“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
In an earlier context,” reference was made to the Joint Board Esti-
mate of United States Over-All Production Requirements of I I Sep-
tember 1941. President Roosevelt’s request for the report had been
motivated wholly by considerations of logistics. But the Joint Board
had rightly deemed it impracticable to arrive at any realistic figures
on forces and munitions needed for total war without a previous
agreement as to national military policy. Consequently, the document
when presented contained four parts: a report by the board on the
strategy best calculated to defeat the enemy, and separate estimates
by the Army, the Navy, and the Army Air Forces of their respective
needs in personnel and materiel.
In its judgments concerning the enemy’s capabilities and in its
analysis of our own strategy, the Joint Board followed the general
tenor of ABC-I. In spite of the entrance of the U.S.S.R. into the war,
the board was convinced that Germany and her allies could not be
defeated by the powers now resisting them. Hence to insure that
defeat it would “be necessary for the United States to enter the war,
and to employ a part of its armed forces in the Eastern Atlantic and
in Europe or Africa.” T h e services were not, however, in whole-
hearted agreement as to how those forces should be applied. T h e U.S.
Navy considered that “since the principal strength of the Associated
Powers is at present in naval and air categories, the strategy which
they should adopt should be based on the effective employment of
these forces, and the employment of land forces in regions where
Germany can not exert the full power of her land armies.” lS9T o
fulfil its mission, the Navy asked for I,IOO,OOOmen plus 150,ooo for
the Marine Corps and a fleet built around 3 2 battleships and 24 car-
r i e r ~ . ’ ~ ~T h e Army believed that “the foregoing strategy may not
accomplish the defeat of Germany and that it may be necessary to
come to grips with the German armies on the continent of
Europe.” 135 It was on the basis of this concept of strategy that the
Army made its estimate of personnel (6,745,658 men, exclusive of the
AAF) and materiel.136
In respect to the proper strategy, the Army air arm took a position
somewhat between these divergent views, but with decided implica-
tions of its own. T h e AAF entered a plea for 2, I 64,9 I 6 men and some
60,000 combat planes,137and to justify so large a request they pre-
sented an operational plan much fuller in detail and more elaborately
* See above, pp. 131-32.
‘45