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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.
“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 IT that is, while lend-lease was being debated and while the staff con- versations were in progress I2’-and they were brought to fruition in a conference on board HMS Prince of Wales in the Atlantic off Argentia, Newfoundland. The only official document published after the meeting, the so-called Atlantic Charter of 14 August, was politi- cal rather than military in nature.”’ The signators were frank enough in their denunciation of the “Hitlerite government” and in their faith in the “final destruction of the Nazi tyranny,” and they made passing allusion to “steps which their countries are respectively taking for their safety” in the face of Nazi aggression. There was no overt refer- ence to joint Anglo-American military operations, though there was pointed reference to the attendance of “high-ranking officers of their military, naval, and air services.” The President on his return identi- fied in a press conference the members of the U.S. ‘delegation, which included the chiefs of staff, General Arnold, and the heads of the service war planning agen~ies.“~Even in the absence of a fuller report on the conference it was obvious to any literate citizen that those officers had not boarded the Prince of Wales to discuss the Four Freedoms. After the return of the President and his party, the problems of joint strategy were examined by the military staffs, both in discussion of ABC-I and of a new review of general strategy presented in a paper by the three British chiefs of staff on I I August.12*This con- sisted of a concise appreciation of the current situation in the several areas of actual and threatened conflict and an analysis of present and future strategy; its outlook was, properly, British rather than joint. Between the drafting of ABC-I and the presentation of this review a new factor of extraordinary importance had occurred in the attack on the U.S.S.R. by Hitler. Initial German victories did not excite too much optimism for Soviet success, but Germany’s preoccupation with a major eastern front a t least precluded any chance of an invasion of England in 1941.Whether the new situation brought any radical change in British thinking or, indeed, whether the review was any- thing more than an elaboration of views expressed in ABC-I is not clear, but to the U.S. chiefs of staff it seemed that the strategic sum- mary now presented departed somewhat from the principles earlier agreed upon. The British started with the familiar assumption that Germany was too strong to attack frontally without a preliminary undermining of 142
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