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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.
“King”32 pages
A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G arrived to staff them. On 2 1 October, a DC-3 took off on the first scheduled flight from Accra to Khartoum; and by the end of that month, seven aircraft and thirty pilots were maintaining regular scheduled operation^.^^ Plans formulated during the summer of 1941 for the opening of the South Atlantic route to the Middle East went no further than the establishment of the contract services. But in the fall of that year a significant development of policy brought about the inauguration of a military ferrying service and a military transport service, for which in both instances the Ferrying Command assumed responsibility. As the Germans in 1941turned from the west to the east, going to the assistance of the Italians in Africa, driving victoriously through the Balkans into Greece and Crete, and hurling the main weight of their military might against the Russians during the summer, support of the British position in the Middle East had come to be a main concern of those charged with administration of America’s lend-lease policy. Not only was it there that the British were now hardest pressed, but the extension of lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union following the German attack in June had given new significance to the defense of all that general area which controlled approaches to a line of supply leading up from the Persian Gulf through Iran to Russia. A North African military mission under Brig. Gen. Russell H. Maxwell had been established at Cairo on I 3 September 1941, with responsibilities similar to those of the special observers in London; * and, as plans were laid for an increasing flow of American air materiel to the Middle East, attention was directed to ways and means by which assistance could be rendered in meeting special problems of mainte- nance and supply for U.S.-built A military air transport service over the South Atlantic, linking Washington with Cairo, was opened on 14 November 1941.As early as July of that year, when the North Atlantic shuttle service started, the Ferrying Command had begun looking ahead for an alternate route to which operations could be shifted with the approach of winter. At that time, no serious consideration was given to opening a service to Cairo. The immediate need was to find a more southerly, all-weather route into the British Isles in order to maintain the air connection with London and, even more important, to enable the British to continue during the winter the uninterrupted movement of * See above, p. 109, and below, pp. 577-79. 325
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