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2012 LEGACY EXEMPLAR PRINT
"MY DEAR CURT...."
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USAFA 2012
Exemplar Original Painting Legacy and Heritage Series ….
General Hap Arnold
“My Dear Curt ….”
By Richard R. Broome
The
inspiration for creating our United States Air Force Academy Class
of 2012 Exemplar painting came from a lifetime of learning and
personal knowledge gained from growing up as one of the first
“Baby Boomers” born during the era following World War II. My
father George W. Broome served as both a combat photographer and
special lab technician with the 5th Air Force in the
Pacific Theater between 1942 until shortly after the capitulation
in 1945. Stateside Mom served as a volunteer with various
organizations and her greatest thrill was being Mamie Eisenhower’s
personal nurse’s aid at Fitzsimons hospital in
Denver.
I well remember
that everyone’s Mom and Dad and relatives had served in some
capacity during the war. My Uncle James P. Smith was an aircraft
mechanic on Navy Vega Ventura’s assigned in the Caribbean. My
cousin once removed was Air Corps Captain James Wayne Wood who
flew B-17’s with the mighty 8th Air Force in Europe.
Later he would gain fame as a test pilot at Edwards and was
assigned as the first astronaut selectee for the X-20 Dyna Soar.
Uncle H. T. Martin had been a Martin B-26 instructor pilot in
Tampa when the Marauder had a reputation of “One a day in
Tampa Bay”
due to the high wing loading and VMC characteristics of that
design. And my uncle Dave Alexander was a P-51 Mustang driver.
My closest
childhood friend and neighbor John Lee Ballantyne’s mother had
been a WASP. Mr. Ballantyne was a combat glider pilot flying two
missions into Normandy, the first on D Day. The Ballantyne family
started my passion for flying and all things aviation when I was
seven years old. I was taking flying lessons at age 10 after
winning a model building contest to celebrate the opening of
Pueblo Memorial Airport in 1956.
A few blocks down
the street lived the Bartley family. Mr. Bartley was a B-24D
pilot who was shot down and held in Nazi prison camps during the
ill-fated Ploesti mission. He was horribly burned in the crash
and yet he never complained. Pueblo became a training base for
the B-24 and later B-29 bombers. As a kid I can remember there
were still a lot of war surplus aircraft including T-6’D’s stacked
on top of one another next to Hangar Two.
Growing up we
went to see all the war and aviation movies. We built model
airplanes. And all of the kids learned first hand about
everyone’s service which included every branch of the service and
all theaters of operation.
My wife “Miss
Billie” was seventh born in her large family. We met when we were
seven years old and her oldest brother Hank had served with the
Marines in the Pacific, Hank was one of the first to land on Iwo
Jima. Hank stayed in the USMC for a lifetime career and was the
enlisted man shown on the 1965 Marine Corps recruiting calendar.
Billie and I were married in ’65 and at that time Hank had
achieved the highest enlisted rank in the Corps and was assigned
to Camp Pendleton.
With two tours to Viet Nam under his belt you would never have
known he was one of the toughest DI’s when that was his duty.
When the USAFA
Class of 2012 commissioned us to create a painting of their
Exemplar General Henry “Hap” Arnold we discussed various ideas and
it was determined that an original painting of the fantastic
statue of General Arnold next to Arnold Hall would be perfect for
this historical heritage and legacy painting. Our son James had
the idea for how to compose and create this painting. And with
his great photography the actual creative work was a piece of
cake.
The title of this
painting “My Dear Curt …” tells the story of the
General and the B-29 Superfortress. Thus it is as much a part of
the legacy as the artwork itself. General Arnold was responsible
for rushing the Boeing B-29 into production. Early problems with
the design and especially the engines resulted in a number of
tragic accidents. Certainly when Boeing’s number one pilot Eddie
Allen lost his life in a crash near the Boeing factory the
development of the pressurized high flying Superfortress was
called into question. At that time the thinking was that the only
way to prosecute the war against Imperialistic Japan was through
high altitude bombing.
