“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
resulted from their belief that such a raid as this would be employed
by the enemy to divert attention from a major air task force which
would hurl its planes against a really significant target. Loyal Japanese-
Americans who had predicted that a demonstration would be made in
connection with the President’s speech also prophesied that Los
Angeles would be attacked the next night.’4 The Army, too, was con-
vinced that some new action impended, and took all possible precau-
tions. Newspapers were permitted to announce that a strict state of
readiness against renewed attacks had been imposed,75and there fol-
lowed the confused action known as “the Battle of Los Angeles.”
During the night of 24/25 February 1942, unidentified objects
caused a succession of alerts in southern California. On the 24tl1, a
warning issued by naval intelligence indicated that an attack could be
expected within the next ten hours.76That evening a large number of
flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense
plants. An alert called a t I 9 I 8 was lifted a t 2 2 2 3 , and the tension tem-
porarily relaxed. But early in the morning of the 25th renewed activity
began. Radars picked up an unidentified target 1 2 0 miles west of Los
Angeles. Antiaircraft batteries were alerted a t 02 I 5 and were put on
Green Alert-ready to fire-a few minutes later. The AAF kept its
pursuit planes on the ground, preferring to await indications of the
scale and direction of any attack before committing its limited fighter
f o r ~ e . ~ ’Radars tracked the approaching target to within a few miles
of the coast, and a t 0 2 2 I the regional controller ordered a blacko~t.~’
Thereafter the information center was flooded with reports of “enemy
planes,” even though the mysterious object tracked in from sea seems
to have vanished. At 0 2 4 3 , planes were reported near Long Beach,
and a few minutes later a coast artillery colonel spotted “about 2 5
planes at IZ,OOO feet” over Los Angeles. At 0306 a balloon carrying .a
red flare was seen over Santa Monica and four batteries of antiaircraft
artillery opened fire, whereupon “the air over Los Angeles erupted
like a volcano.” From this point on reports were hopelessly a t variance.
Probably much of the confusion came from the fact that antiaircraft
shell bursts, caught by the searchlights, were themselves mistaken for
enemy planes. In any case, the next three hours produced some of the
most imaginative reporting of the war: “swarms” of planes (or, some-
times, balloons) of all possible sizes, numbering from one to several
hundred, traveling at altitudes which ranged from a few thousand
feet to more than to,ooo and flying a t speeds which were said to have
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