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

Air Force Historical Studies Office · 863 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 43 …cavalry mounted on gas driven flying horses” never arrived to “sweep the Germans from the sky…
  • p. 46 …Mitchell never received an American air force commensurate with the ambitious idens of air power which…
  • p. 49 …This project, like so many others, had lagged, and the Air Service was never equipped during…
  • p. 50 …the Army or the Air Corps?” but never, “Are you in the Army or the Corps…
  • p. 55 …any Air Service officers, and I have never heard anybody yet-any Air Service officer-against…
  • p. 69 …But one axiom, with its corollaries, never varied. T o him the airplane was first and…
  • p. 75 …Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be completely stopped, but their effects could best…
  • p. 94 …rate for the time being, the decision never- theless left an open question as to how…
  • p. 121 …large-scale warfare; production of combat types never exceeded 300 aircraft a month. The pattern of…
  • p. 122 …the German Air Force, the Regia Aeronautica never exhibited sufficient power to be decisive in the…
  • p. 133 …Except for a few raids against French factories, the force had never been employed in a…
  • p. 140 …into a complete war economy production was never equal to the demands of our own forces…
  • p. 150 …Long-term needs of the Air Corps and the sudden availability of funds in quantities never…
  • p. 181 …Actually, the Air Staff had never approved of the method followed in RAINBOW No. 5 . l…
  • p. 217 …Members of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had never flown heavy bombers, began to receive intensive…
  • p. 219 …were not then satisfactory for permanent garrisons. Never- theless, the commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lt…
  • p. 227 …T h e planes never reached their destination. Other bombardment units were being prepared for transfer…
  • p. 241 …responsible officers, a few crucial points have never been satisfactorily explained. T h e general pattern…
  • p. 277 …motors, sole- noids, and gun mounts-were never found. After many hours of fruit- less search…
  • p. 288 …planners and from which AAF Headquarters was never to deviate. The translation of the accepted grand…
  • p. 303 …the principal features of the plan were never challenged, it was subsequently revised in a draft…
  • p. 309 …W a r Plans Division was never incorporated into GHQ and remained a potential rival to…
  • p. 336 …the shooting and wrote that they were never able to make out an airplane.g6It is…
  • p. 412 …As it happened, the B-24's never returned to India, but, instead, remained in the…
  • p. 457 …Meanwhile the Edsall with the remaining pilots had headed for Java, never to be heard from…
  • p. 492 …Squadron was assigned, but which it would never reach, going from Australia to Tongatabu; ( 3 ) Christmas…
  • p. 500 …deck of a carrier presented a problem never before challenged by Army planes. Hence an accelerated…
  • p. 502 …the bows and wetting the flight deck. Never before had this been accomplished, yet now it…
  • p. 509 …Island, in the Louisiade Archipelago.” They were never needed, for on 7-8 May the two…
  • p. 513 …exist, it was at a point which never reached the aircrews, for on the operational level…
  • p. 524 …handicaps under which AAF planes had operated. Never were more than fourteen B- I 7’s…
  • p. 527 …AAF planners clung firmly to their belief that proper observance of economy of force would never…
  • p. 531 …Crews which had previously never loaded torpedoes now for the first time fitted these weapons into…
  • p. 544 …But the Japanese never at any time based their bombers in appreciable numbers a t either…
  • p. 548 …26's in torpedo-dropping, but they never would be put into All told, the record…
  • p. 556 …until it had been thoroughly trained and never to com- mit it piecemeal. General Magruder had…
  • p. 560 …pressed into service against the Germans," and never reached the CBI." Colonel Haynes had reached India…
  • p. 606 …reason that the Antilles Air Task Force never evolved, as did I Bomber Command, into an…
  • p. 614 …that reason deserving a high priority, could never dispose of the U-boat menace but must…
  • p. 635 …In Washington the Munitions Assign- ments Board t had never considered this schedule as more than…
  • p. 670 …they bombed from 39,200 feet, and never below 30,000. By AAF standards they had…
  • p. 672 …Goering had never put enough bombers over England, nor had he concentrated his forces on the…
  • p. 690 …of co-operation and combined action probably never before equaled by the military forces of two…
  • p. 729 …shoot at aerial targets, and several had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency…
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
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