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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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 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 arrival. Members of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had never flown heavy bombers, began to receive intensive instructions from fifteen crew members who had made the flight, while the remainder of the I 9th Bombardment Group sailed back to the mainland.63 The allocation of a greater number of heavy bombers to the Hawaiian Air Force than to any other overseas garrison in the spring of 1941was an indication of a growing concern over the possibility of war in the Pacific. It was also a testimony to the importance of Hawaiian defense, an importance which stemmed both from the exist- ence of Pearl Harbor naval base on Oahu and from the position of the Hawaiian Islands in continental and hemisphere defense. The duties of Army and Navy forces protecting the islands had been clearly defined in joint defense plans. The principal joint task assigned to forces permanently based in the territory was “to hold Oahu as a main outlying naval base.” 6 4 In accordance with standard procedures established for American forces on the continent and overseas, the Army was to provide the mobile land and air forces required for direct defense of the island coast lines against attack, while the Navy was to conduct operations directed toward defeat of an enemy force in the vicinity of the coast and to support the Army in repelling attacks on coastal objectives. T o accomplish its mission the Navy was charged with the provision and operation of “a system of offshore scouting and patrol to give timely warning of an attack and, in addi- tion, forces to operate against enemy forces in the vicinity of the coast.” 6 5 It thus became the responsibility of the Navy to maintain the long-range reconnaissance that would be required for advance notice of an approaching enemy, but to the Army fell the operation of an air warning system that would promptly alert all defense forces against specific attacks by air. Since such a division of responsibility called for close co-operation between the services, Army and Navy commanders in Hawaii had agreed that if the threat of a hostile attack were sufficiently imminent to warrant joint action, each commander would “take such preliminary steps as are necessary to make available without delay to the other commander such proportion of the air forces a t his disposal as the circumstances warrant.” ” These arrangements, it can easily be seen, were more theoretical than practical, more general than specific. The need for a thorough reconsideration of Hawaiian air defense led the W a r Department General Staff in July 1941 to order that the AAF make a study of ‘ 7 3
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