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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
C H A P T E R 1 * * * * * * * * * * * T H E AIR SERVICE IN WORLD W A R I N THE morning of 7 December 1941 two Signal Corps privms were oper,iting a mobilc ,iir wmiing set a t Opana in the island of Oahu. At 0 7 0 2 they picked up on the radar tracked the planes in from I 3 0 miles only to lose them as they neared screen a large flight of aircraft approaching from rhe north. They the coast. At 0 7 5 5 the planes, soon identified as Japanese, launched simultaneous attacks against Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field. Four days later Germany and Italy joined their Axis partner by declaring war against the United States. T h e war ended, as it had begun, with an air attack-a single atom bomb loosed from a B-29 over Nagasaki on 9 August 194s. Between those two bombardment missions the Axis powers h:id been decisively defeated by the combined arms of the sever71 United h’ations. T h i s is a history of the United States Army Air Forces in that war. T h e present volume carries the story to the end of the summer of 1942.T h e history does not begin with the abruptness of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. A more leisurely approach may lessen the drama of that Sunday morning but will make more intelligjble the course of the war which followed. ’This was the second time since the invention of the airplane t h a t the United States had entered a major war as it approached a crisis. In the first instance there had been little psychologicd or material prepara- tion. America’s contribution to victory was late and hardly conxnensu- rate with national resources. During the long truce between the two conflicts the nation turned resolutely from thoughts of war, but by 1939 it began to appear that peace might not be had a t a reasonable price. There followed two years of hurried rearmament; when war 0
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