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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.
“King”32 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 with a dozen other pilots, had been flown to Australia for the purpose of ferrying back the first of the group’s long-awaited A-24’S. Three days later, remaining personnel had been ordered to prepare against the arrival of the planes three new fields to be located at Lipa below Manila and a t San Marcelino and San Fernando to the northwest. O n the zqth, the move from Manila to these points had just been com- pleted when another order directed all personnel to proceed to the Manila docks. From there by truck and boat they made their way to Bataan, where on Christmas day they celebrated with a dinner of bread and hot coffee, topped off in a few cases by a nip of “grog.” For all practical purposes, the 27th Group now became a part of General MacArthur’s infantry, with which it would fight to the bitter end. T h e same fate awaited personnel of the 24th Group, but for a time the tentative plan and organization reflected a continuing hope of reinforcement. Both General Clagett and General Brereton had left the Philippines, the latter on 24 December with members of his staff in two PBY’s to establish a new headquarters in Au~tralia.~’By +he 29th of December, 650 officers and men of the 19th Group had embarked in a hazardous movement by boat from Luzon to Del Monte, which the Australia-based bombers still hoped to use as a forward staging point for bombing operation^.^^ O n Luzon, which for all practical purposes now meant Bataan, there remained the Inter- ceptor Command under the capable and energetic Col. Harold H. George, who as senior air officer proceeded to bring some order out of the confusion accompanying the move to Bataan. His handful of pursuit planes were distributed among three newly constructed fields at the head of the peninsula under a plan to fall back as required to the Mariveles, Cabcaben, and Bataan fields nearer Corregidor. Except for the few pilots required to fly these planes and the men necessary for their maintenance, the 24th Group was posted as infantry reserves, an action, as events proved, merely preliminary to its redesignation on 10January as the zd Infantry Regiment (Provisional) with assignment to the 71st Division. Colonel George had only a skeleton staff, but one which could be expanded in the event hoped-for reinforcements arrived before the tired American troops had been o ~ e r w h e l m e d . ~ ~ Chief hope of immediate relief rode with the convoy of eight trans- ports and freighters which had left Honolulu for the Philippines on 29 November under escort by the U.S. cruiser Pensacola. As already
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