— 2b is an effective bombing range less than one-fourth the straight-line cruising radius of the plane under optimum conditions, In other words a plane capable, without too much stripping of its equipment, of a 6,000-mile non-stop flight “would probably have an effective bombing range of substantially less than manne? “1,500 miles, | (OO ,= ity With atomic bombs, however, the considerations cay e. severely limit bomb range tend to vanish, C S ' . There“is no question of increasing the number of bombs in order to make the sortie profitable, quite enough, . Yescribed above which so “2. One per plane is The gross weight of the atomic bomb is secret, but even if it weighed two to four tons it would still be a light load for a Be29, certainly be a sufficient ture on a single sortie, It would pay load to warrant any conceivable military expendiThe next step then becomes apparent, Under the callously utilitarian standards of military bookkeeping, a plane and its crew can very well be sacrificed in order to deliver an atomic bomb to an extreme distance, We have, after all, the recent and unforgettable experience of the Japanese Kamikaze, Ly Thus, the plane can make its entire flight in one direction, and its range would be almost as great with a single atomic bomb as it would be with no bomb load whatever, The non-stop flight during November 1915 of a Be29 from Guam to Washington, D.C., almost 8,200 statute miles, was in this respect Neg, li, On several occasions the U. S. Army Air Forces also demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice availability of planes and crews——though not the lives of the latter—in order to carry out specific missions, Thus in the Doolittle raid against Japan of April 1942, in which sixteen Mitchell bombers took off from the carrier Hornet it was known beforehand that none of the planes would be recovered even if they succeeded in reaching China (which several failed to do for lack of fuel) and that the members of the crews hazard, were exposing themselves to uncommon And the cost of the entire expedition was accepted mainly for the sake of dropping 146 tons of ordinary bombs! Similarly, several of the Liberators which bombed the Ploesti oil fields in August 193 had insufficient fuel to return to their bases in North Africa and, as was foreseen, had to land in neutral Turkey where planes and crews were interned, S.2