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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 had been manifested in the fashion in which the Air Staff had com- piled AWPD/r in August,” and it was to be more pronounced after the reorganization of 9 March 1942. The fact that in the several staff committees ancillary to the CCS and JCS the AAF members were peers of their Army and Navy opposite numbers encouraged that attitude, which had been tacitly supported by the War Department on z De- cember when it authorized the Air Staff to communicate directly with the air staff of the British Joint Staff Mission.ll’ An astute English member of one of the staff sections serving the CCS was once contrasting, from his own wide experience, the dif- ferent fashion in which his British and American colleagues inter- preted their functions.’17 It was his contention that in such an agency -say, for example, the Combined Planning Staff-the British members acted as a team with full authority to resolve differences of opinion without consulting their respective service chiefs and thus were able to present to the Combined Chiefs a single approved report. Con- versely, he thought the American members brought to a meeting the opinions of the heads of their respective services, and lacked power to compromise those opinions without reference to higher authority. His explanation for the difference he believed to exist was succinct: You see, fundamentally, you have a system of dictatorship. Your three Service chiefs are dictators. So far as the Navy is concerned, Admiral King, as you know, is not only Chief of the Naval Staff, but also Admiral of the US.Fleet. He can do anything he likes with the Fleet-make everybody stand on their heads if he wants to, sack anybody at a moment’s notice. The same applies in the other Services. General Arnold’s control of the US. Air Force is as com- plete, virtually, as is Hitler’s control of Germany. He is a complete dictator. Now, under that system ...everybody’s career from the bottom upwards de- pends on his pleasing the man above him, and as they rise, the answer is, “DO what Arnold wants and you will get on in the Air Corps.” Be discovered doing something Arnold does not like and Arnold sacks you-like that. These observations were made a t the height of the air war in Eu- rope; they were made informally and with some pardonable exaggera- tion to emphasize an argument. Sober judgment could no more confirm the purported dictatorial powers of the service chiefs than it could transform the genial “Hap” into a Fuehrer. But it was significant that to an observant ally the U.S. service commanders possessed widest powers, and that in that respect the AAF differed not at all from the U.S. Army and Navy. * See above, pp. 146-47. 266
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