The deliveries were made and by the hundreds. In 1940 the first U.S. aircraft were flown to Canada's border, solemnly wheeled across (to keep neutrality technically inviolate though the world was burning). R.A.F. Ferry Command pilots then took over, flew the planes, with a brief stop in Newfoundland, across to England. Thus Britain was first to shuttle planes, men and freight across the North Atlantic.
Retreat from Neutrality. In June 1941, when the U.S. had decided to relax some of the niceties of,a ruinous neutrality, the U.S. Army set up its own Ferrying Command to deliver bombers to England itself. Its chief: the late Major General Robert Olds, then a colonel.
Most of the early planes carried only their crews and their own spare parts. Soon they were carrying U.S. mail pouches. Then an occasional military passenger hooked a ride. From these casual beginnings came the Army's international air transport. It was not until after Pearl Harbor that men and supplies were regularly carried by air. It was done then because it had to be done.
Pearl Harbor found the U.S. Army with no real air transport beyond its long-starved domestic system (for inter-airdrome deliveries of engines, propellers and other freight). In January 1942, President Roosevelt ordered two squadrons of the 7th Heavy Bombardment Group to Mac-Arthur's relief, via the South Atlantic, Africa and India. To a friend one of the pilots of a 7th Group Liberator wrote: "The total weight of my plane was over 60,000 Ib. [standard maximum, 56,000]. I believe that was the first time an air unit ever moved with all its equipment in its air echelon alone" (i.e., with enough equipment aboard to begin fighting).
Lesson in Defeat. In the early days of the war the Air Ferrying Command grew spasmodically, constantly hamstrung by the demand for combat planes—and the general confusion. What air transport there was in battle zones was done largely by combat pilots in war craft, which were loaded to the last limit of safety. Not until July 1942, when the Air Ferrying Command became Air Transport Command, was there an organized effort to fly cargo regularly over established routes.
Hal George, who had succeeded Olds in
April 1942, took over the new organization and went to work with a broad charter. He knew what he wanted: worldwide operations called for experienced operators. The Army had few, or none. General George turned to a group that had plenty: U.S. airlines.
Airlines' Staff. For his chief of staff George picked a tall Texan who had wrought a wonder of airline organization and operation: 43-year-old Cyrus Rowlett Smith, president of American Airlines (biggest in the U.S.). C. R. Smith put on a colonel's uniform, went to work, has won a brigadier's star for the job he has done.