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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 I R C O R P S P R E P A R E S F O R W A R , 1 9 3 9 - 4 1 aircraft production and training, suffered from lack of time and from frequently enlarged objectives. Logically, the new installations should have been built before the training program expanded; actually, for want of time, the two processes went hand in hand. T h e rapid growth in personnel encouraged drastic innovations in the traditional pattern of military housing: hotels, warehouses, and other buildings were leased or purchased, and arrangements were made to take over or share commercial and municipal airport facilities. But in the mean- while it was necessary to acquire new sites and to build new installa- tions; as the Air Corps grew, new airfields mushroomed in every part of the United States. Each new field involved a basic decision on the question of temporary or permanent construction. Long-term needs of the Air Corps and the sudden availability of funds in quantities never before enjoyed argued, sometimes successfully, for substantial buildings of concrete or brick; the pressure of time and the obviously ephemeral nature of inflated requirements urged more rapid and less pretentious construction. T h e solution varied from field to field, often resulting in a compromise. T h e huge complex of fields around San Antonio, for example, came to include every possible combination of facilities ranging from the luxurious permanence of Randolph Field to the heat-baked tar paper hutments of the Aviation Cadet Center; from the huge shops and concrete ramps of Duncan Field to the cow- pasture sod of auxiliary landing strips. O n Kelly Field alone, living quarters included modernistic duplexes, permanent barracks, shacks built during World W a r I, and a tent city. T h e general trend was toward less substantial construction as the Air Corps grew beyond any probable peacetime size and as it became increasingly obvious that national resources in labor and construction material were not unlimited. This type of boom-time construction America understood; it re- peated on a national scale a story which had been written in many an oil field and engineering project. T h e chief emphasis again was on speed. Personnel often moved into an air base long before completion of even the most essential facilities. In such a case, training might be conducted under canvas with construction proceeding on all sides, the instructor in his lecture competing with the noise of hammers and concrete mixers as well as of the ubiquitous trainer “buzzing” the field. Flying would begin with the completion of a single runway. Thereafter heavy construction equipment became a hazard to flying, “ 3
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