“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…
D E P L O Y M E N T O N T H E E V E O F H O S T I L I T I E S
their own planes, staked them down for the night, and then retired for
a few hours’ rest, with many of the men sleeping under the wings of
the aircraft. At 0445 the next morning the planes took off for Wake
Island, 1,035 miles away, where they arrived at 1 1 2 0 .
Since the next hop to Port Moresby involved flying over some of
the Japanese mandated islands, the planes took off at midnight in order
to pass over the territory unseen and thereby avoid any possible inter-
national incident. Climbing from their usual altitude of 8,000 feet to
26,000 feet, the bombers turned out all lights and maintained complete
radio silence over the islands. Although they flew in a heavy rain and
without communications, the B- I 7’s kept their assigned positions, and
the 2,176-mile hop to Port Moresby was completed at noon on 8
September (local time j . Australian officials were most hospitable to
the crews, who remained at Port Moresby until the morning of 10
September. The next hop, 934 miles to Darwin, was covered in six
and one-half hours, and early on the morning of I Z September the
planes took off for Clark Field, near Manila. Upon encountering
stormy weather, the B- I 7’s maneuvered into storm echelon, flying over
water a t an altitude of from IOO to 400 feet. By mid-afternoon the
bombers reached Clark Field, where they landed safely in a blinding
rain.*l Successful completion of the historic flight, ’despite primitive
servicing facilities and incomplete weather data, offered reassuring
proof that the Philippines could be reinforced by air.
General MacArthur, who regarded the air defense of the islands
as one of the more serious deficiencies to be remedied, urged prompt
action to provide additional aircraft and the equipment for an ade-
quate aircraft warning service. A program of airfield development was
already under way, and funds had been provided for a more extensive
program. Particularly welcome therefore was the news that his com-
mand was scheduled to receive before the end of November a light
bombardment group equipped with fifty-two A-24’s and a heavy
bombardment group with twenty-six B- I 7’s. These forces were the
practical expression of a policy which, despite the many urgent de-
mands on the AAF’s limited resources, gave to the Philippines the
highest priority in the delivery of needed combat forces. Indeed, out
of an anticipated production in the United States of z 20 heavy bombers
by the end of February 1942, no less than 165 of the planes had been
scheduled for delivery to the Philippines.82
Inasmuch as the aerial route via Midway and Wake was endangered
179