“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
oil stores, factory areas, and military installations, while others went
on to strike a t Kobe, Yokohama, and Nagoya. At least one bomb from
Lt. Edgar E. McElroy’s plane hit the carrier Ryuho * resting in a dry
dock a t the Yokosuka naval base; *’ bombs from other planes fell into
thickly settled districts. Despite the best efforts of the enemy AA
gunners, only one bomber was hit, that of Lt. Richard 0. Joyce, and
even this hit caused only minor damage. Of the sixteen planes in the
raid, fifteen had bombed installations in Japan and all sixteen safely
left the home islands. But circumstances beyond the control of the
aircrews were against the flight.
Although a fortuitous and unexpected tail wind helped to drive the
bombers across the East China Sea toward the field they sought at
Chuchow, over China the weather was thick and the hour was late;
in darkness and rain and cloud, one after another, the bombers either
crash-landed or were abandoned by their parachuting crews on the
night of 18 April. Of the fifty men who parachuted, forty-nine
reached ground safely and were recovered b y Chinese and led to
safety, as were ten more who had come down in their planes along
the coast; only Cpl. Leland D. Faktor was killed in his leap. One
plane landed in the sea along the coast and one in a rice paddy, both
without scratching their crews; but another, piloted by Lt. Ted W.
Lawson, was badly smashed as Lawson attempted to land on a narrow
beach. Every man in its crew was injured, some almost fatally. The
B-25 piloted by Capt. Edward J. York had gone to a point twenty-
five miles north of Vladivostok, and its crew was interned by the
Russians. Planes piloted by Lts. Dean E. Hallmark and William G.
Farrow both came down in enemy-held territory; of these crews, two
men apparently drowned in escaping from one plane, Lts. Farrow,
Hallmark, and Sgt. Harold A. Spatz all were executed on 1 5 October
1942 after trial by the Japanese, and Lts. Robert L. Hite, George
Barr, Chase J. Nielson, and Cpl. Jacob Deshazer were recovered a t
the end of the war after a long detention in enemy prison camps. One
man, Lt. Robert J. Meder, died late in 1943 while in the custody of
the Japanese. Thus ended the Doolittle raid on Japan.
An assessment of the mission is difficult. All sixteen bombers had
been lost, though not one to enemy action, and fourteen crews had
come through alive. Eight of the planes had bombed their primary
targets, inflicting varying amounts of damage upon them; five others
Not to be confused with Ryujo.
4-42