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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.
“The Invaders”15 pages
T H E A R M Y A I R A R M B E T W E E N TWO WARS sider such possibilities."'s" And yet, in the very year that saw the beginning of another major European war, the Air Corps was engaged in an attempt to secure relief from a prohibition which limited the flight of its planes seaward to IOO miles beyond the ~ h o r e . ~ "That this limitation apparently had been imposed by a verbal agreement between the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Staff is suggestive of certain complications over the bomber program that had entered into the relations of the Air Corps and the General Staff. The War Department had given its approval to an experimental interest in the long-range bomber as early as 1934. It had supported the action leading to the development of the B-17, and though the decision to limit the initial procurement to thirteen planes had proved disappointing to the Air Corps, that decision nevertheless had main- tained the project on a hopeful experimental basis. Further encourage- ment came from W a r Department approval of a contract of 3 I Octo- ber 1935 with the Douglas Aircraft Company for the design of an experimental bomber even larger than the B- I 5 . The contract carried an option for subsequent purchase of a prototype, and under an authorization of 29 September 1936 that option was exercised through a contract for the building of one experimental model.'08 Completed in the spring of I 94 I and test-flown for the first time on 2 7 June I 941, the Douglas XB- 19, with a span of 2 I 2 feet, a weight of 84,43 I pounds, and a range of 5,200 miles, was the Army's largest prewar bomber.lgg Tests proved that there were no fundamental flaws of design or structure, but, as in the case of the B-15, the size and weight of the plane were too great for the power plants. Consequently, the later B-29, though it mounted engines more powerful than those of the XB-19, was designed as a smaller plane. Only one experimental model of the B-19 was built, but that paid more than ample dividends in the lessons applied to future bomber development within the AAF. The record shows, then, that within the four years following the inauguration of Project A three major experimental projects had been authorized for the purpose of exploring the potentialities of the big plane and the long-range bomber. From the Air Corps point of view the difficulty lay in the subsequent disinclination of the General Staff to authorize the procurement of long-range bombers for equipment of the GHQ Air Force. Though twenty-nine B-17's had been included in the 1938 procurement program and eleven more for 1939, when Germany attacked Poland in September of that year, only fourteen 69
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