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

D E P L O Y M E N T O N T H E E V E O F H O S T I L I T I E S
air forces, depended upon a complicated chain of command. In order
to communicate with officials in Washington it was necessary for the
air force to direct its correspondence through the Alaska Defense
Command, which forwarded the material to headquarters of the
Western Defense Command at San Francisco; only from this point
could the correspondence be sent directly to the W a r Department.
The close attention given to Alaskan air needs by both the Alaska
and the Western Defense Commands, however, tended to compensate
for any delays encountered in the routing of requests.
T h e decision to station military air units in Alaska had not been
made until after the outbreak of war in Europe, although the Air
Corps for some years had advocated such a move. Once the threat to
American security became clear, there was general agreement as to
the necessity for systematic air defense of Alaska. But determination
of the position which military aviation would occupy in the total
system of Alaskan defense required a considerable amount of discus-
sion among the services, and several basic issues were not settled until
the eve of hostilities. Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, Jr., heading the
Alaska Defense Command, sought approval of a program of strategi-
cally located airfields and adequate garrisons for the bases. It was
estimated that any enemy assault on the territory would be primarily
an air attack, which could be opposed only by air forces previously
stationed in the area. In joint plans of the Army and Navy, however,
Alaskan defense was essentially a function of the Navy, supported
by air and ground forces at those points where coastal installations
required protection from air raids. Little attention was originally
given to the potentialities of long-range striking forces in opposing
an enemy assault, although the Air Corps was convinced of the im-
portance of all phases of military aviation in Alaskan defense. Because
of the nature of the terrain and the lack of transportation facilities,
ground forces were virtually tied to their stations, and local Army
commanders felt that only strong air forces and a system of well-
developed airfields could assure the mobility needed to repulse a co.
ordinated enemy T h e practicability of air operations in
Alaska had been demonstrated by both military and commercial air-
craft, and a new AAF cold-weather experimental station at Ladd
Field, Fairbanks, was preparing to conduct tests which would reveal
better methods of equipping aircraft for arctic operations.
T h e plan for air defense, as worked out by the Alaska Defense
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