“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
By the evening of the 4th, the issue had been decided; the enemy’s
carriers were disabled and sinking, and Yamamoto realized full well
that with his air strength gone, he had no alternative but to retire.
Even his anticlimactical attempt on the night of the 4th to bombard
Midway with the cruiser force was abortive. The M o g m i and Mikuma
collided and had to be withdrawn, and fresh disaster overtook this
unfortunate pair on the 6th, when dive bombers from the Enterprise
and Hornet caught them, sinking the Mikzcma and damaging the
Mogami very heavily.’ O O
The battle had ended with Midway’s installations badly wrecked by
enemy bombers but still in American hands and with runways intact.
The problem was to assess the damage to the enemy and to examine
the weapons which had inflicted it. During the three days, 3 to 5 June,
the Seventh Air Force had carried out sixteen B-17 attacks involving
a total of fifty-five sorties and one torpedo attack by four B-26’s. The
heavy bombers had expended 3 14 x 500- and 6oo-lb. bombs which had
been dropped, excluding the torpedoes, a t altitudes ranging from 3,600
feet up to ~ 5 , 0 0 0feet. Immediately after the action, General Emmons
reported that his planes had scored a total of twenty-two direct bomb
hits on carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, that one destroyer
had been sunk, and that three torpedoes had struck home on two car-
riers. In addition, a total of eight Zero fighters had gone down before
the guns of the B-I 7’s, two more to the B-26’s, and all this had cost two
B-26’s with their crews, plus two B-I~’s,of which one crew was
rescued, less one man.lol
Results of the action revived the discussion over the merits of high-
level bombardment attacks upon maneuvering surface vessels, rein-
forcing the strong measure of skepticism persisting among Navy men,
who regarded horizontal bombing as relatively ineffective against this
type of target. But there could be no proof until the war had ended,
and even then the evidence was not entirely conclusive. Because of the
extraordinary amount of discussion and debate arising out of the battle,
it is pertinent to examine the conditions and handicaps under which
AAF planes had operated. Never were more than fourteen B- I 7’s over
a group of targets at any one time, and even these failed to attack the
same vessel simultaneously, thus further decreasing the existing slight
probability of hits. Furthermore, most of the attacks were carried out
by small flights of four planes or less per target, a number far too small
45 9