“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…
P L A N S , P O L I C I E S , A N D O R G A N I Z A T I O N
E. Stratemeyer, wrote consolingly that T O R C H was not to be “at
the expense of the bombing offensive from the UK but in addition
to it, and therefore at the expense of anything but the UK.” 71 That
was a very poor prediction. Four days earlier, on 2 I August, Admiral
Leahy had remarked to the Combined Chiefs that T O R C H might
necessitate revision of deployments currently under ons side ration.^^
Time was to prove him right.
One adverse concomitant of the T O R C H diversion could not be
measured wholly in quantitative terms. The Eighth Air Force had
built its plans around a new weapon-the day bomber-and a new
tactical principle. Arnold had originally wished to hold the B- I 7’s
and B-24’s out of action until he could unleash against the Germans
a considerable force. Though that scheme had not been adopted in
principle, delays in movements of the initial units and schedules for
a rapid build-up for BOLERO had promised to accomplish the same
purpose. But T O R C H meant that AAF heavy bombers would be
fed in piecemeal and that American equipment and techniques would
be exhibited to the G A F without adequate returns. The results were
not as disappointing as the premature introduction of the tank in
World W a r I only because the novelty of the weapon was not so
pronounced in I 942 ; fundamentally the cases were parallel.
Comand and Organization
The constant flux in grand strategy for the war against Germany
pade it difficult to plan, with any degree of firmness, the practical
measures by which success in the air phase might be assured. Perhaps
the most obvious example of that difficulty has been suggested in the
references above to frequent changes in allocation of AAF combat
units to the European theater. Both over-all strategy and contemplated
deployments, in turn, affected the organization and the chain of com-
mand through which those units would operate. The problems in-
volved in this latter respect were to AAF Headquarters hardly less
significant than that of finding sufficient forces. In a popular account
of air warfare published in 1941, General Arnold and Colonel Eaker
had written: “Organization is a dry topic. . . . It is likely, for that
reason, that it will receive less attention than it merits. Actually, or-
ganization . . . is the most important of all the military functions.” 73
If that judgment reflected something of the Air Corps’ long struggle
575