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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.
“King”32 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 (Kilner Board) called for the development of two new heavy bomb- ers, with radii of 2 , 0 0 0 and 3,000 miles re~pectively.~~A year later, when the fall of England seemed a possibility which might deny us any friendly base within striking distance of German airfields and ports, plans were begun for a 4,000-mile-radius bomber.57Funds were now available for research and development, and projects were initi- ated which were in time to produce the B-29 and B-32, the XB-35 and XB-36. These planes were not expected to be ready for combat before 1945-47, and in the meanwhile the B-17 was considered inade- quate for the Air Corps mission, “specifically in the Caribbean area.” 58 But the establishment of new bases could extend the capabilities of existing equipment to the point where it could cover all sea and land areas from which enemy air power could endanger our security. Hence the acquisition and construction of new bases became one of the most urgent of our defense measures. This task was not, like the development of new planes, a responsibility of the Air Corps, and indeed some of the new bases were primarily for use of the other arms. But the policies of the national administration enabled the AAF to prepare its defenses in accord with its accepted doctrines. In the Pacific, the problem was essentially one of extending facilities in our own territories. In the Atlantic, it meant securing privileges from other American nations or from friendly European powers. The danger zones were obvious. In the North Atlantic, Iceland, Green- land, and Newfoundland lay as steppingstones between Norway and the New England-New York area. In the South Atlantic, northeast Brazil offered a likely avenue of approach. Natal, a focal point for established trans-Atlantic air routes, was only I ,600 nautical miles from Africa. T o meet an invasion of this area, U.S. planes would have to fly some 2,600 miles from Puerto Rico, the nearest U.S. territory. Since Air Corps intelligence in the spring of 1940 wrongly credited the Axis powers with a surplus over their European requirements of some 4,100 planes capable of making the Africa-Natal flight,5g the implied threat was no light one. Finally, the Caribbean constituted a danger spot inasmuch as its eastern approaches were but poorly fortified. Solidarity of the nations of the Western Hemisphere was a pre- requisite for any successful scheme of total defense in the face of the new threats. That solidarity had been reaffirmed in the Declaration of Lima on 24 December 1938,“ and practical measures to achieve it I 2 0
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