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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.
“United Press”36 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 which men and supplies could be moved to the battlefronts2 While the conference was still in session it had become clear that the Philip- pines could not be held, principally because the Japanese had cut the only sea and air lanes over which available reinforcements, such as they were, could reach MacArthur. By the end of February 1942, the air connection between India and Australia was also cut, although some heavy bombers and other reinforcements from the United States were able to get through before the Japanese captured Singapore and overran the Netherlands East Indies. T h e Australia-Philippines and the Australia-India air routes, included in the seven declared to be of the highest strategic importance, were thus lost in the first shock of the Japanese attack. Fortunately for the Allies, the five remaining major routes were held. Each of the five had its beginning within the continental United States and reached out from the main arsenal of the United Nations to one or more of the major theaters of war: ( I ) the northeastern route, earliest to be developed for military purposes, provided an air connection with Great Britain; ( 2 ) the northwest route, with Alaska and the Russian front by way of Siberia; ( 3 ) the South Pacific route, with Australia and the western Pacific islands; (4) the southeastern route, with Africa, the Middle East, India, China, and, for a brief time, the Southwest Pacific area; and ( 5 ) the mid- Atlantic route, with Europe and North Africa by way of the Azores. While this fifth trunk route was not opened until late 1943, the United States and Great Britain were at all times prepared to occupy the Azores had the security and future use of the route been threatened by the Axis. During the early period of American participation in the war the southeastern route to Africa and beyond assumed an importance far surpassing that of any of the o t h e r ~ . ~In contrast to the slowness with which the North Atlantic route, as well as the newly developed South Pacific and Alaskan routes, came into use during the months following 7 December, the South Atlantic airway was forced a t once to support a heavy volume of air traffic that strained its facilities and personnel to the limit. Lend-lease aircraft and supplies were sent over the route to the British forces in Egypt and to the Russians through Iran, with a smaller volume going via India into China. The earliest heavy bomber reinforcements sent to American air forces in the Southwest Pacific following the Japanese attack were moved over the route, as were most of the aircraft and crews that would form the nuclei of the Ninth 3 1 2
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