“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 I
against the U-boat at sea. Patrol and hunting operations had time
and again proved futile, he asserted. T h e “killer” system, whereby
contact with a submarine is followed continuously and relentlessly,
required more vessels and planes than were available. The only way
he believed it possible to eliminate the U-boat menace was to wipe
out the German building yards and bases-“a matter which I have
been pressing with the British, so far with only moderate success.’) *
But even this form of offensive strategy would do little more toward
making the Atlantic safe for Allied shipping than a complete system
of convoy cover and escort could achieve.“
H e therefore proposed extending and intensifying the convoy sys-
tem as the most effective step toward reducing the submarine menace.
Specifically, he urged the Army to make available as air cover for
escorted convoys a total of 500 planes, 2 0 0 of which should be
deployed in the Caribbean and Panama Sea frontiers, where the
convoy system was being extended in order to protect the vital oil
and bauxite shipping from South America. These 500 planes, he felt,
were a bare minimum, but they would effectively supplement the
total of 5 5 0 patrol and 300 observation planes the Navy hoped to
employ in the four western Atlantic sea
On 7 July 1942, in a memorandum to the Secretary of the Navy,
the Secretary of War reopened the question of antisubmarine or-
ganization with a fresh proposal. H e called attention to the increasing
rate of shipping losses and to the current antisubmarine effort which,
he said, had proved “largely ineffective.” The trouble, he continued,
lay primarily in an inefficient system of command and control with
regard to ASV-equipped aircraft:
Authority and responsibility is at present divided between many commands
and echelons of command. The flow of communications through so many
channels inevitably consumes time and effort and interferes with the most
effective employment of the forces available. Centralized control to enable
the instant concentration of available forces at points of major threat is re-
quired. This situation has assumed such a critical aspect that drastic measures
should be taken immediately.*6
In order, therefore, to provide a greater degree of flexibility “than
appears to exist under the Naval District system and our Eastern De-
fense Command set-up,)’ and to take advantage of the mobility of
’It may be noted in this connection that from October 1942 until June 1943 the
Eighth Air Force had as its objective of highest priority the bombing of German
submarine shore facilities.
548