“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 I R C O R P S P R E P A R E S F O R W A R , 1 9 3 9 - 4 1
the role of the Army air arm in the interception of enemy naval
force^,'^ but that mission had been a leading factor in the Air Corps’
emphasis on the long-range bomber. N o w the new threats to hemi-
sphere security added less debatable obligations, which the Air Corps
proposed to meet with a force of heavy bombers.
Actually, Army air leaders had anticipated somewhat the President’s
public statements of our changing concepts of defense. In June 1938,
the Air Corps Board had begun a study on the “Air Corps Mission
under the Monroe Doctrine.” 5 2 During the following March basic
air doctrines were restated, so that the most important task became
defense against air attacks, to be achieved by the “destruction of enemy
aviation at its bases.” 53 In June 1940, the Air Corps described its role
in hemisphere defense as entailing six specific missions in the following
order of importance: to ( I ) deny the establishment of hostile air bases
in the Americas; ( 2 ) defeat hostile air forces lodged in the hemisphere
by attacking their bases; ( 3 ) defeat hostile air forces by aerial combat;
(4) prevent the landing of expeditionary forces by attacking trans-
ports and supply ships; ( 5 ) co-operate with the mobile army in ground
operations; and ( 6 ) operate in support of or in lieu of US. Navy
forces against hostile fleet^.'^
In each case the statement of doctrine was made to guide the ex-
penditure of funds authorized to the Air Corps for meeting its new
obligations. T h e accepted concept of the air mission which subordi-
nated local air defense and close support of ground forces to long-
range counterair activities was reflected in the practical measures
taken. Units of the GHQ Air Force did participate, with the inade-
quate equipment available, in Army maneuvers in I 940-41, and by the
time war came, the AAF had taken certain steps, largely modeled on
British experience, for local air defense of certain vital areas.” But the
main concern of Army airmen was in defense at a distance by means
of the mobile striking force. This demanded, as they reiterated on
numerous occasions, a wider radius of action, which could be achieved
by increasing the range of their bombers and acquiring new bases,
strategically located. In the summer of 1938 our best heavy bomber
was the B-17, with a theoretical useful radius of 1,000 miles; a new
experimental model, the XB-I 5, seemed to promise better perform-
ance. T h e Air Corps Board in October recommended as a minimum
requirement a 1,500-mile bomber.55 In June 1939, another air board
* See below, Chap. 8.
1 ‘9