“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 A R M B E T W E E N T W O W A R S
neither independent nor strategic as those terms were already under-
stood in 1918.By that time the British Air Ministry had evolved a
concept of the use of air power to enforce a decision, independent
from or supplementary to the action of armies, through long-range
bombardment of selected targets in Germany. Originally evoked by
German air raids on London, this policy had gone far beyond mere
retaliation. The mission of the Independent Force, as defined by its
leader, Trenchard, contemplated nothing less than “the breakdown of
the German Army in Germany, its Government, and the crippling of
its sources of supply.” With the forces available in 1918,Trenchard’s
efforts were perforce limited in scope. Sustained operations against
large industrial areas were out of the question. Target selection, in-
volving careful appraisal of intelligence, was based on the assumption
that scattered raids could slow down production by fostering un-
certainty among workers. Thus Trenchard could write that “at
present the moral effect of bombing stands undoubtedly to the material
effect in a proportion of 2 0 to I.” 73
In 1919Trenchard might have had in the Inter-Allied Independent
Air Force sufficient power to give a real test to the concept of air
power entertained by the Air Ministry, and in that test the Air Service
was to have participated. But because of the failure of the Anglo-
American Handley-Page production program the Air Service had
experienced flo actual practice in strategic bombardment. Thus, how-
ever conversant Mitchell may have been with the activities of
Trenchard’s force, his thinking in 1918 seems to have been geared
closely to the advance of the ground armies. His boldest plan, a project
for a huge airborne operation scheduled for 1919,was designed as a
means for reducing infantry casualties in the capture of Metz.‘* In
the light of subsequent controversy it is significant that, although
Mitchell’s operations had been confined to support of ground troops
on a stabilized front, his tactics had been too “independent” for the
generals. Of the Meuse-Argonne battle Pershing wrote: “The tend-
ency of our air force at first was to attach too much significance to
flights beyond the enemy’s lines in an endeavor to interrupt his com-
munications,” whereas in battle the proper function of aviation was
“to drive off hostile airplanes and procure for the infantry and artillery
information concerning the enemy’s movements.” 7 5
When Mitchell published in 192I his first book on air power-Our
Air Force: The Keystone of National Defense-he had begun to con-
37