“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
( I S ~ O ) , Mitchell gave what is perhaps the clearest statement of his
doctrine. H e starts with a familiar concept:
War is the attempt of one nation to impress its will on another nation by
force after all other means of arriving at an adjustment of a dispute have failed.
The attempt of one combatant, therefore, is to so control the vital centers of
the other that it will be powerless to defend itself. The vital areas consist of
cities where the people live, areas where their food and supplies are produced
and the transport lines that carry these supplies from place to place.98
So far he has followed Clausewitz, but he now breaks sharply with the
latter’s thought. Armies and navies were developed as a means of pre-
venting an enemy from getting a t those vital spots, and war had be-
come largely a matter of attacking the enemy’s military forces, a slow
and bloody affair since the machine gun had given so great an ad-
vantage to the defense.
[But the] advent of air power which can go straight to the vital centers and
entirely neutralize or destroy them has put a completely new complexion on
the old system of war. It is now realized that the hostile main army in the field
is a false objective and the real objectives are the vital centers. The old theory
that victory meant the destruction of the hostile main army, is untenable.
Armies themselves can be disregarded by air’power if a rapid strike is made
against the opposing centers, because a greatly superior army numerically is at
the mercy of an air force inferior in n ~ m b e r . 9 ~
Hence, in any future war “aircraft will project the spear point of the
nation’s offensive and defensive power against the vital centers of the
opposing country.”1ooIn spite of its horror the new weapon would
humanize war. “The result of warfare by air will be to bring about
quick decisions. Superior air power will cause such havoc, or the
threat of such havoc, in the opposing country that a long drawn out
campaign will be impossible.” A strong air force in being would
discourage any potential assailants, but “woe be to the nation that is
weak in the air.” lo*
There is no need here to assess the merits of Mitchell’s theories; such
a critique properly should follow rather than precede a narrative ac-
count of World War II.lo3That Mitchell’s missionary zeal led him to
exaggerate the potentialities of she airplane of the 1920’s is apparent
from even a cursory analysis of his books. But he wrote no Buck
Rogers literature; his theories were grounded in sound technological
knowledge and wide personal experience. It was precisely in those
areas in which his own experience and that of his time was inadequate
that his ideas were to prove least tenable. H e was not alone in underrat-
42