“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
good target, and the bombardier, Sgt. Meyer S. Levin, released in train
the entire load of three 6oo-lb. bombs from ZZ,OOO feet. Although the
Japanese assert that no hits were made, the bombs scored near misses
and to Kelly’s crew it appeared that one of them had struck squarely
amidship. When the B-17 turned back toward its base, the warship
appeared to have been stopped with black smoke pouring from it. All
gunners held their stations during the return flight except the radio
operator, who served also as lower-turret gunner, and who left that
post to receive landing instructions from Clark Field. Suddenly, as
the plane neared the field, two enemy fighters attacked from the rear
of and below the plane in an approach which probably would have
been observed sooner had the lower turret been manned. Bullets
riddled the big bomber. “The commander’s dome flew off,” the instru-
ment panel seemed to disintegrate, a machine-gun burst penetrated the
left rear gunner’s post killing T/Sgt. William J. Delehanty, the low-
pressure oxygen tanks in the radio compartment exploded, and the
empty bomb bay burst into flames. When the flames spread, Kelly
ordered the crew to bail out. S/Sgt. James E. Hokyard, Pfc Robert
A. Altman, and Pfc Williard L. Money dropped out of the rear com-
partment; Bean and Levin tumbled out of the escape hatch; and Kelly
and co-pilot Lt. Donald D. Robins prepared to follow. T h e latter
succeeded in pulling the rip cord of his parachute after being thrown
clear of the plane by a tremendous explosion, and all those who pre-
viously had bailed out of the plane reached ground safely. But Kelly’s
body was later found near the wreckage of his plane.6*
The employment of heavy bombers on 10 December bore little
resemblance to prescribed AAF practice, which called for their use
against shipping targets in flights of sufficient size to assure a pattern
of bombing large enough to cover any possible move of the target in
the interval between release and impact i f the N o t only was
there an inadequate number of planes available, but unsatisfactory
communications with outlying fields, insufficient protection of air-
fields, and the consequent necessity of putting planes into the air for
their security added to the difficulty of maintaining anything ap-
proaching standard operations. N o experience could have emphasized
more forcefully the fundamental importance to an air force of its
ability to assert and maintain control of the air over its own bases.
And with the rapid depletion of our interceptor forces and with
Japanese landings promising the early establishment on Luzon of
2’7