Today -100: February 18, 1925: A group of aircraft could wipe out New York in a day

The House Aircraft Committee hears from army and navy leaders in a closed-door session that US air defenses are weak AF (which does not here stand for Air Force). The continental US needs 106 pursuit planes but has 21, 106 attack planes but has 1, 58 bombers but has 24. Panama, Hawaii and the Philippines are also under-planed, if that’s a word, which it isn’t. Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Service says “A group of aircraft could wipe out New York in a day. The only defense would be from the air.” He’s talking about an aerial poison gas attack rather than bombing.

Fighting for Coolidge’s nomination of Charles Warren to be attorney general, the White House publishes the defenses of the sugar companies, one of which Warren represented until his nomination, against an anti-trust action the FTC is hearing.

Florence Prag Kahn (R) is elected to Congress from northern California in a special election to replace her husband Julius Kahn, who died two months ago. She’ll be the first Jewish woman in Congress, the 5th overall, and will be in office until she loses the 1936 election. Maybe at some point her election will get more than a single paragraph on the bottom of page 3, next to a much longer article on Mussolini having the flu and below a slightly longer article on a city councilman in Bath, England proposing a tax on women who bob their hair.

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