“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
Marine ground forces on the i~1and.O~Finally, at 0904 on the morning
of 3 June, the searchers made the first contact when a patrol plane
picked up two enemy cargo vessels 470 miles west of Midway. The
stage was set.
What followed was perhaps the most important single engagement
of the Pacific naval war. Excepting the role of the submarines, it was
exclusively an air-surface action involving the planes of both services,
and in which most of the damage to the enemy was inflicted by the
dive bombers of the carriers. Superficially, it was the first test of the
B-17’s as defensive weapons against attacking surface forces, and
the first occasion on which the heavy bombers based on Hawaii were
pushed out to forward island bases to strike at the enemy in defense
of the mid-Pacific. Here, it seemed, was an opportunity a t last to test
out one of the cherished beliefs of many of the heavy bomber expo-
nents: that the B- I 7’s could stop the carriers.Q4
Preliminaries to the Battle of Midway opened on the afternoon of
3 June, when at I 62 3 nine B- I 7E’s led by Lt. Col. Walter C. Sweeney,
Jr., of the 43 1st Bombardment Squadron surprised the transport force
with its supporting craft some 5 7 0 miles west of Midway, dropping
36 x 600-lb. demolition bombs from 8,000 feet. T h e claims were sub-
stantial, including five direct hits and several near misses; they were
representative of the scores credited after the subsequent missions of
the engagement, for Maj. Gen. Willis H. Hale, who became com-
mander of the Seventh Air Force on 20 June, firmly believed that a
fair percentage of the bombs had struck home. Assessment was difficult
and in part was based upon the statements of the handful of enemy
survivors picked up after the action; not until the war ended and the
teams of interrogators invaded Japan was it possible to interview a
number of the survivors of this initial action. And even their testimony
had suffered from the destruction of records, from the lapse of three
and one-half years between the action and interrogation, and from
the fact that the Japanese officers reporting were not always aware of
the source of the bombs which were dropped upon them. But their
evidence indicates the necessity of a radical scaling down of the origi-
nal claims as sent in by the Seventh Air Force. At any rate, in some
cases these enemy officers stood on the decks of the targets and were
in a fair way to determine when and by whom they were bombed,
better perhaps than pilots who bombed from zo,ooo feet and saw tall
geysers spout up around their rapidly maneuvering targets, for it has
45 7