“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
prospect of direct intervention on the part of the United States.
Hence, though the bomber offensive was treated as a prelude to inva-
sion, it was conceived on a scale so huge as to obviate the mass battles
of World War I. This was indicated clearly a t the Atlantic confer-
ence of August 1941 when the British chiefs of staff expressed hope
that the air war alone might bring about a German collapse and limit
the role of ground forces to that of occupation troops; at worst, it
would be a matter of mobile armored columns and local ~ a t r i 0 t s . l ~ ~
This concept of war was common enough among airmen, but it was
something new that it should have governmental support. It did not
pass unchallenged. In succeeding months, the high priority given to
heavy bombers and the declared intention of using them exclusively
in a protracted strategic program evoked much argument in England.
Critics complained of the RAF’s failure to provide adequate close
support for ground operations in Africa, of stress on high-level bomb-
ing to the exclusion of dive bombing, of the preference shown
Bomber Command over Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm.157
Public indignation over the escape of the Scharnhorst and Gneisem
from Brest on I Z February 1942 brought editorial agitation for the
reorganization of the RAF and reconsideration of the question of
high-level bombing.158RAF estimates of the efficacy of its efforts
were sometimes challenged-as, for instance, in the highly publicized
mission against the Renault works near Paris on 3 March.lS9In sum,
the complaints followed the familiar pattern of objections to inde-
pendent air force operations which had originally stemmed from
interservice differences. The criticism was eagerly seized on by the
German propaganda machine. Thus, in April, a fake English voice
on one of Goebbels’ radio programs announced:
W e [British] should know better than anyone that the bombardment of
towns can’t bring the end of the war nearer. London withstood about as
heavy a bombardment as could be launched. ... T h e proper use of aircraft
is to support land forces in the actual battle zone, and as the RAF isn’t large
enough to fulfill all its tasks, it should be reserved for this purpose only.16’
Neither honest criticism nor propaganda brought any serious revision
of policy, nor apparently in majority public opinion. An air attach6
on Chaney’s staff reported in the same month that “the British public
have an erroneous belief, which has been fostered by effective RAF
publicity, that the German war machine can be destroyed and the
nation defeated by intensive bombing.” 161 The favorable attitude
593