“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
mitments, supplies were to be divided equally between the British and
the Soviets.11
Whether stated in specific terms or in percentage, the import of
these schedules was the same. On the very eve of war the AAF was
working under an allocation system which made impossible the early
achievement of its 54-group program. T h e principle which since sum-
mer of 1940 had favored aid to the Allies over the needs of our own
air arm was clear enough; as the Slessor Agreement put it, allocations
of air materiel to the using services should be governed by their respec-
tive abilities to “absorb it usefully.” Obviously the most useful em-
ployment of a weapon is in combat, and in the broad view the policy
seemed justified by the time it afforded us. Perhaps the policy might
have been modified had it been realized earlier that war would come
in 1941;efforts to increase heavy bombardment strength in the Pacific
seem to suggest this. Much of the AAF’s loss to foreign services was
in “futures,” but actual diversions and the difficulty of systematic
development in the face of constantly fluctuating allotments help
explain its far-from-perfect preparedness on M-day. W a r was to bring
no easy solution to the problems of aid to the Allies, but it was to
bring a sharp revision in aircraft allocation schedules.
Strategic Plans
Not least important of our defense measures was the formulation of
strategic and operational plans. This activity was intimately associated
with the other phases of our preparations for war, and like them was
profoundly influenced by events in Europe and Asia. Again the
summer of 1940 may be viewed as a turning point in our national
policies. Before that season the US. service staffs had been at work on
a number of alternative plans, each based on a different set of contin-
gencies. T h e planners were concerned only with the mission of the
US. Army and Navy, but they had to assume potential allies as well as
potential enemies. Until the spring of 1940, we could be confident that
in a war against the Axis we would enjoy powerful support from the
British and French; after Dunkirk, the prospect was less sanguine.
Germany and Italy controlled, as conquered territory or as satellite
states, much of Europe; Spain was friendly to the Axis, the U.S.S.R.
bound by nonaggression treaties. T h e Tripartite Pact, signed at Berlin
on 2 7 September 1940, which brought Japan into the Axis gave official
notice of an alliance already suspected. In view of the collapse of
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