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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.
“Independence Day”9 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 I 1 the possibilities in the situation confronting the associated powers, he emphasized the necessity for a defensive strategy until such time as sufficient forces had been brought together for offensive operations “(a) by working from Burma into China towards Shanghai to acquire advanced bases; (b) by exerting slow pressure through the Nether- lands East Indies and Malaya; and (c) by exerting similar pressure from Australia into the islands to the North.” O n the following day he ordered the Holbrook and Bloemfontein, the only vessels so far dispatched to MacArthur, to put in a t Darwin and to discharge their cargo and all troops a t that port.lo4 By this time the War Department, too, held grave doubts as to the feasibility of sending substantial reinforcements to the Philippines. It was clear that a reservoir of supply could not be built up in Australia except over a period of many months. Hope of ferrying short-range planes to the Philippines declined with each report of the progress of Japanese forces, and the prospect of breaking through the sea blockade with a naval escort for convoys was even less promising. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill with their chiefs of staff, then meeting in Washington, had considered such an opera- tion. But the US. Navy had been hard hit at Pearl Harbor, the bal- ance of naval power in the Pacific had been further upset in Japan’s favor by loss of the British Prince of Wales and the Repulse to enemy bombers on 10 December, and forces already committed to the Atlan- tic and Middle East theaters could not be released within the time available.” A memorandum of 3 January for the Chief of Staff signed by Brig. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow, Assistant Chief of Staff, outlined the operations that would be required to restore the American posi- tion in the Philippines. The first requirement would be to gain air and naval superiority south of the line Malaya-Borneo-Celebes and to make preparations for extending this control northward. With air supremacy established in the Netherlands East Indies, it would be necessary to extend this supremacy from NEI bases northward to cover Mindanao, and then with the support of strong naval and air forces to land large ground forces on Mindanao preparatory to a drive into Luzon. The associated powers commanded of course neither the time nor the means for such an operation as this, and on the basis of an unavoidable conclusion that “the forces required for the relief of the Philippines cannot be placed in the Far East area # See below, pp. 239-43. 2 3 2
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