“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
they moved into Bhamo, and on 8 May the enemy climaxed his north-
ward drive by capturing Myitkyina, key base in the current plan for
maintaining an air cargo line to China. With this defeat, Allied re-
sistance on the ground for all practical purposes ended, the AVG
squadron withdrew to Kunming, and Stilwell began his famous walk
out of Burma.
T o the Allied defense against this drive, the Tenth Air Force had
been in no position to make a direct contribution. Conferring with
Stilwell on 24 March a t Magwe, near the current fighting, Brereton
had reported that his air force would not be ready for combat for
another month, an estimate which proved in fact to have been opti-
mistic. Its assistance in combat was necessarily limited to the indirect
aid provided by a few bombing missions which, considered either
individually or collectively, can be regarded as having little more than
a nuisance value.
The first combat mission of the Tenth was flown on the night of
2 April. Brereton planned two missions for that date, one against the
Rangoon area and another against shipping targets in the region of
the Andaman Islands, where a Japanese fleet that included carriers
was reportedly assembled for an attack on Ceylon. At Asansol one of
the two B- I 7’s assigned to the Rangoon mission cracked up on take-off
with loss of its entire crew, and though the second took off well
enough, it was forced by mechanical failure to turn back to base
before reaching the target. That night the second mission, led by
Brereton in person and flown by two B-17’s and one LB-30, success-
fully attacked enemy shipping near Fort Blair in the Andaman Islands.
Having dropped eight tons of bombs from 3,500 feet, the crews
claimed hits on a cruiser and a transport. Antiaircraft fire both from
the ships and from batteries on shore was encountered, and the planes
subsequent to the bombing were attacked by enemy fighters. T w o of
the bombers received damage, but all returned to base.45
At General Stilwell’s insistence, the Tenth thereafter devoted its
attention to the Japanese in On 3 April six bombers took off
from Asansol to strike a t docks and warehouses in Rangoon. In-
cendiary and demolition bombs were used to start three large fires;
no resistance from enemy pursuits developed; one B-17 was lost on
the return trip, cause By 1 6 April the planes had been put
in good enough shape to send again six bombers to Rangoon. Having
taken off this time from Dum Dum near Calcutta, they first dropped
500