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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 Invaders”15 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 of opinion as to the most feasible solution for each. The reorganiza- tion of March 1942 was essentially a compromise, a wartime expedient which postponed rather than effected a final settlement. The imme- diate background of this temporary solution may be sought in a three- cornered struggle between the General Staff‘s War Plans Division, General Headquarters, and the Army Air Forces. Much, though cer- tainly not all, of the controversy turned on the relation of the air arm to the military establishment. General Headquarters was of recent origin, but the desirability of such a staff in the event of war had long dominated Army thought. The Harbord Board of 192I , drawing on the experience of the AEF in 1917-18, had recommended establishment of a staff comparable to Pershing’s GHQ which should channel War Department activities into the theater of operations. T h e core of this headquarters was to consist of the General Staff’s War Plans Division-indeed it was in anticipation of such an eventual function that the latter office had been created and charged with the preparation of over-all strategic plans. Modified in detail in 1936, the Harbord plan assumed that a t outbreak of war the Chief of Staff, or some other commander designated by the President, would lead the field forces with a reinforced WPD as his general headquarters. When Nazi victories of the spring of 1940 lent urgency to the mobilization of American military forces, an initial step toward realizing this design was taken by the activation, on 2 6 July, of a “nucleus of GHQ.” Its original mission was to direct the training of the tactical units of the Army, found in the main in the four field armies, the armored force, and the GHQ Air Force.* Gen- eral Marshall delegated effective control of GHQ to its chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Leslie J. McNair, under whose able leadership a small group of officers undertook the complex task of organizing and training the fast-growing Army.84 A year later, on 3 July 1941,the mission of GHQ was extended to include also the planning and command of operations; in General Marshall’s words, “GHQ now supersedes War Plans Division in the organization and control of task forces and operations.” 8 5 This was in accord with the original intent, but the new arrangement did not prove satisfactory. T h e Harbord report and the subsequent modifica- tions of 1936 had conceived of a war involving a concerted effort in * The last term is confusing, since it referred to an organization which had been established in 1935, five years before the activation of GHQ itself. 258
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