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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
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 mately have been overwhelmed. They believed that a strong British offensive against vital German objectives was the real answer to what- ever renewal of the attack the Germans might plan. Only in this wav could the enemy be placed on the defensive and forced to divert to defensive purposes, as in the manufacture of fighters at the cost of bombers, the resources that would otherwise be used to punish Britain. England, driven from the continent and deprived of allies, could reach her enemy only by the air. For some months Bomber Command was obliged to aid Coastal Command and to use most of its slim resources in attacking the so- called invasion ports. But plans for a systematic and growing offensive against German targets were at the same time carried forward. Ex- cellent bombers had been developed with an emphasis on range and bomb load; during the year following the Battle of Britain, the first- line strength of the bombing force would be increased by 50 per cent while the equivalent increase in bomb load would be 2 5 0 per T h e scale of the bombing effort, now directed chiefly against the industrial Ruhr, remained relatively small in the fall of 1941, but British officials anticipated a monthly production rate of 5 0 0 heavy bombers by 1943 and looked forward to mounting ultimately an offensive a t least fifty times greater than the existing scale of effort.42 O n America’s entry into the war the AAF, with its own emphasis on strategic bombardment, would find in the RAF a stout and under- standing ally. It is true that there were differences which distinguished the two forces: British experience had led to a preference for night and area bombing rather than the daylight, precision bombardment emphasized by the AAF. But these were differences of tactics rather than of strategy, of method and not of principle. Indeed, the differing methods favored were potentially complementary rather than irrec- oncilable. I 0 0
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