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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
A I R W A R , 1939-41 short, swift war, the victory to be achieved largely through the para- lyzing effect of strategic bombardment.’* In the matter of organization, Douhet advocated the establishment of the air forces as a separate arm and the co-ordination of air, army, and navy forces through a depart- ment of national defense. This last part of the Douhet doctrine was closely followed by the Italians, for after the establishment of the Air Ministry all Italian forces were reorganized and Marshal Pietro Badog- lio becarne chief of staff of the United Armed F 0 r ~ e s . l ~But, when the test came, the Regia Aeronautica proved itself incapable of carrying OUK either a short or a long war against any reasonably determined opposition. In its first “combat” test during the thirties the Italian Air Force faced no real opposition. In the war against Ethiopia, 1935-36, Italian bombers gained experience in the use of various types of projectiles, and experiments were conducted in dropping ammunition, food, and water to the Italian ground forces; even fresh meat was supplied for the troops by the dropping of live goats and sheep which parachuted to the desert and took up the march with the army until they were needed for food. Most of the planes used were obsolete, though the few Savoia-Marchetti bombers employed were of latest models. But in a country as primitive as Ethiopia there could be no chance to test Douhet’s theory of strategic bombardment; the air force was employed almost exclusively in giving close support to Italian ground f 0 r ~ e s . l ~ A more thorough test of Italian air materiel and doctrine was pro- vided by participation, beginning in 1936, in the Spanish civil war. Again the opposition was slight. Russia, as well as Germany and Italy, took an active part in the contest, but Soviet assistance to the Loyalists was limited, and the few obsolete aircraft which the Republicans acquired from France were quickly shot down or wrecked. T h e bomb- ing by both factions in the conflict was largely tactical, although the Italians claimed to have accomplished a considerable amount of eff ec- tive strategic bombing. Italian air units, based on the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, and the mainland of Italy, at times operated as an independent force against cities and harbors; and the bombing, performed at heights ranging from 16,000 to 2 0 , 0 0 0 feet, was reported by the Italians to be “remarkably accurate.” According to Gen. Giuseppe Valle, addressing the Chamber of Fasci and Corporations on 5 May 1939, the war in Spain had demonstrated “the importance of the air arm in independent strategic action.” H e pointed to the case of Bar- 83
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