Word: combatants
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...faced by the War Department-but by few other people in the nation-is that Hitler has some 300 divisions, plus innumerable non-divisional organizations, and that the U.S. cannot raise an army of comparable size without drafting boys of 18 and 19; that such boys make the best combat troops. They have the stamina to stand hardship. Drafting such boys produces the least possible dislocation of war production, because few have acquired skills or jobs...
...R.A.F. never went all out against Rommel's troops, tanks and artillery. This failure was the result of deliberate policy. The Air Staff in London long ago convinced itself that aircraft was not effective against troops, tanks and guns in actual zones of combat-and thus lacked planes adapted to such attacks. Instead, the R.A.F. concentrated its attacks on: 1) enemy planes; 2) airdromes and supply lines in Rommel's immediate rear. British pilots, many of them in U.S. planes, raised hob with such targets. But that was not enough. At the pinch Rommel still had enough tanks...
There was dire need for the risks they ran, and for the trickle of supplies that was slowly becoming a tiny but continuous stream. China was desperate for all they could carry, and for the combat planes and ground crews that other pilots were ferrying over northern Burma. The Chinese still had 50 miles of railroad in east China, which denied the Japanese the use of the line between Shanghai and the south. But the Jap had taken the last of three fine airfields prepared by the Chinese in Chekiang and Kiangsi Provinces against the day when the Americans would...
...against the Japanese. Not till the staggering news of the fall of Tobruk did Australians realize that their Pacific second front was receding into the future, and chat they had in their midst the strange spectacle of a four-star general, only top-ranking U.S. officer experienced in actual combat in World War II, stranded on the war's back stoop without a fight on his hands...
Replacement Crews. This week the Army faced a problem in simple mathematics. Factory output for 1942 and 1943 is expected to reach 185,000 combat aircraft. Even if half of that is lent-leased, the Army and the Navy between them will still have 92,500 combat planes. Army schools will graduate something less than 30,000 pilots this year, must step up their training pace next year. The rub: in the tension of long flights and in the electric strain of combat, pilots tire. Flight surgeons ground them, make them rest. But planes don't get tired. Back...