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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 Wash”17 pages
F O R E W O R D time. T h e job had to be accomplished within the limits of an indeter- minate number of months or years. No one could predict the actual duration of the war, but it was clear that at its end, or soon thereafter, the historian must be prepared to bring to a close at least the prelimi- nary selection and arrangement of his materials. It was hoped, to be sure, that he would have an opportunity after the termination of hos- tilities for more intensive study. But there was no escape from the practical necessity of distinguishing between a war and a postwar phase of the effort, and unavoidably the emphasis during that first phase fell on the selection and collection of the materials themselves. It being difficult to lay down principles of selection that were uni- versally applicable, the decision was made to rely principally on the judgment of professionally trained historians strategically placed at key points of command. T h e first of those points, of course, was AAF Headquarters itself. Though the Army Air Forces legally was no more than a training and service organization operating within the limits of this country, its headquarters, as will be demonstrated later, was actually the nerve center controlling in large measure the entire war effort in the air. And so, personnel of the Historical Office under- took, each historian working in his own area of specialization and by research initially in Headquarters files, to draw together as comprehen- sive a record of the air effort as was physically possible within the time limits operating and, while condensing this record into some readily usable form, to treat it with a breadth of view appropriate to the highest echelon of command. At the same time, and for the pur- pose of supplementing Headquarters files with a selection from records of action available only in the area of that action, an attempt was made to secure the assignment of qualified historical personnel to the head- quarters staff of each air force and command. T h e responsibility of the historian so assigned was twofold: to act, first, as the historian of his command for the purpose of recording its activities from the point of view of its own headquarters and, second, to provide such professional guidance as he could for those officers and enlisted men of the various units comprising the command who, in addition to their other duties, were charged with the preparation of the unit history. T h e unit his- tory had long been required by Army regulations, and the effort of the Historical Office in that particular was directed chiefly to the establishment of standards that would lend to it greater historical value. Thus the policy became essentially that of placing profession- xi
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