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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.
“The Invaders”15 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 bombing offensives,” whereas “dependence cannot be placed on win- ning important wars by naval and air forces alone”; and that in con- sequence too little attention had been given to the build-up of large ground forces which would be needed completely to defeat the Ger- man war machine. In substance the Joint Board was not inclined to believe that American entrance into the war, with initial co-operation limited to air and naval action, would insure an early victory, and it was convinced that over-all strategy should adhere more closely to that described in ABC- I. These comments were forwarded to the U.S. Army and Navy special observers at London for presentation to the British chiefs of staff.13’ The memorandum was discussed in a meeting of the special observers and the British Joint Planning Staff on Z I N0~ember.l~’ The British felt that their review had been misunderstood, probably because its brevity had made impossible a clear delineation of their objectives. They gave a reasoned explanation of what they meant by morale bombardment and of their choice of target objectives. Their emphasis on the bomber offensive did not preclude a final land offen- sive; but they had been studying the problems of landing operations and had found many difficulties, and they expressed an interest in American views on the detailed aspects of such an operation. The early outbreak of the war postponed the American reply, though the implied differences in outlook were to be debated on more than one occasion later. There was in the British concept of strategy perhaps no clear-cut break with the principles of ABC-I, rather a difference of emphasis, with the British showing a tendency to subor- dinate serious long-term planning for a large-scale invasion to more immediate and less direct modes of attack. But if the British dictum that it was “impossible to over-emphasize the importance of the bomber offensive as a part of our offensive strategy” was perhaps a stronger statement than the Joint Board could subscribe to, it was a point of view which could be regarded somewhat more sympathet- ically by the Air Staff. Actually, although both ABC-I and RAIN- BOW No. 5 had scheduled the air attack from England as the earliest American offensive action, neither plan had contained any detailed statement of how that mission should be accomplished. Such a state- ment was given in an AAF plan drawn up just on the eve of the Atlantic conference, and in concept it did not differ greatly from the British point of view. ’44
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