“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
M. Brady, chief of staff to General Brereton, promptly took the initial
step toward mounting the operation by ordering the B-17’s at Clark
Field prepared for the mission.27Brereton himself reported at about
0500 to General MacArthur’s headquarters at Fort Santiago, where
he requested permission of Brig. Gen. Richard K. Sutherland, chief
of staff, to carry out offensive action as soon as possible after day-
light. s
That request, unhappily, has become a subject of controversy.
Conflicting statements have bee; made and the historian is left to find
his way without the aid of a complete record. Indeed, only a few
fragments of the official records of the Far East Air Force survived
the initial engagements and movements of the war, with the result
that chief reliance must be placed on the recollections of its personnel.
It would appear that the files of General Headquarters, Southwest
Pacific Area, are also i n ~ o m p l e t e . ~ ~
Since the question turns so largely on evidence drawn from the
memory that men carry of the first hectic hours of war, it seems
pertinent to observe here that there can be little doubt that to the
airmen of General MacArthur’s command the logical defensive use
of the long-range heavy bomber in the circumstances existing was to
strike at the enemy’s concentration of air and naval power on For-
mosa, and to strike before the enemy could attack.” Not only would
this have been in accord with standard AAF doctrine and with the
mission in defense of our own shores for which the B-17 originally
had been designed, but Formosa lay well within the range of the
plane, which incidentally had been built for missions extending be-
yond the distance for which fighter escort could be provided by cur-
rent models of pursuit aircraft. It is true that the number of planes
available was nowhere near that required for a decisive striking force,
but the defensive value of the B-17 lay almost entirely in its offensive
power and the alternative to its use in that manner was to save it for
possible destruction on the ground. Moreover, the mission presum-
ably would serve useful purposes of reconnaissance, and it would
have been in accordance with the recent revision of RAINBOW No.
s.* If General Brereton did not propose an early undertaking of
offensive action against the enemy on Formosa, as both officially and
publicly he has stated he did, it would be surprising indeed.
Following the publication in I 946 of The Brereton Diaries, in which
+ See above, pp. 184-85.
204