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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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 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 Watt, the British radar expert, examined Panama defenses and reported the existence of disturbing weaknesses. The canal, in the opinion of the British observer, fully justified the concern being shown for its safety, for it was “unique in the world, possessing only four vital points, each of small area, but each so fragile that a single projectile on any of the four could cut this vital line of communications, and two projectiles on any one of three could prevent its re-establishment within two years.” 16’ He agreed with American strategists that the most probable form of attack was a carrier-based raid from the Pacific and estimated that the Japanese could well afford to sacrifice four carriers in an attempt to block the use of the canal. Secretary Stimson reported to President Roosevelt his conviction that the planes from even one carrier could cripple the canal and that if two or more car- riers participated in an attack there would be a strong probability of success. Some means of intercepting carriers far to the west of Panama was urgently needed, because once “a carrier has released its planes for attack, no subsequent means of defense against those planes can sufficiently ensure the safety of the Canal.” 162 An adequate defense required early detection-and destruction-of enemy carriers at dis- tances of 500 to 1,000 miles offshore, and since shore-based radars could not reach that distance, the only solution was long-range aerial patrol. Even with such surveillance, a carrier might escape notice long enough to launch its planes, and therefore patrols would need to be supplemented by an effective cordon of coastal radars to provide a twenty-minute warning to alert fighters and antiaircraft batteries for a “last-ditch” defense of the canal. An adequate patrol on the Pacific side of the canal would require coverage of an arc of 400-mile depth extending from an inner semi- circle 600 nautical miles west of Panama to an outer limit of 1,000 miles and from the coast of southern Mexico to northern Peru.16sT o patrol this extensive zone, aircrews needed the assistance of ASV radar, which could detect ships a t distances of twenty-five to fifty miles, and of bases at Tehuantepec in Mexico, at the city of Guate- mala or San JosC in Guatemala, on the Galapagos Islands, at Salinas in Ecuador, and a t Talara in Peru.” Of this proposed chain, only the bases at the city of Guatemala and Salinas were in use at the time of Mr. Stimson’s visit to the Canal Zone. A field in the Galapagos was under construction in accordance with an agreement with Ecuador ‘See map on opposite page. 3 0 0
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