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

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
were common to all theaters-health, morale, etc. Thus, though the
seven volumes are planned as a unified whole, certain volumes or com-
binations of volumes are to a certain degree discrete segments-as I,
11, and 111, or I, IV, and V, or VI by itself.
Certain matters of form require brief explanation. Considerations of
space have kept the detail of footnote citations, which appear at the
end of the volume, to a minimum. Except where the file number or
other evidence of physical location is an indispensable part of the cita-
tion, no attempt is made to locate the document. Similarly, the subject
in letters, memoranda, and other forms of military correspondence
usually has been omitted. In view of the multitude of documents that
must be cited, the very limited number of them that for some time will
be available for use of scholars outside official agencies, and the fluid
state in which official files are kept, it has seemed that documentation
for the purpose primarily of indicating the authority for statements
made would serve as a practical and useful compromise. The work is
based chiefly on the files of the United States Air Force and especially
on materials now filed with the Office of Air Force History. Scholars
accredited for research in official papers will find additional assistance
by reference to the fully documented AAF Historical Studies.
The problem of providing maps for a text of this sort has presented
its own peculiar difficulties. AAF operations were literally world-wide
in their scale and hardly less so in the early than in the later stages of
the war; even when some smaller segment of the story is presented,
such is the range of an airplane that the cartographer’s task becomes
chiefly that of showing relative positions and distances within areas of
vast extent rather than depicting the few hundred square yards so fre-
quently pertinent to an immediate situation in ground operations.
Moreover, the variety of air force combat operations, not to mention
other activities on the ground and in the air, multiplies greatly the
place names mentioned in the text. The choice tends, therefore, to
become one between a reference map, which by its very lack of
emphasis serves little or no illustrative purpose, and a map that is
frankly illustrative in character. In facing such a dilemma, the editors
have felt that there was no choice but to use maps designed primarily
for illustration of the text, and, where additional detail would diminish
or destroy the illustrative value of the map, they have not hesitated to
leave it out. The reader will find any standard atlas a useful supplement
to the text, but the editors have not felt called upon to provide still
xx