“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
allies, which must be met out of their respective allotments. But for
the AAF it substantially narrowed the gap between prospective com-
bat crews and combat planes, and it gave promise of providing a
strong air force for BOLERO. Within a few weeks’ time, however,
that promise was to be blighted by a sudden reversal of strategy.
In London, on 18 June, General Spaatz assumed command of the
Eighth Air Force, the organization which had been created to carry
the AAF’s responsibilities in BOLERO.4z On the same date Mr.
Churchill arrived in Washington with a small staff. Publicly it was
announced that “the object in view is the earliest maximum concen-
tration of Allied war power upon the enemy.” 4 3 In the privacy of
the ensuing CCS conference, a British member ascribed the visit to
the Prime Minister’s desire to discuss the co-ordination and “possible
reorientation” of combined p01icy.~”In plainer English, he was not
too keen about BOLERO.
Much had happened in the two months which had passed since
Churchill had approved that plan. Japanese naval losses in the Coral
Sea and at Midway had eased somewhat the tension in the Pacific; the
monsoon, rather than Allied successes, had for the moment lessened
the threat to India. Elsewhere the news was bad. The long-dreaded
summer campaign in Russia was in full swing. Mannstein had con-
quered the Crimea, was hammering at the inner defenses of Sevas-
topol. Timoshenko’s winter campaign below Kharkov had failed, and
German armies were already launched in their drive for the Caucasus
with its oil fields and its route to the Middle East. Nazi successes in
North Africa were equally alarming. There Rommel had opened his
offensive in May, driving the British back and defeating them de-
cisively a t Knightsbridge on 1 3 June. Tobruk with its large British
garrison was to surrender on the 2 Ist, while the conference was still
in session, and a week later the retreating Eighth Army was to pull
up for a last stand at El Alamein, hardly seventy-five miles west of
Alexandria. With or without Japanese aid, the Germans constituted
a menace to the Middle East and all it stood for-rich resources, the
lend-lease route to Russia, and Britain’s link with India and the South-
west Pacific.
If the British interest in Egypt was most immediate, that fact was
not stressed in the discussions of the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Ac-
cepted strategy for 1942-43 was contingent upon the progress of
events in Russia. Intelligence available in Washington was still too
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