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Kaltenborn Edits the News 41-05-27 xxx Bismark Sunk
00:13:24
Kaltenborn Edits the News 41-05-27 xxx Bismark Sunk
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- [00:00]
Narrator
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- [01:02]
H.V. Keltonborn
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- [02:26]
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Good evening everybody. The important thing to remember in connection with the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck is that she was discovered, pursued, located and crippled by aircraft. Chief credit for finding the Bismarck is given to an American built PBY5 flying boat. These planes have a cruising range of 5,000 miles and like American bombers, need no convoys or patrols or shipping space to get them across the Atlantic. And today the President asked Congress for another three and a half billions to manufacture more bombers and more flying boats to Build a Bismarck takes over four years and costs something like $80 million. But the time will soon be here when a bomber can be completed in less than four months and the bomber costs only $100,000. On the same day on which we hear of the sinking of the Bismarck, Britain reveals that the Germans sank four cruisers and two destroyers with their bombing planes in the Battle of Crete. Here too, superior air power was more important than superior sea power. Surface navies are still important, but sea power without air power has lost its historic might and mission. And in a crisis where speed is essential, bombers must precede battleships. Despite losses, the British navy is still in action at Crete. It is reinforcing the British and preventing seaborne German forces from reaching Crete. But it does so at great risk. The Germans with their control of the air. Today report hits on several additional British warships. Fierce fighting continues in western Crete where the Germans continue to have the upper hand. The British may have to give up the western half of the island and concentrate their remaining forces in the eastern half. Vichy today made a new pledge to the United States. A note delivered by the French ambassador pledges France will not surrender her fleet or her colonial empire to the Germans. But suppose the Germans take them as they took the Syrian heir brooms. Vichy is not a free agent. And we must remember that in appraising any promises Vichy may make. The dominant topic in Florida and Georgia, where I have just made a brief stay, is the power shortage. Everywhere there are appeals to the public through poster press and radio to conserve power. An unprecedented drought joined to an unprecedented defence demand have created a critical situation in many homes of the Southeast. The need to economize power will bring the first real sacrifice for defense. The private power companies of the south east are today eagerly looking towards the completion of new additions to that TVA power whose creation they once condemned is wasteful duplication. Today every prominent power company of the Southeast is joining with the Tennessee Valley Authority in widespread advertisements urging everyone to economize in the use of electric current. Air conditioning may have to go. Daylight saving may be extended and the sale and use of power consuming appliances may be curtailed. Some 40 Georgia mayors will meet in Atlanta tomorrow to launch a united Save Kilowatts program. Chairman McDonald of the Georgia Public Service Commission says it has come down to a plain question of whether we will run our air conditioned plants for comfort or build airplanes for our safety. In Pensacola yesterday I visited the most complete naval air training station I have seen so far. The last time I saw Pensacola, it was a sleepy Charming little Gulf town. Its municipal transportation system consisted of one car, one mule and one Negro driver. When the system met me on the main street, the driver hailed me. This was early in 1899 and I was a soldier in uniform. Sergeant, he called. You all want to ride? Sure, I said, but you're going the wrong way. That's all right, boss, he answered. I'll turn around. He unhitched his mule, hitched it to the other end of the car and off we went. I thought of that first Pensacola ride yesterday as I enjoyed another in a huge Navy amphibian transport plane which carried me over two training stations, a Navy yard, two coast artillery forts and some 30 airfields in a 15 minute flight around the shores of Pensacola Bay. Pensacola is an ideal base for naval aviation. It has the bay and the Gulf for seaplanes, 30 strategically located landing and practice fields for land planes and a deep water harbor big enough to hold the Atlantic fleet. Hundreds of aviation cadets are arriving each month, and at Pensacola they really learn how to fly. I was particularly impressed with the ground school training, which the boys don't like, but which is just as essential as learning how to fly. They have learned one thing at Pensacola that you can save many a young flyer from failure by teaching his teacher how to teach. Not every good flyer is a good teacher. By teaching teachers and eliminating men unfit for teaching, the Pensacola station has reduced eliminations by one half. While I was waiting yesterday to board a naval plane, an aviation cadet landing on the field jammed