“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
of “light bomber.” li0Since the practical difference between the light
and other bombers was as yet not too great, the distinction thus estab-
lished had for the moment only a limited significance, but that it
carried the promise of serious controversy was soon to be demon-
strated. In opposition to Air Corps proposals for specialization the
W a r Department in 1928 advocated, partly for reasons of economy,
concentration on a single all-purpose bomber.
Despite vigorous objections from such officers as Maj. Hugh J.
Knerr, then commanding the 2d Bombardment Group, the Chief of the
Air Corps in June directed the Materiel Division at Dayton to proceed
with the development of a twin-engine plane that would serve for
both day and night bombing and, in addition, for observation mis-
sions.l“ A prompt protest from the Materiel Division having served
to reopen the question, opponents of a “mediocre all-purpose airplane”
renewed their efforts in a discussion that continued into the following
year. Perhaps because it seemed politically advisable, they concen-
trated on an attempt to demonstrate the advantage in a specially
designed day bomber. T h e Bombardment Board and the Tactical
School joined in proposing for this purpose a plane with speed of 160
miles per hour, a service ceiling of 18,000 feet, a radius of 2 j o miles,
bomb load of 1,200 pounds, and armament of 6 machine guns.17*And
in February 1929 the authorities yielded to the extent, at least, of
directing the Materiel Division to develop a modified version of the
Curtiss XO-35 observation plane as a fast day bomber.173
But that success represented something less than a complete victory.
Though a principle of great importance to the future of the Air Corps
had been preserved, at any rate for the time being, the decision never-
theless left an open question as to how far the airmen would be
permitted to go in the development of types other than those specifi-
cally designed for support of ground forces. In fact, it is not easy to
determine the extent to which the full implications of the controversy
were appreciated by either side a t the time. T h e airmen themselves
had based their arguments on a distinction between day and night bom-
bardment, in accordance with experience in the first World War, and
it is significant that the Air Corps Tactical School on second thought
expressed its concern in 1930over the confusion likely to result from
such a d i s t i n ~ t i 0 n . l ~ ~It felt that, while the one type normally would
be used chiefly in the day and the other a t night, to distinguish between
light and heavy bombers would be less misleading; and such a usage,
59