“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 TWO WARS
sider such possibilities."'s" And yet, in the very year that saw the
beginning of another major European war, the Air Corps was engaged
in an attempt to secure relief from a prohibition which limited the
flight of its planes seaward to IOO miles beyond the ~ h o r e . ~ "That this
limitation apparently had been imposed by a verbal agreement between
the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Staff is suggestive of
certain complications over the bomber program that had entered into
the relations of the Air Corps and the General Staff.
The War Department had given its approval to an experimental
interest in the long-range bomber as early as 1934. It had supported
the action leading to the development of the B-17, and though the
decision to limit the initial procurement to thirteen planes had proved
disappointing to the Air Corps, that decision nevertheless had main-
tained the project on a hopeful experimental basis. Further encourage-
ment came from W a r Department approval of a contract of 3 I Octo-
ber 1935 with the Douglas Aircraft Company for the design of an
experimental bomber even larger than the B- I 5 . The contract carried
an option for subsequent purchase of a prototype, and under an
authorization of 29 September 1936 that option was exercised through
a contract for the building of one experimental model.'08 Completed
in the spring of I 94 I and test-flown for the first time on 2 7 June I 941,
the Douglas XB- 19, with a span of 2 I 2 feet, a weight of 84,43 I pounds,
and a range of 5,200 miles, was the Army's largest prewar bomber.lgg
Tests proved that there were no fundamental flaws of design or
structure, but, as in the case of the B-15, the size and weight of the
plane were too great for the power plants. Consequently, the later
B-29, though it mounted engines more powerful than those of the
XB-19, was designed as a smaller plane. Only one experimental model
of the B-19 was built, but that paid more than ample dividends in the
lessons applied to future bomber development within the AAF.
The record shows, then, that within the four years following the
inauguration of Project A three major experimental projects had been
authorized for the purpose of exploring the potentialities of the big
plane and the long-range bomber. From the Air Corps point of view
the difficulty lay in the subsequent disinclination of the General Staff
to authorize the procurement of long-range bombers for equipment
of the GHQ Air Force. Though twenty-nine B-17's had been included
in the 1938 procurement program and eleven more for 1939, when
Germany attacked Poland in September of that year, only fourteen
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