“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
hold the islands against enemy assault. Army air units, organized into
the Far East Air Force under Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, had a
total of some 8,000 officers and men and more than 300 aircraft, con-
centrated largely on the island of Luzon. Fewer than half of these
aircraft were suitable for combat, and much of the equipment for air
defense was still awaiting shipment from the United States.73But the
air force was equipped with thirty-five heavy bombers, more than
any other Army air force, either on the continent or overseas. This
fact was significant, for the Philippines had not always enjoyed top
priority among American outposts. Indeed, for many years the Air
Corps garrison there had been regarded as little more than a token
force and had not been considered capable of meeting “serious con-
tingencies.” 7 4 As late as the spring of 1940, military aviation in the
islands consisted of a mere handful of obsolete planes such as the P-26
and B-10, and during the summer of 1940 only three B-18’s were
allotted to the Philippines. No additional aircraft could be spared at
that time from units in the United States, and prospects of an early
augmentation of pursuit strength were dimmed by a statement from
the Air Corps that the twenty-eight P-26’s then assigned to the Philip-
pine Department would have to suffice until late in 1 9 4 1 . ~ ~Between
the time of this statement and the outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific,
however, War Department policy with regard to the Philippines
underwent a drastic change, and the rapid expansion of aerial defenses
in the islands represented one of the more important results of that
change.
The possibility of American involvement in a Pacific war had been
heightened in the fall of 1940by formation of a pact between the Axis
powers and Japan. Agreeing to support each other’s efforts in estab-
lishing and maintaining “a new order of things” in Europe and East
Asia, the parties announced that they would assist one another “with
all political, economic, and military means when one of the three con-
tracting powers is attacked by a power at present not involved in the
European war or in the Chinese-Japanese conflict.’’ ‘I6 T h e reference of
course was obvious, and it carried a threat which President Roosevelt
described in terms of the greatest danger faced by the nation since
settlement of the c~ntinent.‘~
As part of a prompt attempt to strengthen the defenses of our most
western outpost insofar as it was possible, the Chief of the Air Corps
in October directed that forty-eight P-~s’s,scheduled for shipment to
176