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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.
“Churchill”21 pages
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 force, had come in October 1933, just after the circulation of pro- posals which led to the B-17 and only a short while before the sub- mission of Project A for approval by the W a r Department. In July 1934 the Baker Board made its report, and, in keeping with its recommendations, the GHQ Air Force was activated in March 193s- before the drawing of a final contract for the XB-15 and some four months before the XB-17 underwent its initial flight test. There is in this sequence a t least the suggestion that Air Corps leaders may well have been influenced to accept a compromise on the aggravated ques- tion of organization” because of the hope that they might thus clear the way for a long-range bomber program. Whatever the case, the Air Corps after 1935 was characterized not so much by its concern to change the basic organization of national defense as by a purpose to find in the mission assigned to the GHQ Air Force the basis for an ambitious program of bomber development.? The Army airman thereafter was, above all else, an advocate of the big bomber, and around the potentialities of that type of plane he built his most cher- ished hopes. The mission of the GHQ Air Force proved in the event, however, to be a less secure foundation for those hopes than at first had been anticipated. Although General MacArthur in 1932 had referred to his agreement with Admiral Pratt in terms of finality, Pratt’s retirement from the Office of Chief of Naval Operations on 3 0 June 1933 was followed by a reopening of the old controversies regarding coastal defense.les The tendency of both the Drum and the Baker boards to discount the independent role of the air weapon, and especially their refusal to admit the danger of air attack on the United States, further weakened the position of the Air Corps. And when the Joint Board in the fall of 1934 completed its task of drafting “Doctrines for the * See above, pp. 30-31. t A draft copy of a speech found among General Andrews’ papers and evidently intended for delivery to officers of the newly established GHQ Air Force contains toward the close this paragraph: “Now just a word about the past. Some of us perhaps believed in an independent Air Force. Some thought perhaps that an Air Defense could be best developed as a separate part of the W a r Department not under the General Staff, and others perhaps had still other plans, but now that the decision has been made, and by the President himself, to develop our air power as an integral part of the Army, it is up to us to get behind that plan and push it loyally to success. Gentlemen, I give it to you as my sincere belief that a separate Air Corps is a dead issue for many years to come. T h e GHQ Air Force is a part of the Army and it is our interest and duty to keep that fact constantly in mind, for therein for many years at least I believe lies the best chance of developing Air Power and the best interest of National Defense.” 67
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