Documents / Document
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 R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1 finally been authorized, but it was only after funds had been made available in 1939 that construction had begun on a cold-weather experimental station at Fairbanks and a major operational base at Anchorage. Commercial aviation, already an accepted part of Alaskan life, provided some facilities, and the CAA now inaugurated an exten- sive development program which included the preparation of emer- gency landing fields and other aids to air defense. Under guidance of the Permanent Joint Board on Defense, arrangements were made to establish air route staging facilities in Canada which would tighten the air link between the United States and Alaska. And, as elsewhere, protection of Alaska called for more advanced outposts. Responsible for air defense of the naval base a t Dutch Harbor on Unalaska, the Air Corps instigated preparation of airfields leading to Umnak, farther out in the Aleutians.’‘ Those fields, like the island strips in the Central Pacific, were to prove their worth in the early months of the war. That in general was true of the whole system of extended defenses, though only in the Philippines, Hawaii, and Alaska was the system tested by air attacks. Preparations for defense were incomplete, but in 1942 the security afforded by the defensive measures begun during the period 1939-41,and rushed to completion after Pearl Harbor, was to allow the United States to turn most of its efforts to preparation for the offensive. In turn, our ability to rearm and to establish new defense lines without interruption from our potential enemies had been made possible by the efforts of nations actually a t war with the Axis powers. Hence, support lent to those nations may also be considered a very real part of our preparations for war. Aid to the Allies When war began in Europe in September 1939, the majority of American citizens shared two sentiments: a sympathy with the allied cause against Germany and a strong desire to stay out of the conflict. These sentiments were expressed by President Roosevelt in a radio address on 3 September: “This Nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.” 8 2 American attitudes, if they were correctly interpreted by public opinion polls, tended to shift in emphasis with the progress of events abroad during the period from Munich to Dunkirk, though I 26
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.