“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
Mitchell, are dubious of the morale value of bombing civilian popula-
tion centers, and they deplore the fact that “the strategical employ-
ment of bombardment in stabilized warfare is popularly conceived to
be the true role of that class of aviation”-a concept for which Mitchell
was largely responsible. Such use of the bomber “will have an im-
portant bearing on the outcome of the war, but it must not take pre-
cedence over the support of ground operations by proper tactical
employment.”
In April 1928 the commandant of the same school-now called the
Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS)-sent up through channels for
War Department approval a paper, “The Doctrine of the Air
Force.” ‘19 The paper reflected in its treatment of crucial issues the
very modest organizational gains authorized in the Air Corps Act of
2 July 1926. The Office of the Chief of the Air Corps rejected the
paper on the score that it subordinated the air force to the ground
force and went on to develop its own concept of war, which was
borrowed directly from Mitchell. This branded as unsound the basic
principle of the Field Service Regulations:
The objective of war is to overcome the enemy’s will to resist and the defeat
of his army, his fleet or the occupation of his territory is merely a means to this
end and none of them are the true objective. If the true objective can be
reached without the necessity of defeating or brushing aside the enemy force
on the ground or water and the proper means furnished to subdue the enemy’s
will and bring the war to a close, the object of war can be obtained with less
destruction and lasting after effects than has heretofore been the case. At
present the Air Force provides the only means for such an accomplishment.120
Within a very few years this was to be the dominant theme a t the
school, but its textbook, The Air Force, published in 193I , was less
unequivocal in its estimate of air power. The manual taught that “vic-
tory is practically assured to the commander whose air force has
gained and can maintain control of the air, even if his ground forces
are merely equal or somewhat inferior to those of his enemy.” But it
hedged in predicting that “the next war will begin about where the
last ended, and the air force will be subordinate, although a most im-
portant auxiliary, to the ground forces.” l Z 1
In general, these manuals were hardly consistent with national poli-
cies. The mission of the Army was defense of the United States and
its outlying territories, but the theory of war therein described is
wholly that of the strategic offensive. Both the Field Service Regula-
46