“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
ment was ordered to report at the Alameda Naval Air Station, on
San Francisco Bay, with a stopover a t the Sacramento Air Depot,
where twenty-two aircraft arrived by the ~ 7 t h . ~ ~Four days later the
planes reached Alameda; as yet no aircrew knew its ultimate ob-
jective.
While the crews trained at Eglin, negotiations proceeded through
the CBI command in an effort to make certain that Chinese fields
would be prepared to receive the B-2 5’s. Extreme secrecy surrounded
the project, making it impossible to impart full information to Chiang
Kai-shek, who only reluctantly gave his final consent to the project
on 28 March without ever knowing the details, except that by z April
he was informed that at least twenty-five B-25’s would be employed
and that he should have fuel and flares ready at Kweilin, Kian, Yu-
shan, Chuchow, and Li~hui.~’The Chinese leader sought to delay the
flight until late in May, which would give him opportunity to arrange
his troops so as to prevent Japanese occupation of the Chuchow area,
and right to the end he refused to permit the use of the field at Chu-
chow. But the machinery was under way, and once the carriers had
put to sea, it no longer was possible to alter the original plan.
Back at Alameda, on I April, sixteen B-zs’s, instead of the twenty
originally scheduled, were lifted aboard the Hornet, where they were
lashed down on the flight deck. Next day, carrying 71 AAF officers
and 1 3 0 enlisted men, the Hornet passed out through the Golden
Gate, accompanied by two cruisers, four destroyers, and an oiler.
After a rough voyage beset with foul weather most of the way, north
of Midway the task force joined a similar one which had come up
from Pearl Harbor, and together the two, consisting of two carriers,
four cruisers, eight destroyers, and two oilers, headed west toward
Japan under Vice Adm. William F. Halsey in the Enterprise.
Doolittle hoped to reach a point 450 statute miles from Japan but
believed it possible, if necessary, to take off from 5 5 0 miles. H e felt
a point 650 miles from Japan would be the outside limit of any reason-
able prospect for success.41Presumably the airfields in Chekiang were
to be made ready for arrival of the planes not earlier than 0400 on
2 0 April. If they were not readied, the aircrews could not be warned-
nor could the Chinese be informed of the time of take-off from the
carrier-because Navy task forces followed a policy of absolute radio
silence when at sea on such missions. On the 16th, when the B-25’s
were spotted for the take-off, the leading bomber-Doolittle’s-faced
440