Documents / Document
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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 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 last ARCADIA session on the 14th was submitted to the President and Prime Mini~ter.~’Although the principal features of the plan were never challenged, it was subsequently revised in a draft of 24 January and adopted on 10 February.73 This final version formed, as it were, the constitutional framework for the combined direction of the war; and in view of the remarkable success of Anglo-American collaboration, it may be considered as one of the most significant documents in the long history of military alliances. T h e most important element in the new machinery was the Com- bined Chiefs of Staff (CCS). Actually, that body had existed at ARCADIA; what was new was the designation and the provision for continuous rather than periodic sessions. In choosing the title, Amer- ican rather than British usage was followed: the term “combined” was officially defined as connoting collaboration between two or more of the United Nations, “joint” as connoting collaboration between two or more services of a single nation. This provided a more precise designation than had existed before, though in respect to the sub- sidiary agencies it reversed rather than confirmed earlier practice; thus the group which had been commonly referred to as the Joint Plan- ning Committee now became the Combined Planning Staff (CPS). T h e Combined Chiefs of Staff was to sit normally in Washington, with regularly scheduled meetings. It was to consist of the United States chiefs of staff and the British chiefs of staff or, in their absence from Washington, of their duly appointed representatives. For the British this meant dual representation. Their members of the CCS were Adm. Sir Dudley Pound, Gen. Sir Alan Brooke, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, representing the three services, and Field Marshal Sir John Dill representing Mr. Churchill as Minister of De- fense. Sir John Dill was to remain in Washington after the departure of his three colleagues, and with him were to act, vice those members, the British Joint Staff Mission-Adm. Sir Charles Little, Gen. Sir Col- ville Wemyss, and Air Marshal Arthur T. Harris. T h e United States members consisted of Adm. Harold R. Stark, Chief of Naval Opera- tions; Adm. Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet; Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, U. S. AEmy; and Lt. Gen. H. H. Arnold, Chief, AAF and Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Army. T h e use of the existing British Chiefs of Staff Committee as a model for the new organization raised two awkward questions. In the British system, the R A F enjoyed the same status as the older services, with 253
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 863 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.