“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
toward strategic bombardment was not strong enough to protect
Bomber Command from numerous diversions from its primary objec-
tives or from continued criticism. Just as the Eighth Air Force was
moving into combat, Sir Arthur Harris felt it necessary to draw up an
apologia for Bomber Command’s achievements16’ and to brand as
wanton propaganda” English efforts to belittle the results of its
b~mbing.’’~T o General Arnold he wrote: “We can defeat the enemy
if we are not defeated by our friends.”’64 The friends, one gathers,
were in the other services.
When the US.chiefs of staff accepted the strategy of ABC-I, it
was patent that in the event of an early involvement in war the
United States could not immediately deploy large ground forces in
Europe. This fact encouraged acceptance of a long prelude of
strategic bombardment, but even in 1941 American leaders showed a
more lively concern for the invasion of Europe than did the British.
When the British presented their review of strategy a t the Atlantic
conference, the Joint Board found it to give “an undue importance to
the probability of success solely through the employment of bombing
offensives.” 165 In this critique, the US.services presented a united
opinion which was not apparent in their internal considerations. In
the Joint Board Estimate of US.Over-all Production Requirements
of 11 September, each of the services supported its request for ma-
teriel with a statement on strategy; that of the AAF (AWPD/I) was
much closer to the British than was that of the Army or Navy. Ac-
ceptance of AWPD/I would have given to heavy bombers the same
sort of priorities they enjoyed in the British production program. T o
this the Navy was strongly opposed, and its campaign against accept-
ance of the implications of AWPD/I was staunchly buttressed by
references to British experience furnished by SPENAVO in London.
Messages from that office cast doubts upon the results of the RAF
bomber offensive and criticized the production priorities which made
that campaign possible; they showed, too, a corollary desire to revise
anticipated schedules for four-engine bombers in order to favor pro-
duction of U.S. and British carrier-based planes.las From the evidence
of a single isolated Bomber Command mission, Vice Adm. R.L.
Ghormley, SPENAVO’s chief, concluded that daylight bombing in
force was unsound except at very short range under heavy escort, and
that night bombing was ineffective and expensive.16‘
These attacks on policies fundamental to AAF and RAF alike
(1
594