“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 I1
portant air Similar opinions were voiced frequently by
Pershing,Io6and a year before his retirement they received their most
authoritative formulation as doctrine in the Field Service Regulations,
U.S. Army, revised by the General Staff and promulgated on 2 No-
vember 1 9 2 3 .
The authors of this manual derive their theory of war from Clause-
witz. “The ultimate objective of all military operations is the destruc-
tion of the enemy’s armed forces by battle. Decisive defeat in battle
breaks the enemy’s will to war and forces him to sue for peace.” lo7
Decisive results are obtained only by an offensive, which is made suc-
cessful by the concentration of superior forces “both on the ground
and in the air” at the proper place and time.los Such concentration, to
be effective, involves teamwork. “No one arm wins battles. The com-
bined employment of all arms is essential to success.” looBut the “CO-
ordinating principle which underlies the employment of the combined
arms is that the mission of the infantry is the general mission of the
entire force. The special missions of other arms are derived from
their powers to contribute to the execution of the infantry mis-
sion.” In short, infantry was still queen of battles, the air arm only
one of her several handmaidens.
Sections devoted specifically to the Air Service elaborate this point
of view. For observation and attack aviation its validity is obvious.111
Pursuit, the “most vital element of the air service,” establishes and
maintains air supremacy by its “essentially offensive” operations, thus
affording effective protection to other air categories and to ground
troops.112The enlightening proposition that the “mission of bombard-
ment aviation is the bombardment of ground objectives” is amplified
by a designation of the most important targets. These lie “beyond the
effective range of artillery,” but apparently not far beyond; they con-
sist of objectives “vital to the functioning of the enemy’s line of com-
munication and supply.”113 There is no mention of strikes against
the industrial system which constituted the source of his supply; pre-
sumably such operations were not to be considered profitable. The
chief mission of aviation was close support of ground forces.
The Field Service Regulations had not been revised in whole
when World War I1 began. But, being general in character, they had
been framed with the idea that each arm would describe its principles
of combat in its own training and in the Air Service
(Corps) these were subject to periodic changes. The revisions reflect,
4 4