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The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

Air Force Historical Studies Office · 863 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 43 …cavalry mounted on gas driven flying horses” never arrived to “sweep the Germans from the sky…
  • p. 46 …Mitchell never received an American air force commensurate with the ambitious idens of air power which…
  • p. 49 …This project, like so many others, had lagged, and the Air Service was never equipped during…
  • p. 50 …the Army or the Air Corps?” but never, “Are you in the Army or the Corps…
  • p. 55 …any Air Service officers, and I have never heard anybody yet-any Air Service officer-against…
  • p. 69 …But one axiom, with its corollaries, never varied. T o him the airplane was first and…
  • p. 75 …Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be completely stopped, but their effects could best…
  • p. 94 …rate for the time being, the decision never- theless left an open question as to how…
  • p. 121 …large-scale warfare; production of combat types never exceeded 300 aircraft a month. The pattern of…
  • p. 122 …the German Air Force, the Regia Aeronautica never exhibited sufficient power to be decisive in the…
  • p. 133 …Except for a few raids against French factories, the force had never been employed in a…
  • p. 140 …into a complete war economy production was never equal to the demands of our own forces…
  • p. 150 …Long-term needs of the Air Corps and the sudden availability of funds in quantities never…
  • p. 181 …Actually, the Air Staff had never approved of the method followed in RAINBOW No. 5 . l…
  • p. 217 …Members of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had never flown heavy bombers, began to receive intensive…
  • p. 219 …were not then satisfactory for permanent garrisons. Never- theless, the commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lt…
  • p. 227 …T h e planes never reached their destination. Other bombardment units were being prepared for transfer…
  • p. 241 …responsible officers, a few crucial points have never been satisfactorily explained. T h e general pattern…
  • p. 277 …motors, sole- noids, and gun mounts-were never found. After many hours of fruit- less search…
  • p. 288 …planners and from which AAF Headquarters was never to deviate. The translation of the accepted grand…
  • p. 303 …the principal features of the plan were never challenged, it was subsequently revised in a draft…
  • p. 309 …W a r Plans Division was never incorporated into GHQ and remained a potential rival to…
  • p. 336 …the shooting and wrote that they were never able to make out an airplane.g6It is…
  • p. 412 …As it happened, the B-24's never returned to India, but, instead, remained in the…
  • p. 457 …Meanwhile the Edsall with the remaining pilots had headed for Java, never to be heard from…
  • p. 492 …Squadron was assigned, but which it would never reach, going from Australia to Tongatabu; ( 3 ) Christmas…
  • p. 500 …deck of a carrier presented a problem never before challenged by Army planes. Hence an accelerated…
  • p. 502 …the bows and wetting the flight deck. Never before had this been accomplished, yet now it…
  • p. 509 …Island, in the Louisiade Archipelago.” They were never needed, for on 7-8 May the two…
  • p. 513 …exist, it was at a point which never reached the aircrews, for on the operational level…
  • p. 524 …handicaps under which AAF planes had operated. Never were more than fourteen B- I 7’s…
  • p. 527 …AAF planners clung firmly to their belief that proper observance of economy of force would never…
  • p. 531 …Crews which had previously never loaded torpedoes now for the first time fitted these weapons into…
  • p. 544 …But the Japanese never at any time based their bombers in appreciable numbers a t either…
  • p. 548 …26's in torpedo-dropping, but they never would be put into All told, the record…
  • p. 556 …until it had been thoroughly trained and never to com- mit it piecemeal. General Magruder had…
  • p. 560 …pressed into service against the Germans," and never reached the CBI." Colonel Haynes had reached India…
  • p. 606 …reason that the Antilles Air Task Force never evolved, as did I Bomber Command, into an…
  • p. 614 …that reason deserving a high priority, could never dispose of the U-boat menace but must…
  • p. 635 …In Washington the Munitions Assign- ments Board t had never considered this schedule as more than…
  • p. 670 …they bombed from 39,200 feet, and never below 30,000. By AAF standards they had…
  • p. 672 …Goering had never put enough bombers over England, nor had he concentrated his forces on the…
  • p. 690 …of co-operation and combined action probably never before equaled by the military forces of two…
  • p. 729 …shoot at aerial targets, and several had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency…
D E F E N S E O F T H E W E S T E R N H E M I S P H E R E
against civilian populations and rushed all available training gas masks
-more than 600,000 in number-to the Western Defense Command
for issue to police, air raid wardens, and other key civilians.*s5These
measures were accompanied by a newspaper campaign designed to
prevent “undue excitement” in the event of a raid.’56 A general fear
of reprisal was translated into sharp calls for action when intelligence
was received in mid-May of the impending moves of the Japanese
against Midway and the Aleutians.* Steps were taken a t once to
strengthen the defense forces along the western seaboard. General
Marshall personally visited the Pacific coast and ordered additional
antiaircraft artillery and barrage balloon units to the An air
task force from the Second Air Force was moved to coastal stations
in support of the Fourth Air Force.’” T h e danger seemed so acute by
I June that the pending movement of the air echelon of the Eighth
Air Force was and on the following day the 97th Bom-
bardment Group (H) left the concentration area in N e w England to
fly in two elements to McChord Field in Washington and to Hammer
Field in California. Similarly, the 1st Pursuit Group on 5 June flew
from Maine to Morris Field in North Carolina under orders to proceed
to the West Coast. But the Japanese fleet already had been defeated
west of Midway, and on the 6th the pursuit group returned to Dow
Field.+
Reappraisal of Panama Canal Air Defenses
T h e critical examination of air defenses which had followed the
Pearl Harbor attack naturally included a re-examination of the defense
of the Panama Canal. Plans made in 1940-41 for protection of the
canal had anticipated that the chief danger would come from the
eastern approaches, but now the emphasis shifted.16’ Recently acquired
Caribbean bases and operational rights and facilities provided by an
understanding with Brazil came to be of primary importance as step-
pingstones on the ferrying route to Africa or for use in the mainte-
nance of antisubmarine pat,rols. T h e real danger to the canal was from
the Pacific side, where virtually nothing had been provided by way of
outlying defense and where, geographically, the canal was most
exposed to surprise attack.
Early in March 1942, both Secretary of W a r Stimson and Watson-
* See below, Chap. 12.
t See below, pp. 641-43.
299

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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.