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This is Volume One of The Army Air Forces in World War II, titled Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate. The University of Chicago Press first published it in 1948, and the Office of Air Force History reprinted it in 1983. The front matter explains how the AAF historical program was set up during the war. The index covers Pacific, Atlantic and European operations, and nothing in the text concerns unidentified aerial phenomena.
“Hamilton”9 pages
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 I 1 the Interior. The Administrative History Branch, which he headed throughout the war, would retain in its title the emphasis fixed by the President’s directive for the preparation of administrative histories by war agencies, but the responsibility of the branch actually included comprehensive study of all phases of the AAF’s continental, as distinct from its overseas, activities. It was Colonel Williams’ hope that he might himself assume the major responsibility for coverage of over- seas operations, and in the fall of 1942 he spent two months on tem- porary duty in England, where, in addition to studying the practical problems to be met in covering an overseas air force, he drew heavily upon the experience of the well-established historical section of the British Air Ministry. T o Mr. J. C. Nerney on this and other occasions, and as well to historical officers of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force, with whom AAF historical personnel were associated in the study of combined air operations, there is due an acknowledgment of a variety of courtesies extended. After returning to Headquarters at the close of 1942, Colonel Williams found the pressure of a growing administrative burden such that in the fail of 1943 he turned over to a newly established Operational History Branch, headed by Lt. Col. Wesley F. Craven, much of the responsi- bility for coverage of overseas operations. In August 1945 the His- torical Division was removed from Intelligence and given the status of a special staff office. The proportions of the task which had been assigned to it were staggering. By the close of 1942 there were already twelve air forces, eight of them engaged in widely scattered overseas operations, while in this country the training and service commands alone dwarfed most organizations theretofore known to American military history. Even- tually there would be sixteen separate air forces whose several oper- ations extended literally around the world, not to mention the Air Transport Command, which pioneered in the development of the first world-wide system of air transport. The rapidly accumulating records of this varied activity were not only massive; they were also scattered. The basic problem was to devise some scheme of selection that would permit the assembly in usable form of that part of the record which had clear historical significance and at the same time, paradoxically, to supplement the record by capturing and recording experiences that otherwise would be lost. Basic also was the factor of X
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