“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…
A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G
T h e pilots and crew members who took part in the operation had a
rough time. Many of them were inexperienced in arctic flying, and
the tension of prolonged instrument flight and the knowledge that
maps were inaccurate, that facilities were minimal, and that no search
and rescue system existed produced a mental stress that served to in-
tensify the physical exhaustion caused by long hours in the air. T h e
assumption by the Alaska Defense Command of the right to com-
mandeer any aircraft that crossed the border resulted in pilots being
kept in Alaska until their maximum flight time was reached and in
some cases exceeded; half a month’s flight time would be performed in
three days or less, and when the crews returned to Edmonton they
were an exhausted, unshaven, red-eyed lot. By the end of July the
operation tapered off and planes were being returned to normal com-
mercial operation, but several of the airlines continued to make emer-
gency flights to and through Edmonton until September.178
Following the failure of the early attempt to open an emergency
air supply service into the Southwest Pacific by way of Africa, no
further effort was made by the AAF to establish regular air communi-
cations with the area until April 1942. By that time, construction of
bases and facilities along the new South Pacific route between Hawaii
and Australia was far enough advanced to permit a scheduled trans-
Pacific operation on a small scale. While the initial service was under-
taken chiefly for the purpose of returning ferrying crews from
Australia to the United States, it also provided a means of getting a
limited quantity of badly needed supplies to the Southwest Pacific.”’
Pursuant to a directive from General Arnold to secure two of the
LB-3o’s repossessed from the British and open the service, the Ferrying
Command selected Consolidated Aircraft Corporation as the logical
operating agency.lS0Though Consolidated was an aircraft rnanufac-
turer rather than an airline, its own crews had been ferrying aircraft
to the Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies, and the company had, as
a consequence, a pool of pilots experienced in trans-Pacific flying.l8’
Regular operations began on 2 3 April 1942 when one of the LB-3o’s
was dispatched from San Diego to Australia carrying 1,900 pounds of
airplane parts, radio parts, and mail. It returned eleven days later with
twenty-two Ferrying Command pilots and other ferrying crew mem-
bers aboard. T h e regular route ran from Hamilton Field, California,
to Hickam Field, Oahu, and thence by way of Christmas Island,
Canton Island, the Fiji Islands, and New Caledonia to Australia. In
3 59