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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 Wash”17 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 Sweden, be diverted to the Philippines. Late in November the 17th and 20th Pursuit Squadrons arrived from the United States and took up their station at Nichols Field on the outskirts of Manila.” In March 1941 the Hawaiian Department was ordered to ship eighteen B- I 8’s by transport to the Philippines, and the following month a mer- chant ship sailed from the United States for Manila bearing thirty-one P-4oB’s. T h e arrival of reinforcements and the prospect of receivirig additional aircraft necessitated the creation of a more modern air or- ganization in the Philippines. T h e Army air garrison, which had hith- erto been organized into the 4th Composite Group, consisted of the Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron, the 3d Pursuit Squadron, and the two new pursuit squadrons at Nichols Field, and the 28th Bombardment and zd Observation Squadrons at Clark Field, approxi- mately sixty miles north of Manila. On 6 May 1941 these units, along with the 20th Air Base Group and supporting units, were organized into the Philippine Department Air Force. This change proved to be only the first of a series of steps designed to bring about a more effec- tive air force structure in the Philippines.’* T h e German attack on Russia in June 1941, together with mounting evidence of Japan’s intention to take advantage of the greater freedom of action resulting therefrom for the purpose of a conquest of south- east Asia, lent a new sense of urgency to all defensive preparations in the Pacific and particularly to those in the Philippines.” Gen. Douglas MacArthur, military adviser to the Philippine government and former chief of staff of the U.S. Army, was recalled to active duty effective 26 July 1941 and placed in command of United States Army Forces in the Far East. T h e Philippine Department Air Force, which became a part of the new command, was given a more flexible organization and a new designation on 4 August, when it became the Air Force, United States Army Forces in the Far East. T h e force by this time was able to put into the air one squadron of P-~oB’s,two squadrons of P - ~ ~ A ’ s ,one squadron of P-z6A’s, and two squadrons of B-18’s, but against even a mildly determined and ill-equipped foe, this show of air strength would have been sadly deficient. Japanese capabilities argued therefore for a radical upward revision in the apportionment of aircraft to the Philippines; moreover, the geographical position of the islands afforded the United States an opportunity, while providing for their greater security, to emphasize its opposition to further Japa- * See maps, pp. 202, ZZI. ‘77
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