“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 E I G H T H A I R F O R C E
pilots had been ferrying bombers across the North Atlantic since
1940, and since the summer of 1941 the Air Corps Ferrying Com-
mand had given attention to the development of facilities along the
route; but in April 1942, these facilities were still unequal to the
demands of such a movement as was now And so while
General Eaker directed preparations in England and General Spaatz
supervised the organization of a force in the United States, the Ferry-
ing Command, under General George, redoubled its efforts to prepare
the airway along which so many of the AAF’s planes were destined
to find their way into ~ 0 m b a t . l ~ ~The route ran from Presque Isle in
Maine to Goose Bay in Labrador, then either by BLUIE WEST I
(Narsarssuak) on the southern coast of Greenland or BLUIE W E S T
8 (Sondre Stromfjord) on the west coast to Reykjavik in Iceland, and
thence to Prestwick, the British terminal of trans-Atlantic flights on
the west coast of Scotland. T h e distances involved varied from the
569 statute miles separating Presque Isle from Goose Bay to the gruel-
ing 1,002 miles from there to BLUIE W E S T 8.
It had been decided by the middle of April that the combat groups
would fly their own planes-the 97th its B-I~’s,the 1st its P-38’5 the
3 1 s its P-39’s-and that the Eighth Air Force would have responsi-
bility for the m 0 ~ e m e n t . l ~ ~T o the VIII Fighter Command, under
Brig. Gen. Frank O’D. Hunter, General Spaatz assigned control of
the entire air movement. Because of the special hazards involved in
the dispatch of fighter aircraft on long overseas hops, the B-17’s were
to be detailed to lead flights of up to six aircraft on each leg of the
journey. The pilots, who had been trained for combat rather than for
ferrying, required special training, and so it was planned to move all
units into a concentration area for the purpose about the middle of
May.135 Accordingly, on the 15th of that month the three groups
were ordered to Grenier Field in New Hampshire and Dow Field in
Maine.136During the first week of June, the 60th Transport Group
with its C-47’s was added to the movement and ordered to Westover
Field in Massachusetts, where it, too, came under the control of the
VIII Fighter Command.137
But while the combat units of the Eighthin New England studied
the problems and procedures of the projected air m ~ v e m e n t , ” ~the
Japanese fleet steamed toward Midway; and on I June, orders went
out from Washington suspending the movement of the Eighth and
directing that all planes be held on six hours’ notice for dispatch to a
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