Newspapers / The Waynesville Mountaineer (Waynesville, … / Aug. 6, 1942, edition 1 / Page 9
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THE WAYNESVILLE MOUNiAlNEER Page 9 lieutenant-Colonel Reed Heads New England Fighter Command AUGUST 6, 1942 Ubsday, few England Ue Of Waynesville , .Is jJJ fle Protects Air C Korth. kJiwr NoteThrough the Thp Boston Sunday reproducing the story K rReed, "son of M, James W. Reed, of Way- By Sam Gibson. divine conditions seemingly feleh for any pilot, a lone f iver took off from East bos Lfoi for Mitchell ..wn'nn Long Island. Sti on the eve of the army over the flying of the air afromthe con.mercia air hneg, s fi.at wppV. when Wn aunng l mm Winter handed them every L of dirty weather that has ever ept down over inw vuunj. bi. flwr out 01 Boswiu gui. mo L, weather the day before the W t TT7l am. Iia urn a CorpS tOOK OVer. YVUCii us noo than an hour out of Boston, his stuck its nose into nowiing L..ni Hp knew that he was kef here near Hartford air field, he jwooped down ana maae ii e!y. Before morning, mo miuw Hriftine clean over his plane. (Hut was young Lieutenant Min im. W. Reed, heading for his L field after making a survey Sew England air lanes lor tne w mail service. For a year alter it. h: flew the mail between New rk and Boston, was one of the my dyers who made a fine job of (air weather and low. Now, Minthorne Reed is back in ton again. He's still quite a lung fellow, only 37 years old, it silver leaves that show he s a utenant-colonel perch on his lulders. That isn't a whole lot rank, either, for an army officer Piling down the job he took on after Pearl Harbor. Boss of Hot Fighters me'i regional commander of the ht Fighter Command, which cov- practically all of New England. latmake him the boss of swarms lighter pilots, based with their k little pursuit jobs, on a secret imber of tiny camouflaged land- I fields all over the New England fates. . They're the boys whose job it is take to the air on a second s rio- engines hot, machine guns idy, whenever unidentified planes ( reported winging their way Fard Boston or anywhere else in region. Being commander of these flying 18 a Dig job in itself, but His Job Is To Protect New England Homes From Air Raids 1 - LIEUTENANT-COLONEL MINTHORNE REEO, a Waynesville man, is stationed in Boston, and is nmm.Hf nf t.h lTirt Fio-htr Command, which covers most all of New England. ( Sketch by J. F. Maleanfaut, Sunday Boston Post staff artist). ,:, ; J.':'J behind them Lieutenant-Colonel Reed directs the efforts of nearly 150,000 Civilians who are contrib uting their time, working at all hours of the day and night, the clock around, to set up a network of observation posts past which no raiding bomber : has a chance to get unheralded. It's a great observation system that the army flyer has set up. Let any unidentified aircraft stick its nose over even a far corner of Maine and Colonel Reed, sitting in his control centre, whose location is as secret as that of the fighter fields, guarantees to have nearby fighter planes in the air to inter cept the stranger within two min utes.; . - That's for the farthest point from the information centre. If a strange or so from the centre, the inter ceptor planes will be taking the air in less than SO seconds. That's the sort of proction against bomb raids that this Minthorne Reed has set up, with a lot of civilian help, which he characterizes as the most efficient, the most unselfish that he has ever found, in or out of the service. Praise New England People "You cant beat New England pepole for taking hold of a job and seeing it through," Lieutenant Colonel Reed told this reporter, then added with a grin, "But New England weather is just as unpre dictable as it was when I flew the mail up there." This tall, slender, straight flyer of fighting planes hails from Way nesville, N. : Ci but most of his flying life has been spent in the Northern part of the nation. A letter man at track, he got out of Duke University in 1928 just in time to get into the last army air corps class, before Congress de cided that there weren't going to be any more wars, anyway, so why spend money to train young men to fly fighting planes. After graduating from the fly ing school, Minthorne Reed went to the 1st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Feld, Mt. Clements, Mich. He has been flying hot jobs ever since, save for interludes taking courses in engineering, maintenance, radio communications, blind flying and the like, And there was the year out flying the mails. . However, all the time he was known as a pursuit pilot, finally wound up at Mitchell Filed with the 3.'5rd Pursuit Group. He was with the group, : serving in the Carolina maneuvers under General Kepner, when he was ordered to Boston, arriving here Dec. 11, just four