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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.
“Churchill”21 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 Corps units, for instance, were figured on the basis of the incipient 54-group program. In harmony with the general strategy advocated, US. air forces in the Pacific and Far East were held to a minimum, with the bulk of the available units concentrated in the Western Hemisphere and the offensive striking force set up for the bombard- ment of Germany from English bases. For this task, it was estimated that thirty-two squadrons of bombers and pursuits could be sent in 1941, with a further strength to be added as resources allowed. T o insure an effective collaboration in the political and military direction of the war effort, the report recommended the exchange of military missions which would represent the chiefs of staff of the respective powers. Provisions should be made also for a joint plan- ning staff, for a joint transport service, and for the prompt exchange of military intelligence. In retrospect, ABC-I appears as one of the most important military documents of the war. The staff committees, in drafting it, were careful to emphasize the obvious fact that tentative agreements reached therein constituted no political commitments, and that the acceptance of their recommendations for joint action if the United States should enter the war would require the approval both of their respective governments and chiefs of staff. When war did come, the over-all strategy adopted was, in spite of the crisis occasioned by initial Japanese successes, essentially that of ABC-I, and the joint machinery which was set up for co-ordinating Anglo-American endeavors was patterned on that suggested therein. And months before Pearl Harbor, the acceptance of ABC-I by the US. chiefs of staff made it possible to utilize that report as the basis for more detailed logistical and operational planning.lls Since autumn of 1939, the War Plans Division of the General Staff had been working on five basic war plans for possible use against our potential enemie~."~Each plan, bearing the generic code name RAINBOW and its own numeral designation, assumed a different situation and course of action in regard to the Atlantic and Pacific areas. RAINBOW No. 5, which contemplated an offensive in the Atlantic-European areas and a strategic defense against Japan in the Pacific, fitted most accurately the strategy outlined in the United States-British staff conversations; consequently, that plan was de- veloped in detail in the spring of 1941, and by the end of April the Joint Army and Navy Basic W a r Plan RAINBOW No. 5 had been I 3 9
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