General Arnold
personally selected Colonel Paul Tibbets II to take over the
development of the extremely complicated state of the art design.
Tibbets was the youngest full Colonel in the Air Force at the
time. Changes on the factory floor were happening so fast that
the modified aircraft were going into service with serious
problems.
The first group
of completed bombers flew ferry flights to India where they were
to be based. It would take many dozens of ferry flights that were
loaded with aviation gasoline and flown over the Himalayan
mountain ranges to the base in China from which they would fly the
first missions against
Japan.
Many of the million dollar bombers were lost on these flights due
to engine fires or gasoline explosions in the specially designed
fuel tanks inserted in the bomb bays.
Once they had
enough fuel to fly the first missions the results of the bombing
missions were terrible. The first mission flown by the
China
based B-29’s was on June 15, 1944. They attacked a steel mill in
Kyushu and sixty of the huge bombers reached the target. Only one
bomb hit the plant and seven B-29’s were lost on the mission. The
missions were flown at 30,000 feet and even though the famed
Norden bomb sight was showing the targets to be perfectly captured
between the cross hairs the munitions were far off target. The
Japanese people had always referred to as the “Divine Wind” was
discovered to be affecting the trajectory of the bombs.
This high
altitude wind came blasting out of
Siberia across the
Sea of Japan
at speeds up to 250 miles per hour. If a Boeing flew
perpendicular to the wind it skidded sideways! Flying with the
wind the Superfortress would show a groundspeed in excess of 450
miles per hour. This was far too fast for the famed Norden
bombsite to be effective. This unknown high altitude phenomenon
is now understood and commonly referred to as the “Jet Stream.”
General Arnold
called in his best European General Curtis LeMay who was also the
youngest General in the army air force at only 38 years of age.
He had great bravery and had flown many dangerous missions in
Europe.
LeMay was assigned to solve the problems with the Boeing and prove
that the B-29 had the ability to win the war.
General LeMay
later recorded that Hap Arnold told him: “You go ahead and
get results with the B-29. If you don’t get results you will be
fired.” Meanwhile American military forces were capturing
and occupying the island chains leading up the Pacific toward the
land of the rising sun.
When Saipan was
captured LeMay moved the operations of the B-29 to the Mariana
Islands. As new bases were established the long haul flights out
of China
were no longer necessary and the Army Air Force began flying their
long haul missions from these bases. General LeMay continued the
air force philosophy of high altitude bombing for which the giant
Boeing was designed. However the crews were constantly fighting
the buffeting winds which were as mysterious to the flight crews
and meteorologists.
Two major
decisions were made by General LeMay which would later become
quite controversial in political thinking. First he determined
that the missions would have to be flown at low altitude to avoid
the stratospheric blasts of wind coming out of Siberia. LeMay
determined that the Japanese defense triple A guns were not
effective at low altitudes.
General LeMay’s
second decision was to develop miniature 6.5 pound bomblets that
were clustered into larger bundles. Inside these miniature bombs
was jellied gasoline commonly known today as napalm. Thus set the
stage for the fire bomb raids against the Japanese industrial
complexes which included civilian targets because the majority of
the population of the huge cities like Tokyo involved civilians
manufacturing war equipment inside their homes.
In reflecting
back on American history to the role of the Boeing B-29 during
World War II -- as it really happened and without historical
revisionism -- there is no doubt that General LeMay’s strategy to
use the pressurized high performance bomber at low altitudes in
the controversial napalm fire bomb raids did indeed inflict
tremendous damage and destruction on Japan. The strategy and
tactics won the war.
The first of
these raids took place on March 9, 1945 when 344 B-29 bombers flew
out of Guam, Saipan and Tinian. Crews were shocked to learn at
the mission briefing that General LeMay had ordered the bombers
stripped of their gunner’s ammunition, and guns and most figured
it was a death sentence to be flying the mission at 5,000 feet.
