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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.
“United Press”36 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 organization which characterized their air arms; different strategic and tactical concepts, reflecting in part differences in geographic posi- tion and productive capacity, gave peculiar shape to each of the totalitarian air forces. Similar considerations determined the status of air preparations in Great Britain, France, and other nations opposing the Axis powers. In the military air doctrines developed by major world powers prior to the outbreak of World War 11, and in the practical application of those doctrines during the first two years of conflict, lay significant clues as to the eventual victory or defeat of the several nations. Even if the clues were not obvious a t the time, it was a t least evident that air power would be an important-perhaps de- cisive-factor in the outcome of the conflict. The totalitarian nations had tested their air forces in combat during the years immediately prior to 1939, and their action in the localized struggles preceding the world conflict revealed trends and policies which were to characterize their later conduct of the war. In the Far East, Japan’s undeclared war against China, prosecuted vigorously after 1937, and Russo-Manchurian border fighting in 1939 gave the Japanese air forces an opportunity to gain valuable combat experience. In Europe, the members of the Rome-Berlin Axis seized upon the Spanish civil war of 1936-39 as a proving ground for their weapons, while the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in the mid-thirties also involved the use of warplanes in tactical experiments. These experiences gave the totalitarian powers an initial advantage over the Allies. The U.S. Army Air Corps made such efforts as were possible to keep informed of developments among its potential enemies and allies and to assimi- late the lessons which penetrated the veil of censorship. That veil was particularly effective in concealing the activities and potentialities of the Japanese air forces, and American air officials tended to under- estimate those forces. Japanese Air Power The Japanese air forces, divided into separate army and navy air arms, had developed under the influence of foreign aviation. In 191I two Japanese army officers received air training in France, and they were followed by a few more officers during the next two years. In 1919a French mission comprising some sixty airmen arrived in Japan to assist in army air training; in the same year the army established an aviation section. By 1920 the first military aviation school had been 76
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