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The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

Air Force Historical Studies Office · 863 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 43 …cavalry mounted on gas driven flying horses” never arrived to “sweep the Germans from the sky…
  • p. 46 …Mitchell never received an American air force commensurate with the ambitious idens of air power which…
  • p. 49 …This project, like so many others, had lagged, and the Air Service was never equipped during…
  • p. 50 …the Army or the Air Corps?” but never, “Are you in the Army or the Corps…
  • p. 55 …any Air Service officers, and I have never heard anybody yet-any Air Service officer-against…
  • p. 69 …But one axiom, with its corollaries, never varied. T o him the airplane was first and…
  • p. 75 …Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be completely stopped, but their effects could best…
  • p. 94 …rate for the time being, the decision never- theless left an open question as to how…
  • p. 121 …large-scale warfare; production of combat types never exceeded 300 aircraft a month. The pattern of…
  • p. 122 …the German Air Force, the Regia Aeronautica never exhibited sufficient power to be decisive in the…
  • p. 133 …Except for a few raids against French factories, the force had never been employed in a…
  • p. 140 …into a complete war economy production was never equal to the demands of our own forces…
  • p. 150 …Long-term needs of the Air Corps and the sudden availability of funds in quantities never…
  • p. 181 …Actually, the Air Staff had never approved of the method followed in RAINBOW No. 5 . l…
  • p. 217 …Members of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had never flown heavy bombers, began to receive intensive…
  • p. 219 …were not then satisfactory for permanent garrisons. Never- theless, the commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lt…
  • p. 227 …T h e planes never reached their destination. Other bombardment units were being prepared for transfer…
  • p. 241 …responsible officers, a few crucial points have never been satisfactorily explained. T h e general pattern…
  • p. 277 …motors, sole- noids, and gun mounts-were never found. After many hours of fruit- less search…
  • p. 288 …planners and from which AAF Headquarters was never to deviate. The translation of the accepted grand…
  • p. 303 …the principal features of the plan were never challenged, it was subsequently revised in a draft…
  • p. 309 …W a r Plans Division was never incorporated into GHQ and remained a potential rival to…
  • p. 336 …the shooting and wrote that they were never able to make out an airplane.g6It is…
  • p. 412 …As it happened, the B-24's never returned to India, but, instead, remained in the…
  • p. 457 …Meanwhile the Edsall with the remaining pilots had headed for Java, never to be heard from…
  • p. 492 …Squadron was assigned, but which it would never reach, going from Australia to Tongatabu; ( 3 ) Christmas…
  • p. 500 …deck of a carrier presented a problem never before challenged by Army planes. Hence an accelerated…
  • p. 502 …the bows and wetting the flight deck. Never before had this been accomplished, yet now it…
  • p. 509 …Island, in the Louisiade Archipelago.” They were never needed, for on 7-8 May the two…
  • p. 513 …exist, it was at a point which never reached the aircrews, for on the operational level…
  • p. 524 …handicaps under which AAF planes had operated. Never were more than fourteen B- I 7’s…
  • p. 527 …AAF planners clung firmly to their belief that proper observance of economy of force would never…
  • p. 531 …Crews which had previously never loaded torpedoes now for the first time fitted these weapons into…
  • p. 544 …But the Japanese never at any time based their bombers in appreciable numbers a t either…
  • p. 548 …26's in torpedo-dropping, but they never would be put into All told, the record…
  • p. 556 …until it had been thoroughly trained and never to com- mit it piecemeal. General Magruder had…
  • p. 560 …pressed into service against the Germans," and never reached the CBI." Colonel Haynes had reached India…
  • p. 606 …reason that the Antilles Air Task Force never evolved, as did I Bomber Command, into an…
  • p. 614 …that reason deserving a high priority, could never dispose of the U-boat menace but must…
  • p. 635 …In Washington the Munitions Assign- ments Board t had never considered this schedule as more than…
  • p. 670 …they bombed from 39,200 feet, and never below 30,000. By AAF standards they had…
  • p. 672 …Goering had never put enough bombers over England, nor had he concentrated his forces on the…
  • p. 690 …of co-operation and combined action probably never before equaled by the military forces of two…
  • p. 729 …shoot at aerial targets, and several had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency…
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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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 863 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.