“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 11
units best equipped for antisubmarine operations trained almost ex-
clusively in the performance of their primary function of bombard-
ment rather than in a secondary, emergency duty of antisubmarine
p a t r ~ l . ~
More serious was the inability of the Navy to meet a crisis falling
in an area of primary responsibility. Whether because of its tradi-
tional concern for the problems of the Pacific or for other reasons,
the crisis of December 1941 found the Navy unable to perform the
offshore patrol necessary in order to cope effectively with the subma-
rines. T h e commander of the North Atlantic Naval Coastal Frontier
(in February 1942 replaced by Eastern Sea Frontier), on whom fell
the immediate responsibility for countering the submarine menace,
reported that he had at his disposal on 2 2 December 1941,after other
demands on his resources had been met, a force of some twenty sur-
face vessels capable of taking limited action against submarines. This
force he regarded as woefully inadequate for its task, since there was
“not a vessel available that an enemy submarine could not outdistance
when operating on the surface.” “In most cases,” he added, “the guns
of these vessels would be outranged by those of the submarine.””
Nor was it possible to augment these forces to any appreciable extent
before May 1942. Repeated and urgent requests for destroyers and
escort vessels were denied by COMINCH on the ground that equally
imperative needs existed elsewhere.” This inadequacy of surface
forces naturally threw a heavier immediate burden upon available air
resources, but strength in naval aircraft at hand for antisubniarine
patrol proved equally insufficient. Of approximately IOO planes at the
disposal of the N A N C F commander on the outbreak of war, the
great majority were trainers, scouts, or transport types, unsuited for
the task at hand. By the end of January the situation had improved
slightly, though not in the category of long-range patrol. “There
are,” the N A N C F commander reported to COMINCH on 14 Jan-
uary 1942, “no effective planes attached to the Frontier. . .capable of
maintaining long-range seaward patrols.” In reply to his urgent re-
quest for at least one squadron of patrol planes, he was told that
additional allocations depended on future production.12 Here, as else-
where in these early days of 1942, the demands made upon all services
for men and equipment were great but the supply small.
So it was that the burden of antisubmarine patrol fell heavily on
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