“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…
D E F E N S E O F T H E W E S T E R N H E M I S P H E R E
regarded as ~redible,~’but news dispatches soon characterized the
affair as a test and announced that California had “caught its breath
again.” T h e Army, however, insisted that radar stations had tracked
airplanes approaching the coast from a distance IOO miles a t sea.42T h e
continuity of the tracking convinced officers that the planes were
hostile, and Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Com-
mand strongly denounced those who treated the alert lightly. In the
San Francisco News of 10 December he was quoted as follows: “Last
night there were planes over this community. They were enemy
planes! I mean Japanese planes! And they were tracked out to sea. You
think it was a hoax? It is damned nonsense for sensible people to
assume that the Army and Navy would practice such a hoax on San
Francisco.” Newspapers, impressed with these statements, carried
banner headlines announcing that the “Army Warns City Danger
Near.” 4 4 A similar message had been carried to a national audience on
8 December when Fiorello La Guardia, head of the Office of Civilian
Defense, told the radio public: “I do not want to unduly alarm my
fellow citizens, but I want to be realistic. T h e situation is serious. W e
must not underestimate what happened twenty-four hours ago.” 4 5
Disturbing rumors of enemy threats continued to mount on 9
December. Early that morning unidentified planes were reported off
southern California, and the Eleventh Naval District ordered prepara-
tions made to repulse a raid by sea or air.46Later the Navy relayed to
the AAF a “red hot tip” which announced that thirty-four enemy
vessels were standing off the coast near Los Angeles, waiting for the
fog to lift before starting an attack. Army planes were dispatched and
found that the alarm had been occasioned by the presence of a group
of American fishing boat^.^' Later in the day a report told with con-
vincing detail of a “Japanese cruiser zo,ooo yards off the west tip of
Catalina Island.” Other witnesses insisted that a cruiser and three
destroyers, flying Japanese flags, had been spotted off the coast. This
of course was the period when whales were mistaken for enemy sub-
marines, and when floating logs were bombed by inexperienced and
overeager air crew^.^'
Such rumors and alerts were not confined to the Pacific coast. On
9 December an air raid warning, the first of the war, swept N e w York
City and the northeast At noon, advices were received that
hostile planes were only two hours’ distance away. Fighter aircraft
from Mitchel Field took the air to intercept the raiders, and radio
279