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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.
“King”32 pages
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 167
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