“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
on 24 July by inquiring if U.S. air support for TORCH would be
drawn from strength assigned to BOLERO.63From one as familiar
with the aircraft situation as Sir Charles, that must have been a
rhetorical question. There was no other source to tap, and the Joint
Chiefs specifically stated that heavy and medium bomber groups
would be shifted from BOLERO assignments to A f r i ~ a . ~ ”General
Spaatz thought it might even be necessary to use all AAF units in the
United Kingdom for TORCH.65
Nor was TORCH the only successful rival. On 7 July the Com-
bined Chiefs of Staff had taken under consideration a proposed
schedule of deployments according to which the AAF was to have
in the United Kingdom by April 1943 a total of 3,640 combat
planes.66But in the meeting of 24 July, the Combined Chiefs had
agreed to divert from this force fifteen combat groups of various
categories * to spearhead projected offensives in the Pacific.67 This
decision Arnold had vainly opposed on the ground that constant
fluctuation in BOLERO assignments “makes our course seem vacillat-
ing.” T o his mind, the Southwest Pacific loomed as a more formid-
able rival of accepted plans than TORCH, which after all was to be
a blow against German power, if not at its source. As Marshall had
pointed out in London on 24 July, the American concept of the air
war against Germany had been that the AAF would operate against
Germany from any suitable base, and that in winter weather Africa
might offer some advantages over the United Kingdom.60
This was perhaps an indirect reference to AWPD/I.t That plan,
with its design for shuttling between England and Africa, had con-
templated the use of very long-range bombers not yet in production;
neither B-17’s nor B-24’S could hit Germany from African bases.
General Spaatz was not enthusiastic about the prospects. H e wrote
Arnold on I I August, “Regardless of what operations are conducted
in any other theater, in my opinion, this [England] still remains the
only base area from which to launch aerial operations to obtain air
supremacy over Germany, and until such air supremacy is established
there can be no successful outcome of the war.”’O Intensive opera-
tions could not be conducted from both areas at the same time with
the limited forces available. Arnold’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. George
* Groups were as follows: three heavy bombardment, two medium bombardment,
two light bombardment, two fighter, two observation, four transport. A fuller treat-
ment of this decision will appear in Volume IV.
t See above, pp. 148-49.
574