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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 stations left the air. Since there was no system for warning the public -New York's air raid sirens were not installed until February 1942 50- the police took the initiative in spreading news of the alert. As a pre- cautionary measure school children were hurriedly sent home. No general hysteria was noted, but the warning was taken for the real thing on Wall Street, where a wave of selling on the exchanges brought security quotations down hundreds of millions of dollars in the worst slump of the stock market since the collapse of France." T h e alarm spread to Boston, where police shifted heavy stores of guns and ammunition from storage vaults to stations throughout the city, and where industrial establishments were advised to prepare for a raid.52 The many alerts of this period reflect the inexperience of both the public and the defense forces. To some critics they indicated a delib- erate attempt by the Army to frighten the public in order to stimulate interest in war preparations. Before accepting this view, however, it should be noted that many of the reports of unidentified aircraft, leading to precautionary blackouts, resulted from mechanical difficul- ties with new radar equipment and from the understandable mistakes of inadequately trained personnel. Further, there is every evidence that Army commanders were genuinely convinced that the danger of attack, especially against the West Coast, was very Military men knew better than the layman how limited were the defenses against air attack. Along the Pacific coast in December 1941 there were, for example, only forty-five thoroughly modern fighter planes 54 to defend a coast line which extended for 1 , 2 0 0 miles, and along which were located such important aircraft plants as those of Boeing in Seattle, Douglas and Lockheed in Los Angeles, and Consolidated in San Diego. In heavy bombers, the defenders were even less well equipped; for at the close of 1941,there were only ten such planes stationed along the entire coast and the number within reach for con- centration against an enemy force was indeed limited. Although there were seventy-five medium bombers a t hand, their short range cut down their usefulness against the type of attack expected. Moreover, during late 1941 crews of both fighters and bombers were handicapped by an acute shortage of a m m ~ n i t i o n . ~ ~ T o reconstruct the problem as it appeared to air officers at the time, let us assume that the report of the presence of thirty-four Japanese ships off the California coast on 9 December 1941 had proved to be 2 8 0
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