“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 I R S E R V I C E I N W O R L D W A R I
flared up, and friction occurred with air officers who had been in
France for some time. There was as well mutual antipathy between
air and ground officers. The Air Service was loath to take advice from
men who resolutely refused to enter a plane; ground officers accused
the aviators of being temperamental, lacking in the “garden variety of
home-made discipline,” of substituting a “hodgepodge of independent
personalities for an ordered administration.” 2 5 Pershing spoke of
Foulois’ staff as comprising a “lot of good men running around in
circles.” 2 6 At any rate, they proved incapable of building an effective
organization; their failure, aggravated by production delays at home
and tardiness in French deliveries, threatened to wreck all projected
aviation schedules. It was I April 1918 before the first combat squad-
ron was assigned to the front. By the time the 1st Division got its
baptism of fire a t Cantigny on 28 May, Pershing could write in his
diary, “Our aviation doing well a t the front.” Only six squadrons had
then been sent forward; by promises of the previous spring, achieve-
ment of the 4,500-plane objective should have been in sight.27
Pershing, at the instigation of some of the air officers, instituted a
thorough reorganization which followed immediately that in the
United States. O n 29 May he appointed as Chief of Air Service Brig.
Gen. Mason M. Patrick, an engineer who had nzver been in an air-
plane. Other officers were transferred, lines of authority were made
more precise, and the whole administrative structure of the Air Serv-
ice was revamped.zs A more modest objective of 2 0 2 combat squad-
rons was substituted for the AEF Aviation Project of 386.’’ The
reorganization proved salutary, and with renewed efforts at home the
Air Service was able to accelerate the rate of deployment of combat
units. By Armistice Day forty-five squadrons had been assigned to
the front.”
But with delays at home and in the AEF’s Zone of the Interior, the
combat echelon could hardly assume the decisive role so confidently
predicted in the spring of 1917. Even a t the war’s end the American
air force was dwarfed by that of the Germans, the British, and the
French. Air Service units were in combat just seven months; during
that time the weekly average of squadrons assigned to the front was
about nineteen. The official Air Service record carried a score of 781
enemy planes shot down for a loss of 289.31 If the scale of combat
activities was limited, the ratio of victories was remarkable for a
fledgling air force. When war was declared, the Aviation Section was
I 1