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

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
reached in December, but the runway would not be ready until May
1942.’’~Upon his return to the United States, Secretary Stimson
initiated action to secure a base in southern Mexi~o,’’~but the negoti-
ations were held up by the problem of control of the field that was to
be built.“’ Although ASV radars were on their way to Panama, pilots
a t the time were still depending on visual observation, and the planes
were so few in number that even had they all been radar-equipped
they would have been unequal to the task assigned. The burden of
maintaining the daily patrol was so heavy that no planes could be kept
ifi reserve for a striking force, with the result that even if an enemy
carrier had been detected there would have been no way of offering
immediate resistance. By mid- I 942 the bomber forces available had
been improved by the gradual substitution of more modern planes,
and, with substantial progress by the AAF in the installation of ASV
equipment, the problem of airborne radar as an aid to patrol was no
longer ~ r i t i c a 1 . l ~ ~
The problems involved in providing a serviceable radar screen to
alert the inner defenses of the canal were less easily solved. In March
1942,there were only eight early warning radar stations in operation
in Panama, with six more under construction.les Equipment in use at
these stations was inadequate for early warning and “quite useless” for
purposes of controlled interception. Sites had been selected for four
British-type radars, the sets to be supplied from Canadian production,
but improvement in equipment could not overcome deficiencies of
operating personnel. Operators in Panama were largely untrained, had
been given no indoctrination in the need for precision standards, and
were frequently unenthusiastic about their assignmeht. Radar crews
had made no effort to plot the permanent echoes in their search areas,
and therefore could not discriminate between such echoes and “live”
targets. The combination of inadequate equipment, poor site selection,
and untrained operators produced such inefficiency that even the best
station in Panama was “far below any acceptable standard of oper-
ational utility.” The elimination of all the deficiencies noted depended
on action by the War Department to provide improved equipment
and better trained crews. No complete remedy was available to local
commanders.
Conditions among the fighter units themselves had been improved
with the addition of more modern equipment, new satellite fields, and
facilities for dispersing and concealing aircraft. Effective strength was
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