days after Pearl Harbor. "Seems like something is always setting me down in Boston, but that doesn't make me mad," he said. His first visit to The Hub was in 1931. With the 1st Pursuit Group he flew here from Selfridge, put on an air show during the first Boston Legion convention that thrilled millions. They were pilot ing Boering Prl2s, which were pret ty hot ships then. He has flown with General Jimmy Doolittle at many an air show, deems that spectacular airman the daddy of them all, even though he has gone over to the bombers, now. : These Men Alert The heart of the whole setup that is to protect Boston from air at tack is the information centre. The nerve centres are in "filter" pfane shows up'off Boston harbor, stations all over New - England or anywhere within a hundred miles w mwl . " Heads Ground Forces r 1.1. ' . 1 It was announced in London by Lieut. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of all American forces in the European theatre of war, that Maj. Gen. M. W. Clark (above) ting into the air. In short, the cen tres have advance information on every friendly plane in the air at all times. Or, at least, they're sup posed to have. The other day, a service plane took off on sudden orders. It was in the air just about two minutes before it was reported into the cen tre. That was too late. It had been spotted in 15 seconds by an observer and reported and check ed. In less than a minute after the take-off, interceptor planes were up after it. Quick Identification That's what would happen should the Axis try aerial invasion of New England. The fields are installed, the interceptor fighter planes are on them and the pilots are con stantly on the alert. They have to be, for the Fighter Command is likely to flash the word of an un identified plane anywhere, any time. And when theye're ordered out after an intruder they never know whether its only a test or whether there'll be shooting to do. They get the word by radio. "Strikes me that flying an unre ported plane around here would be a pretty hazardous . occupation," the reporter observed. "Might get has been annotated to head the ground forces in England. This is a J stot up before those interceptor phonephoto. (Central Pr) out you weren't a save that time for the main office. The nerves reach out to an undis closed number of observation posts scattered everywhere, where the more than iZ&.UUO observers are,v, j;.i.f ij4i u i8t. - they'd look for Axis markings, then guys found jerry." "Well, that hasn't happened yet, and we don't believe it will," Colo nel Reed explained. "Once an in terceptor gets on the tail of an un reported plane, he's usually able to identify it very quickly. If on duty, day and night. "Try and fool those observers," challenges Colonel Reed. "We've tried it every wuy in the world and never yet has a test plane got by them to any stategic centre; they've spotted it in plenty of time, every test, to get the fighters up and the anti-aircraft and civilian air raid protection groups notified and on the alert." In that short statement, one gets a working knowledge of the func tioning of the air-raid protection wall that has been set up, not all over New England, but in every coastal section of the nation. Gath ered in the Information Centre are representatives of the Army and Navy Air Corps, the Civilian Aeronautics Administration, the Coast Artillery, that operates anti aircraft guns, and civilian air raid precautions. No army or navy plane takes off or flies into the district without notifying representatives at all centres concerned. Regular scheduled- transport- plane- report to the CAA representative before get- at the silhouette. They spend days, weeks, most of their off time, studying the silhouettes of enemy planes of all classes; they're pretty hard to fool, now." Several formations of bombers thundered over Boston, last Tues day. Those were test formations. Of course, it hasn't been told what field they took off from, but inter ceptor outfits were on top of all of them long before they got any where near Boston or any other strategic centre. Don't Worry about bombers slip ping in over the ocean, either; that contingency has been taken care of. The means of spotting planes ap proaching over the water is a se cret, but remember that one lone listener spotted the Japs' bombers roaring in on Pearl Harbor a full hour before the bombs began to drop. And interceptor planes can streak a long way in an hour, clean across New England, if need be.. , ' When the) "interceptor ,' pilots (Continued on page 16) A New Easy Way To Buy! 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The Waynesville Mountaineer (Waynesville, N.C.)
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Aug. 6, 1942, edition 1
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