“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
of the Eighth Air Force in the United Kingdom was a mere 1,87 I
troops and no American aircraft.lg4
By the first of July, a reappraisal of possibilities in the light of new
demands from other theaters had brought a downward revision of
the BOLERO build-up to a total of fifty-four groups less transport
units, and to 194,332 men. The main strength of the Eighth would
be concentrated in seventeen heavy and ten medium bombardment
groups; fighter groups had been reduced to thirteen and light bom-
bardment to three.lg5 These figures served as the basis upon which
plans for the organization and accommodation of the Eighth were
drafted during its first weeks in the United Kingdom. Even with the
reductions forced by considerations of shipping, production, train-
ing, and the demands of other theaters, the proposed build-up under-
scored the ambitious scale on which leaders of the AAF projected
plans for their major effort.
An attempt by AAF Headquarters during early July to extend its
estimate of the BOLERO build-up to 3 I December 1943 lends still
greater emphasis to the point. Planners estimated that the total number
of groups by that date would stand a t 1 3 7 , or approximately half
of the currently projected strength of the AAF. There would be
seventy-four bombardment groups (forty-one heavy, fifteen medium,
thirteen dive, and five light), thirty-one fighter groups, twelve ob-
servation groups, fifteen transport groups, four photo groups, and
one mapping group, and a total of 375,000 men, of which 197,000
would serve in tactical units and 178,000 in the various service or-
g a n i z a t i o n ~ . ~ ~ ~The estimate proved to be remarkably close, par-
ticularly with regard to the heavy bomber force, to the actual strength
established in the United Kingdom in advance of the invasion of 6
June 1944, though the figures given for the number of groups were
high and for the total of personnel low.
In London during July the BOLERO committee continued its
work on plans calling for the accommodation of 195,000 air force
troops, 556,000 ground troops, 259,000 SOS troops, and 137,000 re-
placements, of whom 35,000 would belong to the AAF-all to be
placed in the United Kingdom by the end of March I943.lg7But
at the end of July, as has been noted elsewhere, it had been decided to
abandon SLEDGEHAMMER," to mount instead TORCH, and to
postpone ROUNDUP, probably until 1944. The BOLERO commit-
* See above, pp. 572-73.
65 3