“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 A R M B E T W E E N T W O W A R S
sponsible for the creation of the Air Ministry in England and, prop-
erly nourished, for the Aviation Act of 24 July 1917 in America.
Mitchell was unwilling to wait for disaster in war; as he told the
Morrow Board in 1925, he and his followers had “appealed to the
President and the American people to hear our cause.” 21 T h e people
were more receptive than Harding or Coolidge.
Having begun his educational campaign in I 9 I 9, Mitchell intensified
his efforts as his cause weakened in the W a r Department. His energy
was prodigious. H e poured forth a steady stream of articles and news-
paper stories and found time to write three books on air power. His
published testimony before committees alone constitutes a formidable
corpus. H e became an indefatigable lecturer and a hardy after-dinner
speaker; he courted interviews by the press.22 Read in quantity now
that the battle has passed, his writings appear repetitious and not al-
ways models of style. An ardent proselyter, he was capable of slanting
an argument or of malting claims for air power hardly justified by the
performance of aircraft then available. But of the vigor and sincerity
of his message there can be no doubt or of its effectiveness in arousing
widespread interest. Time has proved the essential soundness of most
of his basic contentions.
Because of the traditional importance of sea power in the national
scheme of defense, Mitchell’s boldest attacks against the existing order
were directed against the Navy. In that service, even more strenuously
than in the Army, conservatives had resisted the development of the
air arm. Mitchell ascribed that resistance to occupational jealousy of
men who feared the intrusion of a new weapon which might upset
the theories of Mahan. Since his return from France, Mitchell had
insisted that an airplane could sink any surface ship by bombs or
torpedoes. Hence submarines and land-based planes could defend the
nation from any attack. At a time when economy in government was
a magic talisman, his claims that money spent on battleships was a
waste and that national security could be had at a lesser figure through
creation of a unified and independent air force were bound to receive
a t t e n t i ~ n . ’ ~Elis repeated requests for a test on suitable naval vessels
were staunchly resisted by the Navy, which conducted inconclusive
tests of its own in 1920, until congressional interest finally forced
c o m p l i a n ~ e . ~ ~
T h e test, held off the mouth of the Chesapeake in July 192I , at-
tracted widespread public interest. There, after naval aircraft in June
25