“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
and These officers had come up in an atmosphere permeated
with Mitchell’s ideas, and they turned to such other theorists as were
available. It is often difficult, because of the multiple authorship of
military documents and the poverty of information concerning offi-
cers’ reading habits, to trace the evolution of a given idea in the Army.
One of the instructors at the Tactical School has indicated some of
the literature absorbed during this period: 1 3 7 Clausewitz (who was
“right in his time”) ;Frank Simon’s The Price of Peace (“a very good
book, too”) ; Liddell Hart; Goering (“the only foreign predecessor
we had to follow-except old Douhet”). One might suppose that
Douhet, who “really struck the first blow,” was most useful; his work
had been made available in the Air Corps in an incomplete mimeo-
graphed form, done into English from a French t r a n ~ l a t i o n . ~ ~ ~But
even he added little to what could have been gained from a few hours
devoted to Mitchell’s works.
Whatever the source of inspiration, the theory of air war expounded
at the Air Corps Tactical School may be summarized under the fol-
lowing points:
I . T h e national objective in war is to break the enemy’s will to resist and to
force him to submit to our will.13*
2. T h e accomplishment of this objective may entail actual destruction of his
power to resist, or merely the threat thereof, but in either case it requires
an offensive type of warfare. Hence the true mission of all components
of the armed services is to exert maximum destructive powers on the most
vital enemy
3. T h e immediate mission of the armed forces may be: defeat of the enemy’s
army, navy, or air force; the occupation of his homeland; pressure against
his national economy; or operations directed against vital centers within
his country. Under certain conditions the threat of a successful accom-
plishment of such missions will be sufficient to enforce our will upon the
enemy.141
4. These military missions are best carried through by the co-operation of the
three arms: air, ground, and naval. Each has its peculiar functions and
limitations. Thus aviation can aid ground forces to gain territory, but only
ground forces can occupy an enemy’s land. Aviation alone cannot pro-
tect our merchant marine or our troop movements by sea, but it can
unaided accomplish the other functions of sea power-defense of the
nation against waterborne invasions and reduction or elimination of
enemy merchant shipping. And, of the three arms, only aviation can
contribute significantly to all of the designated missions.142
5. T h e special mission of the air arm then should be to attack the whole of the
“enemy national structure.” Under conditions of modern warfare the
military, political, economic, and social aspects of a nation’s life are closely
and absolutely interdependent, so that dislocations in any one will bring
5 ’