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.
“The Pentagon”1 page
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 parity in cabinet representation and in military command; in the American organization, the AAF was only a part of the Army. Brit- ish practice had prevailed a t ARCADIA to the extent that AAF members had met, in each committee, with their British counterparts and on terms of quasi-equality with U.S. Army and Navy members. That arrangement was perpetuated in the appointment of General Arnold to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, though he was officially a deputy chief of staff. In the second place the American members had not liked the idea of including in the CCS a special representative of the Minister of Defense, since the ready access to the President of such a personal representative of Mr. Churchill might make difficult the maintenance of normal military channels of communication and control. The arrangement was later equalized by the appointment in July of Adm. William D. Leahy as personal chief of staff to President Roosevelt in place of Admiral Stark.'* It was apparently the in- fluence of the CCS organization which determined the formation of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), made up of the four Amer- ican members. There was no official charter establishing this com- mittee,75 but by the end of February it had assumed responsibilities toward the American war effort comparable to those of the CCS at the combined level. For the CCS, responsibilities were specifically en~merated.?~They were to include, under the heads of the two governments, the formu- lation and execution of policies and plans concerning: ( I ) the strate- gic conduct of the war; ( 2 ) a broad program of production conceived in terms of that strategy; ( 3 ) allocation of raw materials and weapons; and (4) assignment of shipping for personnel and materiel. Procedure in carrying out these tasks had already been described in the directive issued to the supreme Allied commander of the ABDA area.?' On all important military matters outside the jurisdiction of the theater commanders, the Combined Chiefs were charged with developing recommendations and submitting them to the President and Prime Minister for approval. The issues under consideration might originate with the theater commanders, with the government of any of the United Nations, with the U.S. or British chiefs of staff, or eventually with their subordinate agencies. T h e functions of the CCS (and simi- larly of the JCS) were properly staff rather than command. Ultimate decisions, of course, lay with the President and Prime Minister, and the execution of the enforcing directives was a responsibility of a 254
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 863 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.