“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
brought vigorous rejoinders from the War Department and Air Min-
istry,lss and the attacks were not at the time successful. A more
dangerous threat to the program of strategic bombing as conceived in
AWPD/I, if not to production priorities, came from the efforts of
the JCS to swing strategy over to a second front. This meant shorten-
ing rather than eliminating the bomber offensive, but inevitably it
placed a new emphasis upon close support. T h e AAF supported the
new trend, but with evident disappointment on the part of some of
its members. O n the whole, American airmen had been somewhat
less outspoken than British in claims that air power alone might crush
Germany, but this reflected, perhaps, their inferior position in the
military organization rather than any serious misgivings. Eaker's re-
action to BOLERO, as expressed in a letter of 26 April 1942, may be
taken as typical:
After two months spent in understudying British Bomber Command it is
still believed that the original all-out air plan for the destruction of the German
war effort by air action alone was feasible and sound, and more economical
than any other method available. General Arnold points out, however, that
the required means is not now available, and time does not allow for the
completion of this total air effort, hence it now seems wise to combine a
limited air effort with ground forces to open up a Western European
When Spaatz arrived two months later, he could maintain in friendly
debate with Harris the official American view that the invasion was
necessary to victory, but it was essentially a question of whether
strategic bombing would be the sole weapon or only the most impor-
tant.''O In neither case was there any doubt as to the crippling effects
of an all-out attack on German industry. But as to the mode of attack
there was still no unanimity of opinion.
When in 1941 the two air staffs began planning their combined
attack on Germany, the RAF was already engaged in a bomber offen-
sive over Europe with a carefully chosen system of objectives and a
technique adapted to the means available. Then and later Bomber
Command was forced, somewhat grudgingly and at times only
through pressure from the government, to divert a considerable share
of its effort to attacks on tactical objectives, often maritime in na-
ture."' But in mid- I 94 I , preferred target systems consisted of trans-
portation centers and the industrial communities surrounding them.
This choice marked a change from earlier attacks on the oil industry,
and the rationale of that shift was explained by the British at the
595