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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
P E A R L H A R B O R A N D C L A R K F I E L D have been the subject of repeated official investigations. T h e profes- sional reputations of the highest civil and military leaders have been at stake, and the chief emphasis of the investigations has been to fix responsibilities for our defeat-and indeed, for the very war itself. Thus political considerations have often transcended in importance a mere recital of the sequence of military events; “ultimatums” and “magic” and “wind messages” and “war-warning messages” have loomed larger in the reports than the desperate but futile efforts of Army and Navy personnel in Hawaii, and our initial defeat in the Philippines has come in for little attention. For want of sufficient precise contemporary evidence and because of conflicting statements subsequently furnished by responsible officers, a few crucial points have never been satisfactorily explained. T h e general pattern of events in Oahu and Luzon can, however, be established, and that is the purpose of this chapter. Happily, there is no need here to attempt more. T h e diplomatic and political issues which brought on the war are clearly out of the ken of the AAF historian. And because the chain of command in both Pacific areas and in Washington vested ultimate control of Army Air Forces in Army commanding generals, the graver responsibilities lay with the latter. Nothing in the record indicates that the story would have been substantially better had airmen been in full control of their own forces, whatever minor differences that might have meant. Wherever the fault lay, the AAF in Hawaii, and the fleet whose defense was its chief mission, suffered an overwhelming defeat. Defeat on Oahzi O n 2 6 November a Japanese task force sailed from Hitakappu Bay in the Kurils. T h e force included, in addition to its train, six aircraft carriers, two battleships, two cruisers, nine destroyers, and three sub- marines. They reached position approximately 200 miles north of Oahu before dawn on 7 December (Hawaiian time).2 Plans for the strike had been initiated during the previous summer, completed by early November. In September picked crews-with pilots who averaged better than 800 hours’ flying time-from the Japa- nese First Air Fleet had begun a period of intensive training in hori- zontal and dive bombing and in the technique of torpedo attack in shallow waters. E n route to the rendezvous above Oahu, with the ships under radio silence, the pilots were briefed on their coming ‘95
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