“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
against sea power, for a maneuvering ship could be hit only by the
most precise bombardment. Mitchell preached accuracy in strategic
bombing, but it was against naval craft that he scored his most spec-
tacular successes. Until 1926 or later, the Air Service maintained the
World War I distinction between day and night bombers as separate
types, the former designed for use against ships or tactical targets on
land, the latter for strategic objectives.” 179 In 1926 the Air Service
Tactical School was still teaching, in respect to the latter: “While
under favorable conditions day bombardment may be used, it is in
raids on such objectives as these that night bombardment comes into
its own.” lSo
Within a few years, the same school had gone over to the daylight
precision idea. Its instructors had been led on by the logic implicit in
their arguments for strategic bombardment,lS1 but their conversion
came only as technological improvements gave some realism to the
theories. Mitchell, as his critics liked to point out, had scored his hits
under ideal conditions-at slow speeds and from low altitudes against
defenseless ships a t anchor. Antiaircraft artillery was but lightly re-
garded then, but even so it seemed unlikely that in actual combat level
bombers could operate with impunity in daylight at altitudes of 3,000
feet or less. Dive bombing, early advocated by Mitchell and funda-
mental to Navy tactics, found little support in the Air Corps;1s2
level bombing to be reasonably safe in the face of heavy defenses
must be conducted at greater speed and from higher altitudes, and to
reach precision standards an improved bombsight was required. In the
development of the plane and the bombsight around which Air Corps
doctrines were to be built, it was the antishipping role rather than
strategic bombing which was the decisive factor.
In October 193I, Army observers were greatly impressed with
Navy tests against the USS Pittsbzlrg with a new bombsight, the Mark
XV. This had been developed by Mr. C.L. Norden, a civilian con-
sultant whose earlier models had been in use by the Navy since 1920.
The Chief of the Air Corps in 1932 requested the Navy to secure
twenty-five Mark X V ’ s for Army use.lSsAir Corps tests in the follow-
ing year increased the initial enthusiasm, and seventy-eight additional
items were ordered.lS4It is significant that the Mark XV was designed
primarily for use against ships in motion and that its superiority over
existing Army models (D-I, D-4, C-3) was most keenly appreciated
See above, pp. 59-60.
598