“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
P-38 and P-47 were not to get into action until summer of 1942 and
spring of 1943, respectively. The listed planes were the ones, however,
with which we were to fight the first two years of the war. The only
important new-type aircraft were to come in late 1943 or 1944-the
P-51, first produced in quantity for the British, the A-36, the P-61,
the A-26, and the B-29. Of the models actually in use before Pearl
Harbor, tests and combat records seemed to indicate that as com-
pared to like foreign types, our heavy bombers were superior to our
medium and light bombers, while our light bombers were superior
to our fighters. In general those judgments were borne out by later
experience, though each of the planes underwent repeated improve-
ments on the basis of combat experience.
Personnel requirements grew with the increase in authorization for
aircraft. Intensive recruiting campaigns brought an influx of men as
permitted under the higher ceiling set by Congress in 1939. In mid-
1940, the Air Corps was authorized to procure flying cadets and
Reserve officers without limit during the fiscal year 1941, and relaxed
entrance requirements for cadets made possible the appointment of
large numbers for flying training. The President's order in August
1940 2 6 calling up the National Guard and Reserve forces resulted in
further increases in personnel. A still greater impetus to Air Corps
enlistment, from autumn 1940 until Pearl Harbor, came from the
Selective Service System program; even though procurement of pilots,
aircrew members, and technicians was still on a volunteer basis, the
prospect of compulsory service in an undesignated branch of the
Army proved a potent spur to Air Corps enlistment. Under these vari-
ous stimuli, the total number of Air Corps personnel jumped from
20,503 on I July 1939 to 152,569 just two years later, and the rate
of expansion was rapidly increasing when the United States went to
war.27
Pilot training goals were successively raised to keep pace with the
anticipated progress of other defense programs. From an objective
in 1939 calling for the training of 1 , 2 0 0 pilots a year, the figure was
raised in 1940 to 7,000, then to IZ,OOO, and by directive of February
1941 to 30,000. By the fall of that year, when the 84-group program
was under discussion, the AAF contemplated a training rate of 50,000
pilots a year by mid-1942.'~These goals called also for the training of
a proportionate number of other aircrew members and ground tech-
nicians. The Air Corps had neither the instructors nor facilities for
I I 0