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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
F U N D A M E N T A L B A S E S O F S T R A T E G Y by the slow water route. T h e need was so desperate that on I Z January the US. chiefs of staff suggested a review of the shipping priorities just established for the By reducing the size of convoys designed for Iceland and Northern Ireland and by reassign- ing the bottoms thus released, it was possible to find troop space for z 1,800 men, including ground forces for N e w Caledonia and AAF per- sonnel for the Far East area, and shipping space for the aircraft. This plan was adopted; 38 it retarded troop movements in the Atlantic and the shipment of lend-lease supplies to Russia, but it provided mini- mum forces for immediate defense against Japan. Even after reinforcements for the Far East had been allocated and shipping priorities established, it would be a matter of weeks before they could be brought to bear against the enemy. In the meanwhile, the Allied cause could be strengthened by a more effective utilization of the forces already in the theater. T h e comrnand structure which had been prescribed in ABC-I provided little more than a loose col- laboration of American, British, Australian, N e w Zealand, and Neth- erlands forces dispersed throughout an area of millions of square miles. In the face of the numerical superiority of the enemy's forces and of the effective synchronization of his operations in widely sepa- rated regions, it was imperative that the United Nations improve their system of control. General Marshall on 25 December pointed out the weakness of the current command structure and proposed the establishment of a single unified command for the Far East area.39 There were objections of a practical sort which could be urged against any system which vested in one leader full control over the several arms of five nations, but the alternatives were so unpromising that Marshall's proposal was a c ~ e p t e d . ~ 'Because of the predominant Brit- ish Commonwealth interests involved, the United States accepted as supreme Allied commander Gen. Sir Archibald P. Wavell, whose appointment was announced on 3 January.41 His deputy commander and staff were chosen to give widest representation to air, ground, and naval forces of the interested nations. T h e directive under which Wavell was to exercise his powers was approved b y the President and Prime Minister on 10 J a n ~ a r y . ~ 'This document prescribed the relations which were to be maintained between the supreme Allied commander, the Anglo-American chiefs of staff, and the ABDA governments." Its specific provisions were not always to pass unchal- * American-British-Dutch-Australian. 2 4 3
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