Documents / Document
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.
“Churchill”21 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 plane mechanics in the labor market, the company found it necessary also to set up organized courses of instruction in all types of airplane maintenance and mechanical Pan American Air Ferries actually delivered only a dozen aircraft prior to Pearl Harbor, and all of these were transports for use on the transAfrican run.48After the United States entered the war, deliv- eries by PAAF pilots increased month by month. By the time the personnel and facilities of the organization were militarized a t the end of 1942, some 464 planes had been delivered over the South Atlantic to the Middle East and the Far East by PAAF crews4’ In order to establish the flying boat service to West Africa, the United States purchased for the sum of $900,000 one of Pan Amer- ican’s famous four-engine Clippers, a Boeing B-3 14A withdrawn from the Pacific. It was then leased to the contractor for the nominal fee of one dollar.50The plane accommodated a crew of eleven and sixty-eight day passengers or thirty-six sleeping passengers, with mail and cargo holds having a total capacity of approximately five Only one trip over the route, a survey flight, was made before 7 December.52 Soon after the United States entered the war, the Clipper fleet was increased and a regular service was established over the route: Miami-San Juan (Puerto Rico) -Port of Spain (Trinidad) - Belem-Natal-Fisherman’s Lake (Liberia) -Lagos (Nigeria), with occa- sional trips as far as Leopoldville (Belgian Congo) .53 Perhaps the most important link in the whole system of Pan Amer- ican ferrying and transport services was the operation across central Africa. In providing a transport service and in maintaining the bases, Pan American Airways-Africa supported the movement across the continent of aircraft arriving from both the United States and Great Britain. Terminal points were established by terms of the contract a t Bathurst on the west coast and a t Khartoum in eastern Africa, but after 7 December the service was extended to Cairo and beyond.54 Before operations could begin, Pan American was faced with the problem of assembling in the United States an administrative staff, employing some hundreds of technicians, recruiting and training the pilots, and transporting all of these, together with tons of material, a third of the way around the world to Africa. The headquarters was established a t the main base a t Accra on 8 October 1941. This step was followed by the gradual taking over of other bases on the route during October, November, and December as additional personnel 3 24
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.