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

Air Force Historical Studies Office · 863 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 43 …cavalry mounted on gas driven flying horses” never arrived to “sweep the Germans from the sky…
  • p. 46 …Mitchell never received an American air force commensurate with the ambitious idens of air power which…
  • p. 49 …This project, like so many others, had lagged, and the Air Service was never equipped during…
  • p. 50 …the Army or the Air Corps?” but never, “Are you in the Army or the Corps…
  • p. 55 …any Air Service officers, and I have never heard anybody yet-any Air Service officer-against…
  • p. 69 …But one axiom, with its corollaries, never varied. T o him the airplane was first and…
  • p. 75 …Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be completely stopped, but their effects could best…
  • p. 94 …rate for the time being, the decision never- theless left an open question as to how…
  • p. 121 …large-scale warfare; production of combat types never exceeded 300 aircraft a month. The pattern of…
  • p. 122 …the German Air Force, the Regia Aeronautica never exhibited sufficient power to be decisive in the…
  • p. 133 …Except for a few raids against French factories, the force had never been employed in a…
  • p. 140 …into a complete war economy production was never equal to the demands of our own forces…
  • p. 150 …Long-term needs of the Air Corps and the sudden availability of funds in quantities never…
  • p. 181 …Actually, the Air Staff had never approved of the method followed in RAINBOW No. 5 . l…
  • p. 217 …Members of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had never flown heavy bombers, began to receive intensive…
  • p. 219 …were not then satisfactory for permanent garrisons. Never- theless, the commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lt…
  • p. 227 …T h e planes never reached their destination. Other bombardment units were being prepared for transfer…
  • p. 241 …responsible officers, a few crucial points have never been satisfactorily explained. T h e general pattern…
  • p. 277 …motors, sole- noids, and gun mounts-were never found. After many hours of fruit- less search…
  • p. 288 …planners and from which AAF Headquarters was never to deviate. The translation of the accepted grand…
  • p. 303 …the principal features of the plan were never challenged, it was subsequently revised in a draft…
  • p. 309 …W a r Plans Division was never incorporated into GHQ and remained a potential rival to…
  • p. 336 …the shooting and wrote that they were never able to make out an airplane.g6It is…
  • p. 412 …As it happened, the B-24's never returned to India, but, instead, remained in the…
  • p. 457 …Meanwhile the Edsall with the remaining pilots had headed for Java, never to be heard from…
  • p. 492 …Squadron was assigned, but which it would never reach, going from Australia to Tongatabu; ( 3 ) Christmas…
  • p. 500 …deck of a carrier presented a problem never before challenged by Army planes. Hence an accelerated…
  • p. 502 …the bows and wetting the flight deck. Never before had this been accomplished, yet now it…
  • p. 509 …Island, in the Louisiade Archipelago.” They were never needed, for on 7-8 May the two…
  • p. 513 …exist, it was at a point which never reached the aircrews, for on the operational level…
  • p. 524 …handicaps under which AAF planes had operated. Never were more than fourteen B- I 7’s…
  • p. 527 …AAF planners clung firmly to their belief that proper observance of economy of force would never…
  • p. 531 …Crews which had previously never loaded torpedoes now for the first time fitted these weapons into…
  • p. 544 …But the Japanese never at any time based their bombers in appreciable numbers a t either…
  • p. 548 …26's in torpedo-dropping, but they never would be put into All told, the record…
  • p. 556 …until it had been thoroughly trained and never to com- mit it piecemeal. General Magruder had…
  • p. 560 …pressed into service against the Germans," and never reached the CBI." Colonel Haynes had reached India…
  • p. 606 …reason that the Antilles Air Task Force never evolved, as did I Bomber Command, into an…
  • p. 614 …that reason deserving a high priority, could never dispose of the U-boat menace but must…
  • p. 635 …In Washington the Munitions Assign- ments Board t had never considered this schedule as more than…
  • p. 670 …they bombed from 39,200 feet, and never below 30,000. By AAF standards they had…
  • p. 672 …Goering had never put enough bombers over England, nor had he concentrated his forces on the…
  • p. 690 …of co-operation and combined action probably never before equaled by the military forces of two…
  • p. 729 …shoot at aerial targets, and several had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency…
T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
plete. Out of a projected 240 modern pursuit planes for the Far East
Air Force, only 107 P-40’s had arrived; and instead of the planned
total of I 65 modern heavy bombers, the air force had 3 5 B- I 7C’s and
D’s. The 27th Bombardment Group, which had been in the Philippines
since 2 0 November, was still awaiting the arrival of its 5 2 A-q’s,
which were en route in a convoy of seven vessels escorted by the
USS Pensmola.1‘2 The ships were loaded to capacity with materiel and
troops for General MacArthur’s command. In addition to the A-zq’s,
the vessels carried I 8 P-40’s and much heavy equipment, supplies, and
fuel, including 340 motor vehicles, four dozen 75-mm. guns, more
than 3,500,000 rounds of ammunition, over 600 tons of bombs, and
9,000 drums of aviation fuel. Approximately 2,500 officers and men of
the AAF, including the ground echelon of the 7th Bombardment
Group, and some 2 , 0 0 0 additional troops, including 2 regiments of
field artillery, were on board the vessels. Directed by “higher au-
thority” to take a southwest course instead of the normal course
through the Japanese-mandated islands, the convoy had swung south
from Honolulu after the last ship joined the group on 29 November.
On 6 December, after crossing the equator, the convoy was still a
considerable distance from its de~tination.“~Farther north, a t ap-
proximately 500 miles out from San Francisco, the Garfield and John-
son were en route to the Philippines with the remaining squadrons of
the 35th Pursuit Group and a number of other units and stores of
supplies and equipment.’‘* O n the same day, 6 December, the 557th
Aircraft Warning Battalion arrived a t the San Francisco port of em-
barkation for shipment to the Philippines. But the course of events
did not allow any of these reinforcements to reach their original desti-
nation.
From Hawaii on 6 December General Short sent a message of re-
assurance to General Arnold regarding preparations along the South
Pacific air route, declaring that “we are striving very hard to make
good our promise of having one runway a t all fields so that we can use
the route by I 5 January.” Work was proceeding at an accelerated
rate on Canton, Christmas, Suva in the Fiji Islands, and New Cale-
donia; and inasmuch as no hop was greater than 1,250 statute miles,
General Short felt that upon completion the route would be satis-
factory for medium as well as heavy bombers, a point that had become
a matter of concern by the first week in December. T o the problem
of early completion there now had been added a new concern for the
1 9 2

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 863 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.