<text id=00he0400><title>The Golden Age of Biplane Bombers: Introduction</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>The Golden Age of Biplane Bombers: Introduction</hdr><body>
<p>The bombers streamed down the Hudson River Valley, past Storm King Mountain, their roaring Hornet engines echoing across the wide water below. Their shadows raced under them, a mirror formation of the long column of three-plane Vees. Bright overhead sun reflected from their yellow wings and highlighted the insignia at each wingtip. The mood was captured by a photographer in one of the planes, from the forward gunner's position, and spread across the New York Herald Tribune's Sunday rotogravure section on 31 May 1932. The bombers were part of an "...Army air armada..." that had been on maneuvers in New England, and they staged the aerial parade down the Hudson and over Manhattan as a show of air power.
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<p>The aircraft were strutted and wire-braced Keystone B-3A biplanes, and the show of force over Manhattan that day comprised, in all probability, the entire serviceable bomber strength of the United States Army Air Corps.
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<p>There were other pictures of the times that reflected the sport of open-cockpit flying: a formation of delicate Boeing P-12Es suspended against a backdrop of fluffy cumulus; a right echelon of blunt-nosed Curtiss P-6Es, their noses and landing gears painted with the Arctic snow owl markings of the 17th Pursuit Squadron based at Selfridge Field, Michigan.
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<p>It was the glorious era of the biplane, a golden age of fragile airplanes with yellow wings and olive drab bodies, another epoch in the development of American air power. Behind the pleasant-looking facade of aerial maneuvers with brightly painted pursuits and bulky biplane bombers lay a murky arena of Byzantine maneuvering for recognition of air power. Implicit in that recognition would be the creation of an independent air force, the evolution of a strategic doctrine, and the development of a long-range, heavy bomber to execute that doctrine.
