“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…
A I R W A R , 1 9 3 9 - 4 1
on a larger scale, and personnel were rotated frequently in order to
give combat experience to more a i ~ m e n . ~
In the Russo-Manchurian border fighting which broke oiit in May
1939, the Japanese Army Air Force received a much more severe and
devastating test of its strength. T h e Soviet Air Force, designed p i -
marily as an immediate support to the Red army, administered a
resounding defeat to the Japanese force, which committed almost its
entire strength to the engagement and lost approximately 500 planes
and 150 pilots. According to the Japanese, their losses were worth
while because they brought about important changes in organization,
training, and tactics. These changes, however, were accompanied by
no marked departure from existing concepts of air warfare, and the
chief development came in an accelerated rate of expansion.'
As the border fighting ended in September 1939, the poor record
of the Japanese Army Air Force led foreign observers to conclude
that the army's force was inferior in both training and efficiency to
the naval air force. There was some justification for such a belief.
Training in the army flying schools was devoted almost exclusively to
pilots, and training of other air crewmen was largely neglected until
their assignment to tactical units. T h e navy, on the other hand, gave
closer attention to the training of all members of the crew, and by
1941 its training program was designed to turn out annually some
t ,500 navigators, bombardiers, gunners, and flight engineers. At the
same time, the navy was training about 2 , 0 0 0 pilots a year, while the
army was turning out pilots at the rate of approximately 7 5 0 a year.
In equipment, too, the army air force lagged behind the navy air force.
T h e latter possessed some excellent four-engine patrol bombers, while
the army had nothing heavier than a two-engine bomber. Prior to 7
December I 94 I the army air force flew almost exclusively over land,
and its longest-range bombers had an operational radius of only some
500 miles. T h e navy's force had been trained to operate over water
with a radius of about 800 miles. Both forces, however, had a number
of well-tried torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and level bombers,
reconnaissance and transport planes, and several models of the Zero
fighter-a fast, highly maneuverable but somewhat vulnerable plane
with a maximum speed of approximately 350 miles per hour." T h e
* The Japanese made no use of the manufacturer's name in the designation of their
aircraft, possibly because two or more manufacturers not uncommonly produced the
same type plane. Their type numbers instead corresponded to the last one or two
79