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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.
“King”32 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 organization applied to technically inadequate equipment used in exceptionally difficult conditions.” lZ9 Progress would depend upon giving all levels of command an understanding of the true capabilities of radar, which, according to the British expert, could be found as a happy medium between two absurd attitudes, one of which viewed radar as an all-seeing, omniscient weapon, “a crystal ball on a truck,” and the other extreme which regarded it as nothing more than a freak gadget “producing snap observations on targets which may or may not be aircraft.” Actually, radar, in the hands of trained technicians, could provide a dependable warning system “in which continuity of tracking is normal, [and] where the unexplained is rare.” But such results could be achieved only with close organization and supervision, a point at which the American warning service fell short. Equally serious was the problem of equipment. In a report filled with illuminating detail, the British expert found our seaward recon- naissance grossly inefficient because of the total lack of ASV equip- ment and because of the limited number of patrol aircraft of suitable range. The radar screen along the West Coast was based on too few stations, and the equipment itself had inherent defects which made it “gravely unsuitable.” All radar experts were agreed that each set represented a compromise between a variety of demands, but the prin- cipal American radar was “unique in combining slow search with poor cover in elevation, with lack of all facilities for height finding, and with a grave danger of plotting false tracks.” Moreover, depend- able employment of this radar had been made even more unlikely because of a mistake in the selection of sites for its installation. Per- sonnel to operate the radars had not been carefully selected and were inadequate both in numbers and in training. The United States was found to have repeated an early error of Britain in failing to provide for the training of large numbers of skilled radar technicians. Officials in Washington accepted the report in the constructive spirit in which it was offered. The director of Air Defense at AAF Headquarters concurred in every detail with the findings and called the study “a damning indictment of our whole warning service.” 1 3 0 H e also expressed the view that the situation on the East Coast was even worse than the conditions reported along the Pa~ific.’~’The Chief Signal Officer and the Chief of the Army Air Forces agreed that the causes of the trouble lay in the lack of time for improvement of radar equipment and the limitations imposed by considerations of 2 9 2
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 863 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.