“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
Apparently the report was not officially approved at the governmental
level; yet in spirit if not in letter, its principles served as a guide to
aircraft allocation.
T h e decision was not an easy one to make. It promised to retard
further the limping 54-group program, considered our minimum
requirement for defense. A narrow view, or one motivated by pessi-
mism concerning England’s chance of survival, might have suggested
that we arm ourselves first, then extend aid. T h e situation in the Pacific
lent support to such an attitude. T h e policy actually followed, how-
ever, had been described in the President’s “Arsenal of Democracy”
radio address of 29 December 1940: “AS planes. . . are produced, your
Government, with its defense experts, can then determine how best to
use them to defend this hemisphere. T h e decision as to how much
shall be sent abroad and how much shall remain at home must be made
on the basis of our over-all military necessities.” lo’ T h e only satis-
factory solution lay in the increased production recommended in
ABC-2. New estimates, submitted in &/lay by the W a r Plans Division
of the General Staff to satisfy the contingencies anticipated in ABC-2,
called for 4,200 planes a month for the AAF and the British, 800 for
the US.Navy.’’’ This would total 60,000 aircraft a year, some 10,000
more than the President’s goal which was far from being realized.
Nevertheless, a new long-term objective and a new principle of col-
laboration in satisfying munitions requirements were soon to be
projected.
O n 9 July 1941, President Roosevelt requested the secretaries of
W a r and the Navy to prepare for him an estimate of “over-all produc-
tion requirements required to defeat our potential enemies,” on the
basis of which the Office of Production Management could relate our
military needs to the practical realities of production facilities. In
compliance, the secretaries presented on I I September a Joint Board
Estimate of United States Over-All Production Requirements. T h e
section dealing with Army air needs had been prepared by the newly
created Air W a r Plans Division, in a document known as AWPD/r.
T h e estimate of forces required for accomplishing the AAF mission
was based on a plan to develop first an interim air force with models
now in production or in advanced stages of development, and even-
tually, by 1944, to produce a force including an experimental bomber
with a 4,000-mile radius. Requirements included: trainers, 37,os I ;
tactical planes, interim force, 2 2,676; tactical planes, ultimate force,
1 3 1