“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 F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
gains, both in planes manufactured and in the rate of acceleration,
came in the latter half of the year, when the fall of France and the
Battle of Britain lent a grim incentive to American efforts. By the end
of September 1940, contracts were outstanding for 16,649 Army air-
craft, of which 9,122 were ta~tica1.l~In the second half of that year,
3,770 military aircraft were accepted by all users; in 1941,the total
accepted was 19,428. Nor do these figures reveal the whole story;
there was, because of a trend toward heavy bomber types, a marked
increase in the average weight per plane as well as a numerical gain.20
Of the aircraft delivered the Air Corps received far too few to equip
its authorized fifty-four groups. Prospects for the future were, how-
ever, encouraging. The appropriations of 1939 and 1940were dwarfed
by those of the following year. In the first eight months of 1941,some
$6,500,000,000was appropriated, the major part of which was allo-
cated to the procurement of about I 5,000 aircraft and the enlargement
of productive capacity. All told, the Air Corps was authorized, in
the three years before Pearl Harbor, to expend about eight billion
dollars and to procure about 37,500 planes.’l It had not known such
generosity since I 9 I 7,
One policy of the Air Corps ran counter to the insistence on mass
production of existing models of aircraft. This was the continued stress
on research and development. Efforts to develop new types of air-
craft diverted talent from tasks of current utility to projects which,
if successful, might pay dividends in the future. The policy was costly,
but in view of the time lag between original design and quantity pro-
duction, it was essential if we were to keep abreast of German devel-
opments. The results of the research and development program were
not always spectacular. Many new airplane models were stillborn, or
died in the experimental stage. But the same program which spawned
such forgotten airplanes as the XP-44 or the XB-21 gave birth also
to the B-29, designed in 1940. Mass production was hampered even
more by the large number of modifications for current models which
this policy encouraged. Changes in design and equipment made
standardization difficult; “freezing” a model at a certain stage in its
development would have made for more rapid production. But to
keep abreast of foreign air forces, it was necessary to incorporate h-
provements which were constantly suggested by combat experience.
The earliest and most obvious lesson which came from the air war
in Europe was the need for heavier armor, greater defensive firepower,
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