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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.
“The Wash”17 pages
A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G Australia. Another Indian Ocean route was proposed that would have connected Mombasa with Ceylon or Bangalore, India, by way of Coetivy Island, the Chagos Archipelago, and the Maldive Island~.~' A survey of the route across Africa was made by a board headed by Lt. Col. Neil B. Harding." Early in March, Maj. Harold B. Willis of the Air Corps and Lt. Col. Herman B. Pohl of the Corps of En- gineers began a joint survey of the Indian Ocean route, making use of a Pan American Clipper for the purpose. Before the Clipper had left the east African base at Mombasa, however, word was received from General Brett in Australia that Japanese operations in the area of the COCOSIslands made the route to Australia no longer practicable. Willis and Pohl were given orders to proceed no farther than the Chagos Islands.78There still seemed a possibility that an alternate air supply line to India might be found, but fortunately the preferable Middle East land route was held and continued in use throughout the war. Nor was it found necessary, as had been considered, to divert all waterborne fighter aircraft to Port Elizabeth in the Union of South Africa for ferrying up the old Cape-to-Cairo airway. Although more exposed to attack, Takoradi and Accra in the Gold Coast Colony continued to be the assembly points for fighter and lighter types of aircraft shipped to Africa by Until February 1942, when the Japanese captured Singapore and overran the East Indies, the southeastern route served as the principal line of air communications between the United States and the South- west Pacific area. This was, indeed, its most immediate importance. In the first days of the war the Japanese had cut the central Pacific route from Hawaii through Midway and Wake to New Guinea and Australia-the route over which the Far East Air Force had received its thirty-five heavy bombers in the fall of 1941.Considerable progress had been made by 7 December in the construction of bases for an alternate, more southerly route from Hawaii to Australia through Canton Island, the Fijis, and New Caledonia.80But this route was not ready when orders were issued shortly after Pearl Harbor to rush eighty heavy bombers and crews as soon as they became available to the Far East for the relief of the Philippines." The only other route that could possibly be used was that by way of the South Atlantic and across Africa and southern Asia." Even though it had the marked disadvantage of stretching approximately two-thirds of the distance See above, pp. 179-81, 192-93, 223. 3 3 1
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