“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
fectly drawn; a unit and its equipment might arrive separately and with
a considerable time interval to add a further complication. Vital parts
and tools might be missing or else it would require time to locate them,
and once found, they might prove defective or damaged in transit
with no nearer source of resupply than America.54 T o assemble the
planes, reliance perforce was placed in large part upon inexperienced
and untrained personnel; ground crews of the 7th Group, a heavy
bomber unit, erected I 38 P-40’s between 2 3 December and 4 Febru-
ary.55A shortage of Prestone continued to be a delaying factor, for
the Australian supply was limited and it took time to transport an
adequate supply from the United state^.^' T h e pilots sent out, more-
over, were considered insufficiently trained for the operations they
would be required to undertake, and veteran pilots evacuated from the
Philippines took over the task of whipping them into shape through
an improvised training program that was marked by a high rate of
Under the War Department’s policy of shipping out men
and planes as they became available, it was necessary to provide for
them a provisional organization in the theater. Five provisional pur-
suit squadrons-the 17th, zoth, 3d, 33d, and 13th, respectively com-
manded by Maj. Charles A. Sprague, Capt. William Lane, Jr., Capt.
Grant Mahoney, Maj. Floyd Pell, and Lt. Boyd D. Wagner-were
organized and manned by casual pilots.58
Activation of the 17th Squadron (Prov.) was authorized on 10
January, when Major Sprague received directions to select in addition
to the pilots three radio men and one mechanic, one armorer, and one
crew chief for each plane from those available in Brisbane. O n 16
January, the flying echelon of the newly organized unit, headed by
Major Sprague and composed of twelve other pilots who had fought
in the Philippines and four second lieutenants recently arrived from
the United States, left Brisbane for Darwin on the way to Java.
Guided by two Australian planes, they flew the 2,000-mile route
overland by way of Rockhampton, Townsville, Cloncurry, and Daly
Waters. Accidents delayed three planes en route, and one of the P-40’s
was completely “washed out” in a landing, but all save this one had
come in at Darwin by the 18th.~’From Darwin they took off on the
22d for the fi4o-mile hop across the Timor Sea to Koepang, escorted
by an Australian two-engine Beechcraft. The next leg carried them
to Waingapoe on Soemba Island, whence, no longer united in one
flight and some of them without escort, they flew the 500 miles across
3 85