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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.

  • p. 125 …an invading army. For that job they were well equipped, trained, and organized. Though the Luftwaff…
  • p. 127 …For the first time, German parachute troops were successfully employed when the Nazi forces invaded Holland…
  • p. 131 …equipment for moving an invading force across the intervening waters. The army itself, caught unprepared, required…
  • p. 134 …By the first of June the British had been forced to yield Crete to the invaders…
  • p. 183 …Nevertheless, a land army should be prepared to invade the continent and Germany itself. T h…
  • p. 246 …this effort." Apparently the course of the invaders plotted earlier in the morning was not utilized…
  • p. 263 …tanks, but they too “strafed and restrafed the invaders.” As Lt. Samuel H. Marrett, squadron commander…
  • p. 461 …the invading forces was merely preliminary to the bringing in of bombers in preparation for the…
  • p. 493 …Its nickel and chrome mines were readily accessible to an invader. Admiral King believed that the…
  • p. 522 …after the action; not until the war ended and the teams of interrogators invaded Japan was…
  • p. 529 …There was no intention of invading the Alaskan mainland, or even Dutch Harbor; the objective was…
  • p. 535 …Four of the most efficient carriers had gone down, carrying with them the hopes of Admiral…
  • p. 559 …the latter presented the more immediate need for reinforcement. Tavoy had fallen to Japanese invaders as…
  • p. 630 …The Netherlands East Indies and Burma, already invaded, were doomed. T h e Indian Ocean was…
  • p. 633 …to the preliminary strategic bombardment and only modestly to direct support of the invading force. A…
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
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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.