“Nevers”44 pages
- p. 43 …cavalry mounted on gas driven flying horses” never arrived to
“sweep the Germans from the sky…
- p. 46 …Mitchell never received an American air force commensurate with
the ambitious idens of air power which…
- p. 49 …This project, like so many others, had lagged, and the Air Service was
never equipped during…
- p. 50 …the Army or the Air Corps?” but never, “Are
you in the Army or the Corps…
- p. 55 …any Air Service officers, and I have never heard
anybody yet-any Air Service officer-against…
- p. 69 …But one axiom,
with its corollaries, never varied. T o him the airplane was first and…
- p. 75 …Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be
completely stopped, but their effects could best…
- p. 94 …rate for the time being, the decision never-
theless left an open question as to how…
- p. 121 …large-scale warfare; production of combat types never exceeded 300
aircraft a month. The pattern of…
- p. 122 …the German Air Force, the
Regia Aeronautica never exhibited sufficient power to be decisive in
the…
- p. 133 …Except for a few raids against French
factories, the force had never been employed in a…
- p. 140 …into
a complete war economy production was never equal to the demands
of our own forces…
- p. 150 …Long-term needs
of the Air Corps and the sudden availability of funds in quantities
never…
- p. 181 …Actually, the Air Staff had
never approved of the method followed in RAINBOW No. 5 . l…
- p. 217 …Members of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had never flown
heavy bombers, began to receive intensive…
- p. 219 …were not then satisfactory for permanent garrisons. Never-
theless, the commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lt…
- p. 227 …T h e planes never reached their destination. Other
bombardment units were being prepared for transfer…
- p. 241 …responsible officers, a few crucial points
have never been satisfactorily explained.
T h e general pattern…
- p. 277 …motors, sole-
noids, and gun mounts-were never found. After many hours of fruit-
less search…
- p. 288 …planners and
from which AAF Headquarters was never to deviate.
The translation of the accepted grand…
- p. 303 …the principal features of the plan
were never challenged, it was subsequently revised in a draft…
- p. 309 …W a r Plans Division was
never incorporated into GHQ and remained a potential rival to…
- p. 336 …the shooting and wrote that they were never
able to make out an airplane.g6It is…
- p. 412 …As it happened, the B-24's never
returned to India, but, instead, remained in the…
- p. 457 …Meanwhile the Edsall with the remaining
pilots had headed for Java, never to be heard from…
- p. 492 …Squadron was assigned, but which it would never reach, going from
Australia to Tongatabu; ( 3 ) Christmas…
- p. 500 …deck of a carrier presented a problem never
before challenged by Army planes. Hence an accelerated…
- p. 502 …the bows and wetting the flight deck. Never before had this been
accomplished, yet now it…
- p. 509 …Island, in the
Louisiade Archipelago.” They were never needed, for on 7-8 May
the two…
- p. 513 …exist, it was at a point which never reached the
aircrews, for on the operational level…
- p. 524 …handicaps under which
AAF planes had operated. Never were more than fourteen B- I 7’s…
- p. 527 …AAF planners clung firmly to their belief that
proper observance of economy of force would never…
- p. 531 …Crews which had
previously never loaded torpedoes now for the first time fitted these
weapons into…
- p. 544 …But the Japanese never at
any time based their bombers in appreciable numbers a t either…
- p. 548 …26's in torpedo-dropping, but they never would be put into
All told, the record…
- p. 556 …until it had been thoroughly trained and never to com-
mit it piecemeal. General Magruder had…
- p. 560 …pressed into service against the Germans," and never reached the
CBI." Colonel Haynes had reached India…
- p. 606 …reason that the Antilles Air Task Force
never evolved, as did I Bomber Command, into an…
- p. 614 …that reason deserving a high
priority, could never dispose of the U-boat menace but must…
- p. 635 …In Washington the Munitions Assign-
ments Board t had never considered this schedule as more than…
- p. 670 …they bombed from 39,200 feet, and never
below 30,000. By AAF standards they had…
- p. 672 …Goering had never put enough bombers over England,
nor had he concentrated his forces on the…
- p. 690 …of co-operation and combined action probably never
before equaled by the military forces of two…
- p. 729 …shoot at aerial targets, and several
had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency…
T H E A R M Y A I R A R M B E T W E E N T W O W A R S
force, had come in October 1933, just after the circulation of pro-
posals which led to the B-17 and only a short while before the sub-
mission of Project A for approval by the W a r Department. In July
1934 the Baker Board made its report, and, in keeping with its
recommendations, the GHQ Air Force was activated in March 193s-
before the drawing of a final contract for the XB-15 and some four
months before the XB-17 underwent its initial flight test. There is in
this sequence a t least the suggestion that Air Corps leaders may well
have been influenced to accept a compromise on the aggravated ques-
tion of organization” because of the hope that they might thus clear
the way for a long-range bomber program. Whatever the case, the
Air Corps after 1935 was characterized not so much by its concern to
change the basic organization of national defense as by a purpose to
find in the mission assigned to the GHQ Air Force the basis for an
ambitious program of bomber development.? The Army airman
thereafter was, above all else, an advocate of the big bomber, and
around the potentialities of that type of plane he built his most cher-
ished hopes.
The mission of the GHQ Air Force proved in the event, however,
to be a less secure foundation for those hopes than at first had been
anticipated. Although General MacArthur in 1932 had referred to his
agreement with Admiral Pratt in terms of finality, Pratt’s retirement
from the Office of Chief of Naval Operations on 3 0 June 1933 was
followed by a reopening of the old controversies regarding coastal
defense.les The tendency of both the Drum and the Baker boards to
discount the independent role of the air weapon, and especially their
refusal to admit the danger of air attack on the United States, further
weakened the position of the Air Corps. And when the Joint Board in
the fall of 1934 completed its task of drafting “Doctrines for the
* See above, pp. 30-31.
t A draft copy of a speech found among General Andrews’ papers and evidently
intended for delivery to officers of the newly established GHQ Air Force contains
toward the close this paragraph: “Now just a word about the past. Some of us perhaps
believed in an independent Air Force. Some thought perhaps that an Air Defense
could be best developed as a separate part of the W a r Department not under the
General Staff, and others perhaps had still other plans, but now that the decision has
been made, and by the President himself, to develop our air power as an integral part
of the Army, it is up to us to get behind that plan and push it loyally to success.
Gentlemen, I give it to you as my sincere belief that a separate Air Corps is a dead
issue for many years to come. T h e GHQ Air Force is a part of the Army and it is
our interest and duty to keep that fact constantly in mind, for therein for many years
at least I believe lies the best chance of developing Air Power and the best interest
of National Defense.”
67