“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
reduced, however, by the necessity of using the planes as a supple-
ment to radar in the identification of and indeed no matter
how many planes were supplied, the defense of the canal would remain
imperfect until better means for detection of an approaching enemy
had been provided. This problem was not solved until 1943.
Reinforcements and New Bases for Alaska
Fortunately, when the enemy struck, the blow fell on the Aleutians
and not in Panama. T h e defenses of the Alaskan area were no better
prepared, but the stake was smaller. In December 1941, fundamental
questions regarding air defense plans in the North Pacific had hardly
been solved; it was not until 26 November that the decision had finally
been made to build an airfield on Umnak Island for the protection of
Dutch Harbor.” Substantial progress had been made under earlier
and more limited plans of defense; but only a handful of combat planes
were based on Elmendorf Field a t Anchorage, and preparations for
moving up air reinforcements from the States in the event of an
emergency were still imperfect.17’
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that emergency seemed
unmistakably imminent. T h e Chief of Staff informed the President in
January 1942 that the W a r Department feared a damaging raid on
Alaska “at any moment,” and prophesied that as soon as the Japanese
could assemble troops and ships they would launch an effort toward
actual occupation” of a base in that area.171This prospect had led to
a prompt decision to send aerial reinforcements to the threatened out-
post, even in the face of the well-understood risks of winter flights
along imperfectly developed airways.’ 7 2 Because Alaska was part of
the Western Theater of Operations, responsibility for the movement
was assigned to the Western Defense Command. T h e shortage of
trained aircrews made it necessary to assign to this project squadrons
composed of men untrained in Alaskan flight conditions. A pursuit
squadron of twenty-five P-40’s was secured by assignment of the I I th
Pursuit Squadron from Meridian, Mississippi, and thirteen B-2 6 me-
dium bombers were ordered to be flown to Alaska by the 77th Bom-
bardment Squadron from Boise, Idaho.
Notification of the movement was given on 10 December 1941,but
two weeks elapsed before the planes reached the Sacramento Air
Depot to be winterized. Hastily conceived and inadequately organ-
d i
* See above, pp. 167-68.
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