“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
planned deployment of American pursuit units could be completed
before late March, and every indication was that by then the fate of
Java already would have been sealed.
Japanese Encirclement of Java
On 1 5 February Singapore fell. Already the enemy held virtually
all areas of strategic importance in Borneo and Celebes. H e was slowly
but surely eliminating a courageous Australian garrison on Amboina,
where the Japanese had landed on 3 1 January. After an Allied naval
force of four cruisers and seven destroyers had been driven back in
Makassar Strait on 4 February, the enemy’s strength in the air had
restricted efforts by naval units of the ABDA Command almost en-
tirely to night operations. The invasion of Sumatra began on 14 Feb-
ruary with a paratroop drop at Palembang, where on the following
day a reinforced enemy controlled both the town and its airfield. The
enemy was closing in on Java, and there was little if any prospect of
wresting from him that air superiority which on all sides prepared the
way for his advance.
Indeed, General Brett already had suggested to the W a r Depart-
ment the necessity for prompt attention to the probability that only
through Burma and China and along a line extending northward from
Australia would the Allies be given an opportunity to strike back.
Fitting his actions to his words, he had sent Brady to Burma for a sur-
vey of facilities, supplies, and munitions, and had called on General
Barnes in Australia for pertinent study and report.66
Reinforcements for the bomber command continued to come in;
five B-I~E’sreached Java by way of the Atlantic route during the first
week of February and two LB-3o’s by the Pacific. In two LB-~o’s,
twenty more officers and men were evacuated from Mindanao, and
by submarine four officers reached Java from C~rregidor.’~But foul
weather and enemy interception thwarted all attempts to bomb targets
of importance for ten days after 2 February. T h e major effort was
made on the morning of 8 February, when Capt. J.L. Dufrane led out
nine B-17’~in an attempt to strike back at Kendari. The weather pro-
vided a cloud cover that appeared inviting but actually contained so
much turbulence as to make flying in formation almost impossible, and
about halfway across the Java Sea the Americans were set upon by
nine to twelve enemy fighters. In what the survivors agreed was the
best-executed attack yet encountered, the Japanese concentrated first
388