“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 A R M B E T W E E N T W O W A R S
tions and the Langley Field treatise on bombardment are deliberately
limited to warfare against a major opponent in a land theater of opera-
tions. Coast defense and landing operations are excluded; where and
how air and ground forces were to come to grips with an enemy is not
explained. Essentially the war described is that of I 9 I 7-1 8, but without
reference to the allies who had provided the Army with bases and a
lodgment in Europe. It was impolitic in the 1920’s to speak of ex-
peditionary forces or allies, but without them the concept of air power
as an auxiliary to great land forces was meaningless.
During the next decade discussion within the W a r Department of
the Air Corps mission assumed a more realistic tone. Here again
Mitchell’s influence was important; if he had been somewhat circuitous
in his approach, his treatment of air power had at least been couched
in terms of concrete problems. But the deciding factor was the devel-
opment of new strategic plans for national defense, initiated in ac-
cordance with the implications of the MacArthur-Pratt agreement of
1931 and shaped more decisively thereafter by consideration of the
growing unrest in Europe and Asia. It has already been shown how
conflicting opinions as to the air mission led eventually to the creation
on I March 1935 of the GHQ Air Force.” That reorganization called
naturally for a reformulation of doctrine, and, since the idea of such a
force had long been associated with air operations of a quasi-inde-
pendent nature, exponents of strategic bombardment hoped for a more
positive statement of the importance of that type of mission. That
hope was unfounded. While recommending the establishment of the
GHQ Air Force, both the Drum Board ( I 2 October 1933) and the
Baker Board ( 1 8 July 1934) had denied the possibility of an air attack
on the United States and of an effective defense by aircraft alone
against other modes of invasion.’22 But they did allow that GHQ
aviation would prove a valuable adjunct to coast defense. T h e Baker
report summed up this attitude in a dictum which was often quoted
in subsequent arguments: “The development of aviation has increased
the power of the offense where the countries at war border on, or are
close to, each other, and has increased the power of the defense where
the contestants are widely separated. This new arm is, therefore, ad-
vantageous to our national policy.” l Z 3
If US. planes could not attack European cities, foreign land-based
aircraft could not operate against this country without aid of a large
* See above, p. 3 1 .
47