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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 and the Philippines, having left Honolulu on 29 November in a convoy bearing substantial reinforcement and equipment for General Mac- Arthur's command. Movement of the air echelon had been scheduled for the first week in December, and it actually began on the evening of the 6th when planes of the 38th and 88th Reconnaissance Squadrons took off from Hamilton Field in California for Hickam with instruc- tions to push through to the Philippines as quickly as possible."l At Del Monte the 14th and 93d Squadrons of the 19th Group, com- manded respectively by Maj. Emmett O'Donnell, Jr., and Maj. Cecil Combs, had come in from Clark on the 5th. Dispersal and camouflage of the bombers proved difficult, for there was no natural cover near the field. T h e one available spray gun was put to work night and day to change the shining silver color of the planes to an olive drab. Huge quantities of coconut leaves were hauled to the field by trucks ob- tained from a local plantation, for camouflage of the dispersed planes on the ground. T e n truckloads of leaves were required to cover ef- fectively one B-17.l" During the final days of November, preparations in the Philippines had been hastened by the knowledge of increased Japanese activity in the western Pacific. Intelligence from British sources late in Oc- tober had warned of the presence of two Japanese aircraft carriers in the mandated islands. Within a few weeks American commanders learned from another warning that Japanese planes had been detected flying over British territory, perhaps photographing some of the Gilbert Islands. British officials in Singapore suggested that the asso- ciated powers send their own aircraft to photograph all the Japanese- mandated islands, the coast line of French Indo-China, and other areas occupied by Japan. T h e W a r Department, promptly approving the idea, notified General MacArthur on 26 November that two B-24's equipped for high-altitude photography would depart for the Philip- pines within forty-eight hours. T h e crews were to fly at high altitude and to avoid Japanese planes, but they were to "use every possible means of self-preservation" if attacked by any aircraft. T h e specific mission of the B-24's was to photograph Jaluit in the Marshalls and Truk in the Carolines, and to obtain as much information as possible on the location and strength of military and naval installations. Gen- closely with readily established facts regarding the state of preparations at Del Monte and the anticipated movement of the 7th Group that it has been used as the basis of the account given here. '89
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