“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…
L O S S O F N E T H E R L A N D S E A S T I N D I E S
reaching the target area; and with visibility poor, their bombing runs
brought only uncertain r e s u l t ~ . ~
By this time the Japanese had begun their southward move. Tarakan
fell on I I January, and on the same day enemy forces, including para-
troopers, landed a t Manado in upper Celebes. Small Dutch garrisons
resisted as best they could, but naval units which might otherwise have
helped to provide some semblance of a striking force were on convoy
duty to the west, and available air forces were equal only to a token
defense. Australian Hudsons, based on Boeroe and Amboina, American
PBY’s, and Dutch planes struck at the enemy in Celebes, but such hits
as were scored left the enemy force uncrippled, and in the face of stiff
resistance serious losses were sustained by the Allies.33 Against Tara-
kan on the day of its occupation, Major Combs led a mission of seven
B-17’s; but in heavy wind and rain four of the seven were forced to
turn back before reaching the target, and the remaining three, after a
fight with enemy pursuits in which two Japanese planes were shot
down, found the visibility too poor for accurate b ~ m b i n g . ~ ’
The Japanese were now halfway down the Malay Peninsula on
their advance to Singapore, and the next mission of the B-17’s was
flown on orders from the newly established ABDA Command against
the recently captured Sungei Patani airfield on the west coast of the
peninsula, a thousand miles west of their latest target at Tarakan. T h e
distance from Malang again was 1,500 miles, a factor which required
the use of an intermediate field at Palembang in Sumatra. Seven B- I 7’s,
once more led by Combs, flew from Malang to Palembang on 14
January. Equipment for service of the planes there proved to be
seriously inadequate, and experienced maintenance personnel were
lacking. T h e take-off of the planes on 15 January was delayed by
difficulty in refueling and in fuzing unfamiliar Dutch bombs, which
alone were a~ailable.~’Storms buffeted the planes on the 75o-mile
flight from Palembang to Sungei Patani, and two were forced to turn
back. The other five proceeded, relatively free of enemy pursuit and
antiaircraft interference, to make several bomb runs over the target
during which more than twenty hits and several resulting fires were
observed. The bombers returned that night to the Lhoknga emer-
gency field in northern Sumatra, from which they flew to Malang the
following morning. O n this 3,000-mile mission, the only loss was one
B- I 7 damaged beyond repair when landing on rain-soaked Sing~sari.~‘
In the absence of Combs and the B-I 7’s, four LB-~o’sand six B-I 7’s
3 79