“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
appointed in each of several departments-War, Navy, Commerce-
to supervise aviation.
The Lampert report, published on 1 3 December,46 was in many
respects an indorsement of Mitchell’s ideas. On the central issue of
organization, after an analysis of six possible schemes, it favored the
single Department of Defense with equal representation for air,
ground, and naval forces. These dissident reports evoked a wave of
new air bills in Congress, ranging from Representative Charles Curry’s
detailed plan for a Department of Defense to a War Department-
sponsored bill providing only minor change^.^' The bill which was
finally enacted purported to be a compromise, but it leaned heavily
on the Morrow recommendations.
The Air Corps Act of 2 July 1926 4 8 effected no fundamental in-
novation. The change in designation meant no change in status: the
Air Corps was still a combatant branch of the Army with less prestige
than the Infantry. The establishment of an air section in each division
of the General Staff was prescribed for a three-year period. A new
Assistant Secretary of War was to be named to help in “fostering
military aeronautics,” but in the absence of a more definite mission his
usefulness would be determined by the attitude of the Secretary.
Specific provisions were aimed a t removing complaints in respect to
flying officers’ rating, pay, and promotion and at regularizing procure-
ment procedure. T o remedy existing deficiencies in personnel and
equipment, the law authorized a five-year program to bring the Air
Corps up to a strength of 1,518 officers, 2 , 5 0 0 flying cadets, 16,000
enlisted men, and I ,800 serviceable aircraft.
The skepticism with which Air Corps officers viewed this legislation
was confirmed by the experience of the next few years. Funds were
not made available for the authorized expansion, and for that failure
the War Department and the Bureau of the Budget, rather than Con-
gress, seem to have been respon~ible.’~Directed reforms were not
carried out to the satisfaction of the officers concerned, and token
representation in the General Staff accomplished little. The ineffec-
tiveness of the Air Corps Act confirmed proponents of a sweeping
reorganization in their opinions; between 1926 and 1935 twelve bills
for a Department of Aeronautics and seventeen for a single Depart-
ment of Defense were presented in Congress.6oNot one was reported
favorably, however, and by 1933 many Air Corps officers had come
to believe it hopeless to strive longer for independence from the War
29