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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.
“Cairo”26 pages
A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G Life Line to the Middle and Far East Ferried aircraft departing from southern Florida bases for flight over the southeastern route stopped first either a t Borinquen Field, Puerto Rico, or a t one of the bases on the island of Trinidad. Piarco Field on Trinidad, a Pan American base, was used for some months after Pearl Harbor or until Waller Field, a purely military installa- tion, was opened for traffic in February 1942. The Waller Field site had been secured from the British in the destroyer-base lease agree- ment, as was the site for Atkinson Field in British Guiana, the next major staging base to the south. From Waller Field or Atkinson Field aircraft were usually ferried to the base at Belem in northern Brazil and thence to Natal on the Brazilian bulge, although some use was made of alternate landing fields along the way. The two bases a t Belem and Natal, built with airport development program funds by the Pan American organization, were opened for traffic shortly after Pearl Harbor. Prior to the opening of the base on Ascension Island in July 1942, nearly all two-engine aircraft taking off from Natal for flight over the South Atlantic landed at either Hastings Field in Sierra Leone or Roberts Field in Liberia, each a t a distance of approximately 1,900 statute miles from Natal. Four-engine aircraft were able to fly direct to Accra, but many stopped first at Hastings or Roberts fields for refueling. From Accra aircraft moved in easy stages across the central African route to Khartoum, and here the route divided. India- bound planes were sent either across southern Arabia by way of Aden to Karachi or up through Cairo, Habbaniya, and Basra to the Karachi gateway. Lend-lease planes for Russia were flown through Cairo to Basra or to Tehran, where they were turned over to Soviet flyers. Aircraft bound for China crossed central India to Dinjan in Assam and were flown over the Himalayas to K ~ n m i n g . ~ ~ A month or more before the United States entered the war and in anticipation of an increasing flow of lend-lease aircraft to the Middle East, the Ferrying Command had taken steps to place its own control officers a t key bases on the southeastern route as far as Cairo. None of these had reached his post prior to 7 December, but with the com- ing of the war and the selection of the route for the ferrying of heavy bombers to the Far East, the procurement and assignment of these officers, as well as weather and communications officers and enlisted specialists, was speeded up. The control officers became responsible 3 2 9
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