“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
reply of a pilot lieutenant: “It has been discussed everywhere I have
been where there are any Air Service officers, and I have never heard
anybody yet-any Air Service officer-against it.” * There were a few
iconoclasts in the Navy who supported the move for reorganization in
some particulars-not in all. There were, too, enthusiastic advocates of
the separate air force in Congress, and eventually a large public fol-
lowing was built up. Early incumbents of the Office of Chief of the
Air Service (Corps) found it difficult to press vigorously for reorgani-
zation and, by default, leadership devolved upon General Mitchell,
assistant chief from 1 9 1 9 to 1925, whose energetic and sometimes
flamboyant figure dominated the postwar struggle as it had the com-
bat effort in France.
The alignment was hardly an even one. Mitchell and his followers
had enthusiasm, but their opponents had rank. Because the far-reaching
and permanent changes sought by the Air Service demanded legisla-
tive sanction, much of the struggle was aired publicly. In 1928 Maj.
Gen. Mason M. Patrick, recently retired Chief of the Air Corps, wrote
somewhat plaintively that “the Air Service or rather the air effort, of
the United States since we entered the World War has probably been
the most investigated activity ever carried on by the United States.”
The end was not then in sight. Six years later the Baker Board listed
fourteen such investigations (omitting the one most favorably inclined
to the independent air force),” and others were to follow. The mem-
bers of most boards were distinguished enough, but they were named
by those in authority who were opposed to change: from the Menoher
Board of 1919,composed of a nonflying Director of the Air Service
and a group of artillery officers, to the Baker Board of 1934, with its
military membership of four ground officers and one aviator, the in-
vestigating committees from the airman’s point of view were usually
stacked. Whatever may have been the logic of arguments redundantly
cited, he viewed the conclusion, usually conservative in nature, with
deep suspicion: as a disgruntled witness said in one instance, “the find-
ings of the Morrow Board were approved before the Morrow Board
ever assembled.’’ l 1
Filled with a missionary zeal and frustrated by lack of success,
Mitchell and his followers spoke intemperately. Their opponents re-
plied in kind and attempted to still dissident voices by authority rather
than by reason. And so the fight for recognition of air power took on
all the bitterness of domestic strife, with “the feeling on the part of
2 2