“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…
P E A R L H A R B O R A N D C L A R K F I E L D
enemy pursuit pilots had so systematically chosen their targets that
seventeen or eighteen of the bombers were de~troyed.~*Damage a t
Iba was, if anything, even more severe. Of the 3d Squadron’s P-~o’s,
apparently only two escaped destruction. Bombs crashed into barracks
and service buildings. Much of the airplane maintenance equipment
was lost, and with it the entire radar installation. Ground crews, who
had thought the approaching planes friendly, suffered heavily.
A bombing attack on Nichols Field in the early morning of 9
December created still more havoc. Bombs fell on a hangar, damaging
several planes and destroying a t least one B- I 8. Several pursuit planes
had been ordered off the ground for night patrol, but the inadequacy
of night-flying facilities and almost impenetrable dust a t the field
resulted in the loss of two or three of these planes and one pilot.5s
In less than one day of hostilities the strength of the Far East Air
Force had been reduced by half. Of its thirty-five B-17’s, not more
than seventeen remained in commission. About fifty-five of the
original P-40’s had been lost either in combat or on the ground. Of the
P-3 5’s, no more than fifteen were operational, and perhaps twenty-five
to thirty miscellaneous aircraft-B- ~o’s,B-I S’s, and observation planes-
also had been destroyed. Casualties were comparably heavy. At
Clark Field alone, 55 officers and men had been killed and more than
IOO wounded, to which numbers were added approximately 25 killed
and 5 0 wounded a t other points.54
The War Department had forwarded instructions to General Mac-
Arthur to carry out the tasks assigned under RAINBOW No. 5 and
to co-operate with the British and Dutch insofar as it was possible
without jeopardizing the accomplishment of his primary mission of
defending the phi lip pine^.^^ Bomber losses, however, left little hope of
effective offensive action, and comparably heavy losses of pursuit air-
craft lent a new desperateness to prospects for defense against an
expected enemy invasion. In a move of adjustment to the losses sus-
tained, the remaining aircraft of the hard-hit 3d Pursuit Squadron
were divided between Lieutenant Wagner’s I 7th Squadron, which
now was transferred to Clark Field, and the 2 1st Squadron at Nichols
Field. At the same time, personnel of the ground echelon were dis-
tributed among these and other units in order to bring them nearer
up to ~trength.‘~Every effort was made to strengthen antiaircraft
defenses, which had proved ineffective against both high-level bomb-
ing and low-altitude attacks. The Manila area seemed particularly
2 1 3