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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
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 11 vulnerable, and in the early evening of 8 December a machine-gun battery of the 60th Coast Artillery (AA) moved to Nichols Field and the port area of Manila. Additional if limited equipment was available in the Philippine Ordnance Depot, and 500 officers and men were transferred from the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment to man it. Work- ing almost continuously for thirty-six hours, these men, who had been hastily organized into the Provisional 200th CA (AA), put together and installed twelve 3-inch guns, “3 directors and height-finders, 5 AA searchlight units,” and twelve 37-mm. AA guns. By 10 December new 3-inch batteries were located a t Paranaque, at Paco, and east of Nielson Airport, and 37-mm. batteries had been installed a t Nichols Field, a t Nielson Airport, and in the section of Manila known as the Walled City.57 While these defensive preparations continued and ground crews worked frantically to make every available aircraft ready for opera- tion, the chief responsibility of the air arm was reconnaissance. Though principal reliance was placed in AAF pursuits and Navy patrol bombers, B-17’s from Del Monte also participated in the effort to gain intelligence of the enemy’s movements and intentions. At 0730 on 9 December, six of the heavy bombers, commanded by Maj, Cecil Combs and loaded each with 20 x Ioo-lb. demolition bombs, took off from their Mindanao base. Having reconnoitered the area in the vicinity of Catanduanes without finding evidence of enemy activity, they proceeded to Clark Field, where they landed at 1430.In an action which was representative of the desperate conditions now governing operations from bases on Luzon, the planes took off almost imme- diately and remained in the air until after dark to avoid attack on the ground. During the afternoon, seven additional B- I 7’s were dispatched from Del Monte to San marcel in^.^^ A relatively respectable striking force had thus been brought into position for resistance to such inva- sion attempts as might be made. Through the first two days of hos- tilities, however, reports both from the warning net and from patrol planes revealed principally the confused and nervous state into which our defenses had been thrown by the enemy. As Admiral Hart later reported, “an extraordinary crop of incorrect enemy information” came over the warning net, and there were reports of “enemy sight- ings when nothing was actually sighted and when a vessel was really seen she was usually reported in one of two categories: irrespective of size, she was either a Transport or a Battleship.776sBut during the 2’4
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