The weight
savings was 2700 pounds. This allowed each of the B-29s to carry
over a ton of the newly developed M69 napalm cluster bombs to be
carried to the targets. When the last of the giant B-29’s folded
its wheels and set the vector for Tokyo the total bomb tonnage was
calculated to be 3,334,000 pounds of the deadly pipe bomb sized
napalm devices. Each bomblet in the huge cluster only weighed six
pounds,
The first bombers
over Tokyo flew patterns to mark the ground with a huge X and the
for several hours bombs rained on the civilian and military
industrial areas of the huge city burning over 12.5 square miles
to the ground. The conflagrations caused millions of civilian
“collateral damage” injuries, tragic casualties, and death to the
Japanese population who were innocent victims and not directly
involved in the war effort.
LeMay knew when
he sent out the first armada of B-29’s that his career and the
fate of American forces were on the line. The crew chiefs for the
huge 344 aircraft formations figured they were saluting off their
best friends when the bombers departed for the fist fire bomb
mission. Some say that the expected casualty losses off this huge
formation of Boeing B-29’s was estimated by some planners to be
perhaps up to 70 percent of the crews and aircraft lost.
General LeMay
decided not to tell his Boss and wrote:
“If I do it I
won’t say a thing to General Arnold in advance. Why should I?
He’s on the hook in order to get some results out of the B-29’s.
But if I set up this deal, and Arnold O.K.’s it beforehand, then
he would have to assume some of the responsibility. And if I
don’t tell him, and it’s all a failure, and I don’t produce any
results, then he can fire me. And he can put another commander in
here, and still have a chance to make something out of the 29’s.
This is sound, this is practical, this is the way I’ll do it: not
one word to General Arnold.
One can only
imagine what
LeMay might have
been thinking during the long hours it took for the mission to be
completed. With radio silence there was no real way to access the
situation back in his headquarters. After what must have seemed
like an eternity the B-29s began returning to base. Surprisingly
there were few losses of aircraft or crews with the majority of
missing aircraft lost due to fuel exhaustion or engine problems
over the Pacific Ocean.
When word of the
success of the mission reached General Arnold in Washington he
penned a hand written letter to General LeMay to congratulate him
on his battle plan and success of the first mission. General
Arnold’s letter began with the words My Dear Curt …
which is why we decided to use this as the title this historical
painting.
I chose to depict
a B-29 flying low over the terrazzo for the primary aircraft in
the work of art. While off in the distance I painted a B-25 in
which my father had flown many times when recovering combat
reconnaissance photography shot by Lockheed P-38 photo ships that
were then known as the F-5. Dad had photos of his B-25 in his
personal photo collection. It was an old worn out Mitchell which
had previously seen duty flying with the famed “Air Apache’s”
As we have done
for almost forty years there is great symbolism in the 2012
Exemplar painting because the numbers 29 and 25 add up to 54 and
the great “HAP” Class of 2012 is the 54th graduating
class from our Air Force Academy!
Without debating
the politics or decisions made at this time in American history
General Hap Arnold later became the “Father” of the Air Force and
the missions flown by the B-29’s – to include both nuclear
missions – certainly brought World War Two to a quicker conclusion
with Japan’s capitulation coming on September 22, 1945.
Military
historians throughout the world seem to concur that the Boeing
B-29 won the war with
Japan.
And it is generally agreed sixty-five years later that the
controversial fire bomb and nuclear missions resulted in far less
casualties on both sides than would have happened if an all out
ground invasion and occupation of Imperialistic Japan had been
necessary.
Why purchase a Print of this painting?
True historical
fine art has great value from both the perspective of what it
represents in capturing the moment of time represented.
Throughout the history of the arts when considering the subject
matter and depiction of events that resulted in both legacy and
heritage the true value is established and has always been shared
through the talents of artists. Art is a great investment.
Capturing specific legacy and heritage -- as seen through the eye,
heart and soul of the artists – great art has always proven to be
a worthy investment. Throughout history the best in show always
increase in value with time.
