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The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)
Air Force Historical Studies Office · 863 pages · text from the file's own layer
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.
“Nevers”44 pages
- p. 43 …cavalry mounted on gas driven flying horses” never arrived to
“sweep the Germans from the sky…
- p. 46 …Mitchell never received an American air force commensurate with
the ambitious idens of air power which…
- p. 49 …This project, like so many others, had lagged, and the Air Service was
never equipped during…
- p. 50 …the Army or the Air Corps?” but never, “Are
you in the Army or the Corps…
- p. 55 …any Air Service officers, and I have never heard
anybody yet-any Air Service officer-against…
- p. 69 …But one axiom,
with its corollaries, never varied. T o him the airplane was first and…
- p. 75 …Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be
completely stopped, but their effects could best…
- p. 94 …rate for the time being, the decision never-
theless left an open question as to how…
- p. 121 …large-scale warfare; production of combat types never exceeded 300
aircraft a month. The pattern of…
- p. 122 …the German Air Force, the
Regia Aeronautica never exhibited sufficient power to be decisive in
the…
- p. 133 …Except for a few raids against French
factories, the force had never been employed in a…
- p. 140 …into
a complete war economy production was never equal to the demands
of our own forces…
- p. 150 …Long-term needs
of the Air Corps and the sudden availability of funds in quantities
never…
- p. 181 …Actually, the Air Staff had
never approved of the method followed in RAINBOW No. 5 . l…
- p. 217 …Members of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had never flown
heavy bombers, began to receive intensive…
- p. 219 …were not then satisfactory for permanent garrisons. Never-
theless, the commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lt…
- p. 227 …T h e planes never reached their destination. Other
bombardment units were being prepared for transfer…
- p. 241 …responsible officers, a few crucial points
have never been satisfactorily explained.
T h e general pattern…
- p. 277 …motors, sole-
noids, and gun mounts-were never found. After many hours of fruit-
less search…
- p. 288 …planners and
from which AAF Headquarters was never to deviate.
The translation of the accepted grand…
- p. 303 …the principal features of the plan
were never challenged, it was subsequently revised in a draft…
- p. 309 …W a r Plans Division was
never incorporated into GHQ and remained a potential rival to…
- p. 336 …the shooting and wrote that they were never
able to make out an airplane.g6It is…
- p. 412 …As it happened, the B-24's never
returned to India, but, instead, remained in the…
- p. 457 …Meanwhile the Edsall with the remaining
pilots had headed for Java, never to be heard from…
- p. 492 …Squadron was assigned, but which it would never reach, going from
Australia to Tongatabu; ( 3 ) Christmas…
- p. 500 …deck of a carrier presented a problem never
before challenged by Army planes. Hence an accelerated…
- p. 502 …the bows and wetting the flight deck. Never before had this been
accomplished, yet now it…
- p. 509 …Island, in the
Louisiade Archipelago.” They were never needed, for on 7-8 May
the two…
- p. 513 …exist, it was at a point which never reached the
aircrews, for on the operational level…
- p. 524 …handicaps under which
AAF planes had operated. Never were more than fourteen B- I 7’s…
- p. 527 …AAF planners clung firmly to their belief that
proper observance of economy of force would never…
- p. 531 …Crews which had
previously never loaded torpedoes now for the first time fitted these
weapons into…
- p. 544 …But the Japanese never at
any time based their bombers in appreciable numbers a t either…
- p. 548 …26's in torpedo-dropping, but they never would be put into
All told, the record…
- p. 556 …until it had been thoroughly trained and never to com-
mit it piecemeal. General Magruder had…
- p. 560 …pressed into service against the Germans," and never reached the
CBI." Colonel Haynes had reached India…
- p. 606 …reason that the Antilles Air Task Force
never evolved, as did I Bomber Command, into an…
- p. 614 …that reason deserving a high
priority, could never dispose of the U-boat menace but must…
- p. 635 …In Washington the Munitions Assign-
ments Board t had never considered this schedule as more than…
- p. 670 …they bombed from 39,200 feet, and never
below 30,000. By AAF standards they had…
- p. 672 …Goering had never put enough bombers over England,
nor had he concentrated his forces on the…
- p. 690 …of co-operation and combined action probably never
before equaled by the military forces of two…
- p. 729 …shoot at aerial targets, and several
had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency…
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
air force which could absorb in 1943 the tremendous flow of aircraft
and aircrews. Just ten days after the 115-group program was au-
thorized, the Chief of the Air Staff presented General Arnold with
a plan for AAF expansion in 1943, recommending an increase of 109
combat groups.65 By 5 February this 2 24-group program had been
accepted in the AAF as a basis for further study.G6The program was
not formally approved until July, by which time several changes had
occurred in the allocation of groups among the several combat types,
and by September 1942 this schedule had in turn been supplanted by
the 273-group program. But inasmuch as long-range allocation and
deployment plans for some months after ARCADIA were based on
anticipated forces of I I 5 groups by 3 I December 1942 and of 2 2 4
groups a year later, it is convenient to summarize here the unit status
at the several pertinent dates.G’ Groups
Aircraft per G r o u p Author- To be
Aviation mented H a n d , 19 19 Jan. Group Increase b y 3 1 Dec.
T y p e of Group Strength Strength Jan. 1942 1 9 4 2 Progrum 1 9 4 3 r 9 4 3
1st Aiig- Groups on ized 115- Proposed Attained
Heavy Bombardment 35 5s ‘4 2 0 34 3 2 66
Medium Bombardment 57 69 9 5 I 2 6 18
Light Bombardment 57 57 5 3 10 2 0 30
Pursuit 80 10s 26 7 3’ 2 7 58
Transport 35 55 6 6 I 2 I 2 24
TOTALS 70 45 1 1 5 109 224
2 8
-4 16 I 2
- - -lo
5 5 57 -Observation
Permanent Machinery for Militlmy Control
O n I January I 942, twenty-six nations through representatives
assembled in Washington pledged their mutual co-operation against
the Tripartite powers to the extent of their respective military and
economic resources.68 In manpower and industrial capacity, if not in
current military strength, the United Nations were vastly superior
to the Axis powers. But whatever public statements might be made
about common ideals, the twenty-six members of the new organiza-
tion had separate national interests, sometimes widely divergent or
even conflicting; material advantages might easily be dissipated by the
lack of unity usually inherent in a military coalition. In his address to
the Congress on 6 January, President Roosevelt promised that “we
shall not fight isolated wars-each nation going its own way.” H e
referred to measures already taken to insure cohesive efforts-current
military discussions and the unified command in the Southwest Pacific-
and said: “There will be a continuation of conferences and consul-
2S I
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