“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
sibility for delivering to the point of ultimate take-off those planes,
other than PBY flying boats, that were to be flown to England. Fully
aware of the need for haste, he expressed the desire “to cut through
all the formalities that are not legally prohibitive and help the British
get this job done with dispatch.”
The job of delivering the aircraft was given to a new agency, the
Air Corps Ferrying Command, created specifically for the purpose.
On 29 May 1941,Col. Robert Olds of the Plans Division, Office of the
Chief of the Air Corps, received verbal orders to organize the ferrying
service.” A week later, on 5 June, the Air Corps Ferrying Command
was officially constituted as of 29 May.’l The mission of the new
command was, first, “to move aircraft by air from factories to such
terminals as may be designated by the Chief of the Air Corps,” and
second, “to maintain such special air ferry service [i.e., air transport
service] as may be required to meet specific situations.” l2 These were
broad powers, and working within them the Ferrying Command
eventually expanded far beyond the limits imagined by those respon-
sible for its creation. The second assignment provided specific author-
ity for the establishment of a military air transport service over the
North Atlantic between Washington and the United Kingdom, a
project which had been under consideration for some months.13
For crews to do the cross-country ferrying work, once the factory
pilots were replaced in mid-July, the Ferrying Command relied ini-
tially on two-engine and single-engine pilots detailed from the Air
Force Combat Command for thirty- to ninety-day tours of tempo-
rary duty. More highly qualified four-engine pilots of the Combat
Command, as well as navigators and other crew members, were bor-
rowed to fly the trans-Atlantic transport shuttle. In the summer and
fall of 1941approximately 2 0 0 pilots were trained at Barksdale Field,
Louisiana, especially for ferrying duty, although they were assigned
to the Combat Command and served, as did the others, on temporary-
duty status with the Ferrying Command.14
During the six months between 6 June 1941, when the Ferrying
Command assumed nominal control over deliveries to the British, and
the Pearl Harbor attack, approximately 1,350 aircraft were ferried to
points of transfer, nearly all by pilots of the Air Corps. Over 90 per
cent of these deliveries were made from West Coast factories to the
British in Canada or a t points on the Atlantic seaboard. T w o types of
the latest twin-engine attack bombers-Bostons (DB-~’s,the British
3 16