“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
and Strauss were allowed to break the routine of reconnaissance by
undertaking the hazardous mission of dive bombing the enemy-held
airfield at Vigan. When they had reached the target area, Wagner
signaled Strauss to remain on patrol, while he and Church proceeded
to bomb the airfield. As they went into a dive, Church's plane was hit
and set afire by AA, but he continued the attack, released his bombs,
and crashed. Wagner meanwhile had dropped six fragmentation
bombs and had strafed a fuel dump and approximately twenty planes
parked on the runway. Other combat activity by pursuit piiots was
incidental to scheduled reconnaissance missions, as when on I 3
December Lieutenant Wagner in approaching Aparri shot down four
enemy fighters and went on to strafe others on the field."
The First W i t h d r a w a l to Australia
Such isolated victories could not conceal the fact that the Japanese
held unchallengeable control of the air over Luzon and, helped by
the possession of such fields as those at Aparri and Vigan, were in a
position to extend this control over all of the Philippines. Though the
heavy bombers had already been forced to move back almost 600 miles
from Clark Field to Del Monte, it was now planned to withdraw them
another 1,500 miles to Darwin, Australia. In addition to the growing
danger that Del Monte would soon be subjected to constant air attack,
there was a general lack of maintenance facilities there which seriously
limited the operations that could be undertaken. War had come at a
time when little more than a beginning had been made in the effort to
convert Del Monte into a major heavy bomber base." Since then per-
sonnel of the 5th Air Base Group had worked day and night to
strengthen defenses and to improve the facilities. Underground shel-
ters had been constructed instead of barracks, and for purposes of
dispersal four outlying fields within a fifteen-mile radius had been
selected. But there was no radar set on Mindanao; no pursuit planes
were available for defensive cover; nor did the base enjoy the protec-
tion of any large-caliber antiaircraft guns. Antiaircraft defenses were
limited to water-cooled .So-cal. machine guns and a few additional air-
cooled .so's removed from B-17's. The air warning system consisted
of lookouts posted on hills north and south of the field with a tele-
phone line to operations headquarters. Until the Del Monte base could
be greatly strengthened and its facilities improved, it seemed advisable
* See above, pp. 187-89.
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