“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 , POLICIES, A N D O R G A N I Z A T I O N
and operational losses included eight of the twenty Fortresses, and
others were grounded for want of repairs. It was dubious that two of
the x,Ioo-lb. bombs customarily used had hit assigned targets, and not
an enemy fighter had been destroyed.’” One long ton of bombs
delivered a t a cost of eight B-17’s was an expensive mode of warfare.
In the face of these failures, British enthusiasm for the Fortress One
cooled rapidly and RAF skepticism as to the feasibility of American
tactics seemed confirmed. One AAF observer noted that “while the
first British reaction was one of confidence in the B-17C because of
its ability to withstand gunfire, this original confidence has been dis-
sipated.” lg8 In retrospect, the failure is easy to explain. The B-17
had been designed to operate at 25,000 feet, and while there was in
America some talk about substratosphere bombing, training had been
a t designed altitude or lower. The British had taken the plane much
higher; in one mission they bombed from 39,200 feet, and never
below 30,000. By AAF standards they had greatly overloaded the
plane. Failures in hastily modified oxygen and heating systems had
lowered crew efficiency. Guns had frozen and windshields had
frosted, and when German fighters had attacked-at altitudes up to
32,000 feet-the Fortress had lacked speed to escape, firepower and
visibility to fight back.lggGoebbels had in derision labeled the planes
“Flying Coffins.” The RAF had never sent the B-17’s out in forma-
tions large enough to insure a proper bomb pattern-four was the
maximum eff ort-and bombardiers, though experienced, had not re-
ceived sufficient training with the Sperry bombsight, which for secu-
rity reasons had been substituted for the Norden.“’
The experience accorded a handful of B-24’s also delivered in Eng-
land in the spring of 1941 had been no more gratifying: good initial
publicity had been followed by undue delay in modification and a
preference on the part of the British for using the Liberator as a
transport or sea-search plane.’O1 General Arnold was not unnaturally
concerned over reports of the manner in which B-17’s and B-24’s
were being handled in England when heavy bombers were needed
desperately for the expanding AAF. Unfavorable British comment
came most inopportunely while the AAF was working strenuously
to secure, in the Victory Program, a top priority for its heavy
bombers. Too much adverse criticism might discredit the equipment
as well as the doctrines of the AAF. As an air officer in SPOBS put
it, “The success or failure of the initial results of the B-17’s bombing
60 I