“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
with the addition in time of “medium” and “very heavy” categories,
became the rule. There was reassurance as to the future of heavy
bombardment in the decisions leading by way of the 193I competition
to the development of the B-10. Its many superior qualities, however,
did not include a range in excess of what was generally accepted as
useful for a supporting mission, and it was already becoming apparent
that the real test of policy would come on a question of range.
The problem of extending the effective range of the airplane had
been a major concern of American aviation throughout the 1920’s.
Witness the Army’s round-the-world flight of 1924 and its flight from
California to Hawaii in the same year that saw Lindbergh and Byrd
each span the Atlantic in a single hop. In such tests as the endurance
record of 151 hours set in 1929 by Maj. Carl Spaatz and Capt. Ira C.
Eaker, the Air Corps had contributed further to study of the complex
problems of design and engineering which were fundamental, among
other things, to the quest for greater range. Given the current effi-
ciency of motors and design, range was a matter of size, and by the
I ~ ~ o ’ s ,when aeronautical science had reached a stage in its develop-
ment that brought a truly big plane within practical reach, an issue
within the Army which first had been debated in terms of day and
night bombardment, and which then had been restated by the Air
Corps in terms of heavy and light bombardment, became almost
imperceptibly a question of the long-range bomber.
Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews, in writing a few years later on
“Types of Airplanes Required T o Execute Air Force Missions,”
prefaced his discussion by the following observation:
The tactical and strategical employment of Air Forces and the status of
development of aeronautical science exercise a profound mutual influence, each
upon the other. The needs of employment spur the designers and manufacturers
to produce equipment that can meet those needs, and likewise, the equipment
on hand, or definitely foreseen, limits or extends the sphere of influence of
Air Power.175
It is in the light of this fundamental consideration, perhaps, that the
origins of the long-range bomber can most profitably be considered
here. On an earlier page notice has been taken of doctrinal develop-
ments within the Air Corps which by the 1930’s emphasized the need
for a long-range bomber. That these developments depended partly
upon the assurance that such a plane could be built is hardly less certain
than that the new doctrine drew continuing support from the techni-
60