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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 P-38 and P-47 were not to get into action until summer of 1942 and spring of 1943, respectively. The listed planes were the ones, however, with which we were to fight the first two years of the war. The only important new-type aircraft were to come in late 1943 or 1944-the P-51, first produced in quantity for the British, the A-36, the P-61, the A-26, and the B-29. Of the models actually in use before Pearl Harbor, tests and combat records seemed to indicate that as com- pared to like foreign types, our heavy bombers were superior to our medium and light bombers, while our light bombers were superior to our fighters. In general those judgments were borne out by later experience, though each of the planes underwent repeated improve- ments on the basis of combat experience. Personnel requirements grew with the increase in authorization for aircraft. Intensive recruiting campaigns brought an influx of men as permitted under the higher ceiling set by Congress in 1939. In mid- 1940, the Air Corps was authorized to procure flying cadets and Reserve officers without limit during the fiscal year 1941, and relaxed entrance requirements for cadets made possible the appointment of large numbers for flying training. The President's order in August 1940 2 6 calling up the National Guard and Reserve forces resulted in further increases in personnel. A still greater impetus to Air Corps enlistment, from autumn 1940 until Pearl Harbor, came from the Selective Service System program; even though procurement of pilots, aircrew members, and technicians was still on a volunteer basis, the prospect of compulsory service in an undesignated branch of the Army proved a potent spur to Air Corps enlistment. Under these vari- ous stimuli, the total number of Air Corps personnel jumped from 20,503 on I July 1939 to 152,569 just two years later, and the rate of expansion was rapidly increasing when the United States went to war.27 Pilot training goals were successively raised to keep pace with the anticipated progress of other defense programs. From an objective in 1939 calling for the training of 1 , 2 0 0 pilots a year, the figure was raised in 1940 to 7,000, then to IZ,OOO, and by directive of February 1941 to 30,000. By the fall of that year, when the 84-group program was under discussion, the AAF contemplated a training rate of 50,000 pilots a year by mid-1942.'~These goals called also for the training of a proportionate number of other aircrew members and ground tech- nicians. The Air Corps had neither the instructors nor facilities for I I 0
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