“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
himself and a small staff, called for a tremendous force of 1,500planes-
the largest air show of the whole war. Of the I ,48 I actually engaged,
only 609 were from American squadrons, the remainder being made
up of aircraft from the RAF’s Independent Force, the whole of the
French Air Division (strategic reserve), and Italian and Portuguese
units. Preparations for so large a battle could not be hidden completely,
but a certain degree of tactical surprise was achieved. Only about a
third of the aircraft were attached to the ground forces. The rest,
divided into two air brigades, struck alternately a t the right and left
flanks of the salient and at communications and supplies at the rear.
Local air superiority was maintained according to plan throughout
the battle, and the air component contributed effectively to the
American victory in spite of unfavorable eath her.^' Mitchell’s skill
in marshaling and controlling so large and heterogeneous a force was
surprising; in short, St.-Mihiel was as promising a debut for the Air
Service as for the First Army.
In the more extended Meuse-Argonne offensive of 2 6 September-I I
November, Mitchell was unable to rally so large a force, being usually
dependent upon American units only. The principle of concentration
which had been so successful at St.-Mihiel continued, however, to
guide his tactics. In the Meuse-Argonne it was the Americans who
occupied the salient and the German air force which struck at the
flanks, trying, in Mitchell’s words, to “make our infantry insist on
splitting up our pursuit aviation so as to give local protection every-
where.” Mitchell refused to “spread a thin veneer of airplanes all
along the front through which they could break easily a t any point
with a large group formation.” To intercept German “battle squad-
rons” of attack planes, the Americans organized a special branch of
their forces known as “low-flying pursuit.” Patrols of five planes each
were assigned ten-kilometer fronts. Flying at two levels and using
friendly antiaircraft fire to spot enemy intruders, the patrols proved
successful in breaking up their attacks on ground troops.
The rest of his offensive forces Mitchell concentrated along the axis
of the American advance. Since the Germans had numerical superior-
ity in the air and were flying in large formations, he used where pos-
sible a force of two groups of pursuits and one group of day bombers.
These struck at troop concentrations and communications and attacked
airdromes behind the lines with the purpose of destroying the enemy’s
installations and planes on the ground or forcing him to come up and
‘4