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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 the movement of aircraft and fuel trucks an impediment to the con- tractor's job. Both training and construction activities suffered from the discomforts incident to new communities, as a field became alter- nately a dust bowl or a morass with each change in Primi- tive living conditions, makeshift classrooms, and overcrowded shops remained characteristic of the whole of the prewar expansion period. But construction, if rarely ahead of schedule, managed somehow to meet increasing needs. While the Air Corps was expanding it was undergoing, as well, changes in organization and administrative structure. Inasmuch as the organizational developments followed a somewhat circuitous course, they sometimes tended to intensify, rather than assuage, the growing pains of the Army air arm. T o the degree that these changes moved toward greater autonomy, however, they did aid in simplifying com- mand channels and delimiting responsibilities more sharply. T h e proc- ess did not, in the period 1939-41, go far enough to satisfy those in the Air Corps who had long desired independence; but as we drew closer to war the air arm was able to assume an increasing share in the determination of its own policies. At the beginning of 1939, the Army air establishment still was or- ganized into two correlative but independent elements," the Air Corps and the GHQ Air Force-the one charged with materiel and training functions, the other primarily with combat operations. With the inauguration of the expansion program, the need for a closer co- ordination and a centralized control became more pronounced, and on I March 1939 the GHQ Air Force was placed under the Chief of the Air Corps. T h e new relationship proved of short duration, for on 19 November 1940 the GHQ Air Force was removed from the jurisdiction of the Chief of the Air Corps and was accorded a separate status under the commander of the Army field forces. T h e move was opposed by most air leaders, since it precluded their ultimate com- mand of the air striking force. T h e potentially serious effects of the change were in some respects mitigated by the appointment a week earlier of Maj. Gen. H.H. Arnold as Acting Deputy Chief of Staff. Holding this office as well as that of Chief of the Air Corps, he was in a position to co-ordinate the activities of the two elements of Army a~iation.~' By the spring of 1941, however, it was clear that co-ordination was * See above, p. 3 2 . 1 I4
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