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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 I 1 lenged during the early months of successive defeats, but as the first test of the practicability of a combined war effort, the ABDA com- mand was of signal importance. The solicitude of the chiefs of staff for the problems of the South- west Pacific stemmed from the fact that they considered the enemy’s amphibious thrusts in that direction as his principal effort. They were not blind, however, to the gravity of the situation in China. The American administration had long recognized the resistance of the Chungking government as an obstacle to Japanese expansion, and had encouraged Chinese efforts by loans and since 6 May 1941 by lend- lease aid.43Later in the year the basis of aid had been broadened to include actual military support by the unofficial sanction bestowed on the American Volunteer Group (AVG) of combat pilots. Now, when Japan’s new commitments in the Pacific should have brought hope to China, US. observers were finding that nation war-weary, her resistance weakening under pronounced material and moral deteri~ration.~~China’s own productive powers were slight and com- munications with the western world so poor that it was difficult to bolster that weakness by grants of munitions. Isolated from the other United Nations in the Far East, China had not been included in the ABDA area; her armies were directed by Generalissimo Chiang Kai- shek, and co-ordination of effort must be effected by mutual agree- ment. The United States, both from long-standing sentiment and for reasons of immediate military expediency, wished to continue and to increase China’s war effort; if that effort in itself bore little hope of ultimate victory, it promised at least to contain large Japanese forces and to constitute a continuous drain on Japanese resources. T o provide a broad basis for our desired policy of immediate assistance to China, the US.chiefs of staff presented a plan which was approved on 10 January.45 This entailed increasing the security and capacity of the Burma Road, and providing base facilities and technical services to the end that the Chinese combat operations might be made more effec- tive. Specifically, the U.S. chiefs of staff proposed to appoint, with the consent of Chiang Kai-shek, a high-ranking military officer to act as the representative of the United States in China. He was to super- vise lend-lease, to command (under the Generalissimo as supreme commander) all US. forces and such Chinese units as might be at- 244
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