his brakes too hard and crashed. His plane nosed over on top of him. A siren sounded from the control power and in 30 seconds an ambulance, a control car and a wrecking car were alongside the plane. Within a minute the cadet was on his way to the hospital for a checkup. And within three minutes the wrecked plane was tilted right side to and on its way to the hangar. And all the time scores of other planes took off and landed in routine fashion. I also visited Fort Barangas and Fort Pickens and saw the army teach selectees how to shoot at 1212 inch gun. Practically everything in the way of armament at Fort Pickens is out of date. But the army has wisely decided to put this fort way at the bottom of the priority list. We don't propose to wait until an enemy sails into Pensacola Bay before tackling him. The men I saw training at Fort Pickens will soon man our new defense stations in the Caribbean and someday they may be sent to islands even further out in the Atlantic. Ambassador Wynant is on his way home from London for important consultations. He reaches New York by clipper on Friday. He will bring important information and may carry important decisions back to London. Clipper service across the Atlantic makes possible those complete private man to man exchanges which even the transatlantic telephone cannot provide. Tonight, the President will speak to 130 million Americans by radio. No previous president has ever been able to do that. At a time when this nation faced the risk of war. Few American presidents could have used radio with the persuasive skill of Franklin D. Roosevelt. But tonight, something more than skill and persuasion is needed and expected. We are waiting to hear what the President will say. We know that he will say it well. This speech would make history, no matter how poorly it might be delivered. But it comes at a turning point of one of the world's great wars and it will outline in more or less definite terms the policy which this nation will follow towards that war. Many people believe we are already in this war. Others believe that we are committed to this war. Still others see definite and clearly defined limits to this commitment. There is still a considerable aid short of war party which honestly believes that the President himself has it in his own hands to so limit and circumscribe our aid to Britain that we need not run the risk of war. Seven congressional isolationists headed by Senator Wheeler today sent a letter to the President warning him against the use of convoys and any direct naval action which might mean war. The President's answer was to call the congressional leaders of both parties to the White House late this afternoon for a review of the talk to the nation which he will deliver tonight. The isolationists had warned the President in their letter today that 80% of the people of the United States are opposed to any course which will take this nation into the European war. End quote. They remind him that under the Constitution, only Congress can declare war. But the letter of the isolationists says nothing about the Lend Lease Law under which, by the vote of 3/4 of Congress, we are definitely committed to aid Britain. It warns the President, but suggests no alternative course of action under which he could carry out the duty which Congress has assigned to him of providing all out effective aid to the British. The small group of isolationists in Congress have told the President what he should not do. This evening the President gave the duly selected leaders of both parties in Congress the opportunity of telling him what they think he should do. In the course of human history, there are times when doing nothing may be more disastrous than doing something. There are times when a council of migration is not enough. The true leader is almost always the man of action. Speaker of the House Rayburn, after hearing the president read his speech, told him he approved Spain's surrender in his hand. Many of you remember the abuse heaped upon the head of Woodrow Wilson, the scholar president who talked of peace without victory and sought to avoid war for the United States in a last great effort to bring about a fair and enduring peace in Europe. So when you listen to the president tonight, don't forget that he has taken counsel with many of our best minds. The great majority of our people has shown again and again that it trusts him, particularly in his conduct of our foreign affairs. The majority of our people has approved the policy of giving practical, effective help to Britain in the belief that this policy at least gave us a chance of avoiding total war. For in this at least, the isolationists are right. The American people do not willfully want war. The division that is among us arises because we differ as to the best ways of keeping every kind of war away from the Western world, which we have vowed to protect against aggression. And that means aggression by secret propagandists, saboteurs, fifth columnists, trade stealers and spies, as well as open military aggression. When your enemies are Nazis, you must define what is true peace and what is sneaking war. Feeling in Washington tonight is serious. The mood of the president is serious, as you will realize when he begins to speak. But the man who speaks tonight was chosen as the sovereign voice of the American people. He is your president and mine. Good night.