“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
air forces. But whereas the W a r Department had been able to deter-
mine the official pronouncements on employment of air forces as it
had the organizational structure, the Air Corps had also developed its
own combat doctrines. Long considered heretical, these doctrines
were to be accepted as orthodox in World War 11, and their develop-
ment therefore should be described briefly here.
Army air doctrine, like the Army air arm itself, had started from
scratch in April 1917.Poorly equipped and limited in tactical experi-
ence to a not-too-glorious chase of Pancho Villa through northern
Mexico, the Aviation Section had previously found little incentive to
formulate combat principles for a handful of obsolete planes. Ameri-
cans had followed eagerly the highly publicized exploits in France of
individual aces and of the Lafayette Escadrille, but the revolutionary
implications of the new weapon were but dimly appreciated. In June
19 I 7 requests for the large appropriation for aviation were bolstered
by loose talk about “blinding the beast’s eyes” and of a plan for “driv-
ing the German fliers out of the air and maintaining a constant raiding
patrol [to] tear up the enemy’s communication line.’’ 6 5 But the plain
truth is that Americans, whether in the Aviation Section or out, had
no definite idea of how to accomplish those laudable ends-nor did
they know whether there were other ends still more desirable.
Writing in 1920, General Mitchell contrasted the situation of the
older military arms, possessed of a rich tradition and accepted stra-
tegical and tactical doctrines, with that of the Air Service: “All of our
fighting tactics, methods of operation, organization, traditions, and
cohesion had been evolved and developed on the European battle-
fields.” 6 6 T h e initial lessons, he frankly admitted, had come from the
Allies, and it is highly significant that the Air Service, with few pre-
conceived ideas on aerial combat, had arrived in France a t a time when
many of the basic principles of air power were beginning to emerge
in articulate form. American aviators, proving apt pupils, had modified
the original lessons in light of their own problems and combat experi-
ence and, by Armistice time, had developed reasonably clear ideas of
what they wanted to do in the air and how they proposed to do it.
While war lasted, there had been little time to reduce those ideas to
formalized doctrines, but Air Service veterans returning to the States
in 1919 had distilled the fruits of their experience into training manuals
which were already under revision when Mitchell wrote.’? T h e po-
tentialities of air power had been sensed rather than tested in 1918,
34