“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
bomber groups, and eventually to base two groups of very long-range
bombers in Alaska.
It is apparent, however, that the air planners were less interested in
the problems of the defensive in the Americas or the Pacific than in
the war in Europe. The basic feature of their plan lay “in the applica-
tion of air power for the breakdown of the industrial and economic
structure of Germany.” This involved “the selection of a system of
objectives vital to continued German war effort, and to the means of
livelihood of the German people, and tenaciously concentrating dZ
bombing toward destruction of those objectives.” The objectives were
predominantly precision targets, and it was not intended to resort to
area bombing of civilian concentrations until German morale began
to
The main target objectives should be the electric power grid in
Germany, the transportation network (rail, inland water, and high-
way), and the oil and petroleum industry-with final attacks on urban
areas. It was accepted that this program might not be accomplished
without some serious diversions. As an “intermediate objective” pre-
requisite to successful long-range bombardment operations, it would
be necessary to neutralize the German Air Force by attacking its
bases, the aircraft factories which nourished it, and the light metals
industries upon which those factories depended. And to protect the
security of bases and the sea lanes which connected them with Amer-
ican production centers, it might be necessary to attack submarine
bases, surface craft, and “invasion” bases on the
T o calculate the force required to accomplish these missions, esti-
mates were made as to the number of individual targets which must
be destroyed to disrupt each of the target systems enumerated, as to
the bomb weight required for each, as to the total bomb lift required
according to computed coefficients of aiming errors under combat
conditions, and finally, as to the number of planes required to deliver
that total bomb load within the accepted time ~chedu1e.l‘~T h e
resultant requirements, in terms of tactical groups, were: medium
bombers (B-25, B-26)--10; heavy bombers (B-17, B-24)-20; [very]
heavy bombers (B-29, B-32)-24; VLR heavy bombers (4,000-mile-
radius type)-#; in all, a total of 98 groups, >with6,834 aircrafr. It
was expected that these planes, other than the 4,000-mile-radius type,
would be based in the United Kingdom and the Suez region; and that
since the latter type would not be available before 1944, an interim
148