B-10/B-12 Martin 139 - Operations
Gen. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, who called the B-10 "the air power wonder of its day," led 10 B-10s on a 8,290-mile flight from Washington, D.C., to Fairbanks, Alaska, and back in 1934. In 1934 the Air Corps established a project for a mass flight to Alaska of its new type all-metal monoplane bomber, the Martin B-10. Such a flight would not only prove the feasibility of sending an aerial force to Alaska in an emergency, but it would be excellent training for personnel flying across isolated and uninhabited areas.
Ten B-10s, under the command of Lt. Col. H.H. Arnold, left Bolling Field near Washington, D.C., on July 19. Flying by way of Winnipeg and Edmonton, they arrived safely in Fairbanks, Alaska, on July 24. For the next month numerous exploratory flights were made over Alaska, including missions for aerial photography of 23,000 square miles of territory in only three days.
The planes took off from Fairbanks on Aug. 16 and returned to Washington, D.C., by way of Seattle, Wash., and Omaha, Neb. They landed at Bolling Field on Aug. 20, completing a round trip of more than 7,000 miles, much of it over uncharted wilderness. For commanding this flight, Arnold won the 1934 Mackay Trophy.
The operational B-10s were distributed between seven bomber groups. 2,3,7,9 and the 19th group were deployed directly on the territory of the USA, the 5th BG was sent to the Hawaiian Islands and the 6th BG to the protection of the Panama Canal. The service of American B-10s and B-12s turned out to be peaceful. June 19, 1934, General Arnold made a group flight from Bolling Field to Fairbanks with a length of 13,320 km. Due to the excellent high-speed data, several B-10 and B-12 were used as post-courier airplanes. A small amount of YB-10 and B-12A were equipped with Edo floats. In August 1935, on one of these planes, the pilot F. Andrews flew from Langley to New York. Later, in 1936, on Martin bombers for the first time tried variable-pitch propellers and Norden bombs.
The practical benefits and effectiveness of the B-10 was confirmed the exercises conducted in 1937. Utah, a 21,825-ton Florida-class battleship, was built in Camden, N.J., and commissioned in August 1911. Her original hull number was BB 31. In 1931 Utah was converted to a radio-controlled target ship and redesignated AG 16, a role in which she would spend the rest of her active service. Over the next nine years, the former battleship performed a vital service to the fleet as a mobile target, contributing realism to the training of naval aviators in dive, torpedo, and high level bombing. Thus, she greatly aided the development of tactics in those areas. During the 1937 maneuvers, the commander of the 3rd group flying B-10 bombers found and attacked the target ship "Utah", hitting her with several bombs.
From the spring of 1937, the B-10 / B-12 bombers began to be replaced by B-18. The remaining aircraft were modified, bringing to the standard B-10M / VM and B-12AM. By the beginning of the entry into the Second World War, the B-10 bombers remained in service with only the 6th BW and in the 28th squadron in the Philippines. Most likely, all of them were destroyed in the early days of the Japanese invasion.
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