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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 Wash”17 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 I1 shore exploded the next day, killing four men.64Attempts by Army planes to bomb the submarine were apparently unsuccessful. In any case, the air patrols were powerless to prevent a second attack on Aruba on 19 February 6 5 and additional nuisance shellings of shore installations in Puerto Rico on 2 March 1942 “ and of a refinery on CuraGao on 19 April.67 The initial attack on Aruba prompted President Roosevelt to warn the nation that enemy ships could shell New York City, or enemy planes drop bombs on Detroit.68 Secretary Stimson added that the public might as well prepare itself to accept “occasional blows,” because the Army was determined not to disperse its forces in small fragments to serve as security garrison^.^^ The New York Times, in an editorial on 2 0 February, pointed out that American seaboard cities were well within the enemy’s reach, but that the only danger was that attacks might create a popular demand for protection at all costs. The real need, it was suggested, was for the perfection of the defense machinery already in e~istence.~’This raised the question of the adequacy of the national air defenses; a few days later, events along the West Coast provided a not too reassuring answer. During the course of a fireside report to the nation delivered by President Roosevelt on 2 3 February 1942, a Japanese submarine rose out of the sea off Ellwood, a hamlet on the California coast north of Santa Barbara, and pumped thirteen shells into tidewater refinery installations. The shots seemed designed to punctuate the President’s statement that “the broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.” “ Yet the attack which was supposed to carry the enemy’s defiance, and which did succeed in stealing headlines from the President’s address, was a feeble gesture rather than a damaging blow. The raider surfaced at 1905 (Pacific time), just five minutes after the President started his ~peech.~’For about twenty minutes the submarine kept a position 2,500 yards offshore to deliver the shots from its 5S-inch guns. The shells did minor damage to piers and oil wells, but missed the gasoline plant, which appears to have been the aiming point; the military effects of the raid were therefore nil. The first news of the attack led to the dispatch of pursuit planes to the area, and subsequently three bombers joined the attempt to destroy the raider, but without success.73The reluctance of AAF commanders to assign larger forces to the task 2 82
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