“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
has brought with it a new doctrine of war.. .and a new doctrine of
peace.” 8 4
Formerly the oceans had made difficult any attack against the
United States, but the “coming of aircraft has greatly modified this
isolation on account of the great range and speed which these agents
of communication are developing.” The heart of the nation’s war po-
tential lay in a triangle marked by Bangor, Norfolk, and Chicago.85
The complex functioning of that area was so delicately balanced as to
be highly vulnerable to air attack. Bombers could paralyze transporta-
tion by hitting a few chokepoints, could render governmental and in-
dustrial centers impotent: “A few shells, gas, explosive or incendiary,
landed in Manhattan would cause a complete evacuation.” 8 0 Disrupt
the tightly integrated activities of that vital triangle, and “resistance
is no longer possible and capitulation is the outcome.” 8 7
Even in the air age geography favored the United States; it was
far less open to air attack than European nations. But its immunity,
only relative, was steadily diminishing with improved performance of
aircraft. At first Mitchell was greatly concerned with the possibility
of carrier-borne attacks against America once that fast “floating air-
dromes” had been adapted to the use of bombers. His belief, however,
in the inherent superiority of land-based over carrier-based or float
planes and the increasing range of the former made them appear the
chief threat. In 1925 Mitchell pointed out that England could trans-
port aircraft to the St. Lawrence area whence they could menace the
whole of the vital triangle; in 1927 he was claiming that parts of
that region could be attacked directly from His main con-
cern, however, was with the northern approaches to the American
continent. Airplanes already in service could easily cross the North At-
lantic, staging from island to island with no overwater flight of more
than 400 miles. In the North Pacific only the narrow Bering Strait
separated Siberia from Alaska, and farther south the Aleutians con-
stituted a natural avenue of approach. Eventually, he thought, aircraft
would “follow the meridians straight over the top of the earth.”
Against a waterborne attack an efficient air force would be the
cheapest form of protection; against the new threat it was the only
defense. Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be
completely stopped, but their effects could best be held to a minimum
by aggressive air action, and U.S. aviation should be organized ac-
cordingly. Defensive air units, chiefly pursuit, should be assigned for
40