“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 P R O B L E M O F N E W G U I N E A
lawed, pilots had been instructed to attack only with an altitude
advantage, and to repeat the attack only under the most favorable
circumstances. As a result the inferior characteristics of the P-40
were minimized, while the pilot capitalized on its superiority in arma-
ment and diving.'
Lt. Col. Boyd Wagner, who had been appointed director of pur-
suit in the Moresby area, faced a still tougher assignment. Trained
service units were lacking; engineering equipment and maintenance
supplies were critically low; and the P-39, even in a good state of
repair, was unable to meet the Japanese fighter on equal terms. The
P-39's leakproof tank, rugged construction, and heavy firepower were
popular characteristics, but the superior maneuverability, greater ac-
celeration, and higher ceiling of the enemy's plane enabled him to
avoid combat almost at will.13 Late in May the first flights of the
35th Group, equipped with P-~OO'S,arrived to relieve the pilots of
the 8th Group, who in June returned to Townsville to recover from
dengue fever, malaria, and fatigue. During May alone Moresby had
been attacked twenty-one times. Though some of these attacks were
slight, one had been carried out by thirty-four bombers and fifteen
fighters with considerable damage to the Seven-Mile Airdrome."
That most of the enemy's raids on Port Moresby did little damage
was hardly because of the intrinsic merits of the P-39 and P-400. The
threat of interception and a gradual improvement in antiaircraft
defenses in the area tended to keep the enemy's bombers high; more
than forty of his planes had been shot down; and during June and
July the scale of his effort was reduced. The cost to the Americans,
however, had been high. Prior to June, twenty to twenty-five P-39's
had been lost in combat, eight more in forced landings, and three by
destruction on the ground. The sources are contradictory, but fighter
losses a t Port Moresby seem to have declined somewhat during June
and July.
In addition to the defensive tasks assumed and a few offensive
sweeps, the fighters at Port Moresby also provided escort for trans-
port planes on flights to the primitive airfield of Wau in North East
New Guinea. There a band of miners and prospectors, reinforced
by a small but specially trained Australian commando-type unit and
known as the Kanga Force, held out against a larger force of Japanese
who had advanced inland from Lae and Salamaua. By way of a cir-
cuitous water and land route, the Kanga Force received supplies at
477