“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
of opinion as to the most feasible solution for each. The reorganiza-
tion of March 1942 was essentially a compromise, a wartime expedient
which postponed rather than effected a final settlement. The imme-
diate background of this temporary solution may be sought in a three-
cornered struggle between the General Staff‘s War Plans Division,
General Headquarters, and the Army Air Forces. Much, though cer-
tainly not all, of the controversy turned on the relation of the air
arm to the military establishment.
General Headquarters was of recent origin, but the desirability of
such a staff in the event of war had long dominated Army thought.
The Harbord Board of 192I , drawing on the experience of the AEF
in 1917-18, had recommended establishment of a staff comparable to
Pershing’s GHQ which should channel War Department activities
into the theater of operations. T h e core of this headquarters was to
consist of the General Staff’s War Plans Division-indeed it was in
anticipation of such an eventual function that the latter office had been
created and charged with the preparation of over-all strategic plans.
Modified in detail in 1936, the Harbord plan assumed that a t outbreak
of war the Chief of Staff, or some other commander designated by
the President, would lead the field forces with a reinforced WPD as
his general headquarters. When Nazi victories of the spring of 1940
lent urgency to the mobilization of American military forces, an
initial step toward realizing this design was taken by the activation, on
2 6 July, of a “nucleus of GHQ.” Its original mission was to direct the
training of the tactical units of the Army, found in the main in the
four field armies, the armored force, and the GHQ Air Force.* Gen-
eral Marshall delegated effective control of GHQ to its chief of staff,
Brig. Gen. Leslie J. McNair, under whose able leadership a small group
of officers undertook the complex task of organizing and training the
fast-growing Army.84
A year later, on 3 July 1941,the mission of GHQ was extended to
include also the planning and command of operations; in General
Marshall’s words, “GHQ now supersedes War Plans Division in the
organization and control of task forces and operations.” 8 5 This was in
accord with the original intent, but the new arrangement did not
prove satisfactory. T h e Harbord report and the subsequent modifica-
tions of 1936 had conceived of a war involving a concerted effort in
* The last term is confusing, since it referred to an organization which had been
established in 1935, five years before the activation of GHQ itself.
258