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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. 430 …The Dutch had also constructed modern air- fields on Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, and Amboina, and suitable…
  • p. 437 …The bombers returned that night to the Lhoknga emer- gency field in northern Sumatra, from which…
  • p. 438 …And so on the morning of 16 January, the day of Combs’ return from Sumatra, the…
  • p. 446 …The invasion of Sumatra began on 14 Feb- ruary with a paratroop drop at Palembang, where…
  • p. 452 …Possessed now of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Celebes, Amboina, and Bali, the Japanese by the…
  • p. 783 …This shows that British forces were concentrated in Burma, Malaya, Sumatra, and Borneo. The Aus- tralians…
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
mission. The primary target was the naval base of Pearl Harbor, the
design to cripple the Pacific Fleet. It was hoped that at least four air-
craft carriers and four battleships could be sunk or rendered useless
for a long period. Postwar interrogations of enemy personnel indicate
a lack of precise information as to the U.S. naval vessels then at Pearl
Harbor, but each pilot received charts marking off definite areas of
a t t a ~ k . ~
Exactly on schedule, a t 0600 on the 7th, orders for the take-off
were given. Shortly thereafter the first wave-fifty fighters, fifty hori-
zontal bombers, forty torpedo bombers, and fifty dive bombers-
roared off the carriers and headed toward Oahu. Forty-five minutes
later fifty horizontal bombers, eighty dive bombers, and forty fighters
followed as the second and last wave of a t t a ~ k . ~
The arrival of the first wave over Oahu was not entirely unher-
alded. About 0630 a small submarine had been sighted in a restricted
zone off Pearl Harbor. By 0650 it had been sunk by the U,S. destroyer
Ward, whose commander had immediately reported the action to the
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About this file

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.