“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 B A T T L E L I N E I N T H E P A C I F I C
467 feet of clear deck and the last plane hung precariously out over
the stern ramp of the carrier; there was no spare space on the Hornet’s
flight deck.
Early on the morning of 18 April, the task force encountered the
first of the enemy’s line of pickets; by 0 7 38 a patrol vessel was sighted.
Now that secrecy had been compromised, and apprehensive that
enemy bombers would strike the surface force prior to the launch,
Halsey ordered the B-zs’s off at 0800, some ten hours prior to the
original plan, which had contemplated a late afternoon departure and
a night attack. Furthermore, the entire task force was one full day
ahead of the schedule originally sent out to the Chinese. And instead
of the 650 miles foreseen as a maximum distance to the targets, the
aircrews now faced approximately 800 statute miles of flight before
they would reach Tokyo.4z But this contingency had been foreseen
and it had been agreed that rather than endanger the carriers, the
planes would be sent off despite the remote chance that they could
reach China from such a distance. T h e crews entered their planes
amid some minor confusion caused b y the rush of last-minute prepara-
tions, and at 0818 local time Colonel Doolittle made his run down the
plunging deck into a 40-knot gale, which was sending green water
over the bows and wetting the flight deck. Never before had this been
accomplished, yet now it was carried off without a hitch. By 0 9 2 I the
sixteenth plane had taken off and was on its way toward Japan. After
launching the planes, the Hornet and the Eizterprise escaped without
interference, although a Japanese force of five carriers returning to
the homeland from Ceylon was alerted near Formosa and attempted
to intercept them.43
Although the patrol boat had warned of the approaching American
carriers, Japanese intelligence, not anticipating that the attack would
be made from such a distance, had not expected a raid before the
following day.44Thus the bombers were unopposed as they swept in
low over the coast on their way to Tokyo, where an air raid drill
was in progress. A full air raid alert was not effected until after the
attack was opened at I 2 I 5 b y Doolittle in the lead plane, who un-
loaded his incendiaries upon the Japanese capital. Almost at once he
was followed by Lt. Travis Hoover, attacking from 900 feet with
three 500-lb. demolition bombs, which, with the addition of a single
incendiary cluster, constituted the bomb load of the majority of the
Plane after plane roared over Tokyo, bombing and firing
441