“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
as ill informed of the combat as of the materiel phase of aeronautics,
and it was necessary to learn from the Allies all but the very rudiments
of flying. By Armistice Day the basic lessons had been absorbed, and
the Air Service, AEF, had shown some evidence of boldness of con-
cept in the application of air power; here, as in production, there was
great promise if only limited achievement. It is no reflection upon the
bravery and skill of American pilots to suggest that both achievement
and promise owed much to the genius of Brig. Gen. William Mitchell,
who was in a very real sense the founder of American air power.32
Mitchell, after a varied career in the Signal Corps, had become
interested in military aeronautics in its infancy and had followed its
progress in the European war through such information as was avail-
able in Washington. He had learned to fly in 1916and, as a major, had
for a while been in charge of the Signal Corps’ tiny Aviation Section.
Sent to Spain as a military observer in March 1917,he had moved up
to Paris with the American declaration of war. With characteristic
energy and disregard of military protocol, he had plunged immedi-
ately into the task of learning a t first hand the true nature of the air
war. Until Pershing’s arrival he was something of a free lance, and his
inspections took him to various headquarters, to depots and airfields,
to-and over-the front lines. Sentiments which were later to stud his
public utterances began to appear in his diary: “The only real defense
against aircraft is other aircraft.” “A very significant thing to me was
that we could cross the lines of these contending armies in a few
minutes in our airplane, whereas the armies have been locked in the
struggle, immovable, powerless to advance for three years. , . .They
get nowhere, as far as ending the war is concerned.” After experienc-
ing a night raid by German planes, he had come to have a wholesome
respect for the material and morale effects of bombardment: “NOone
can ever tell me that there is nothing in airplane bombing. It will have
a great effect on all the operations, if efficiently carried out.” “Several
generations will have to be born and pass away before people can
adopt and maintain the same attitude toward this form of warfare as
they exhibit toward the old familiar ones.” ’’
In May, Mitchell visited Maj. Gen. Hugh M. Trenchard, then com-
mander of the Royal Flying Corps, and was profoundly impressed by
his advanced ideas of air power. Mitchell quoted approvingly Tren-
chard’s dictum that “an airplane is an offensive and not a defensive
weapon” and the views the latter expressed on behind-the-line bom-
I 2