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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
shift to the Pacific route of heavy bomber ferrying to the Southwest
Pacific area, the Ferrying Command control office a t A4acDill Field
was discontinued. Meanwhile, in January the command had been as-
signed jurisdiction over Morrison Field near West Palm Beach,
Florida, for future use as the aerial port of embarkation for ferried
aircraft departing over the southeastern route, A subheadquarters of
the command, known as the South Atlantic Sector, was established a t
the field and an experienced Ferrying Command officer, Col. Paul E.
Burrows, was appointed commanding officer of both the sector and
the air base. In order to concentrate a11 ferrying activities at the one
base, the 3 I 3th Materiel Squadron and certain key officers were trans-
ferred from Miami, where a small control office had existed since
November 1941. Thereafter, A4iami served principally as the base for
air cargo operations of the contract carriers. At Morrison Field the
3 I 3th Squadron performed 1st and zd echelon maintenance, while
heavy maintenance work of 3d and 4th echelon became the respon-
sibility of the subdepot established at the field by the Air Service Com-
mand in late February. Aircraft maintenance was the most important
aspect of the staging job a t this time, for the success of a flight de-
pended largely on the mechanical condition of the airplane on take-off.
And it would be some time before maintenance facilities at bases
along the foreign routes compared favorably with those at ports of
embarkation within the United States.97
When lend-lease shipments were temporarily suspended immedi-
ately following Pearl Harbor, doubt existed in the minds of some as
to whether the United States, concerned primarily with its own re-
quirements, would continue to give logistical support to those nations
that had now become allies. Would the needs of American armed
forces preclude the further shipment of aircraft and other supplies to
Britain, Russia, China, and the smaller nations at war with the Axis?
An answer to this question was given by the President on 1 2 De-
cember in a report to Congress on lend-lease, in which he laid down
the principle that “we must use the weapons from the arsenal of the
democracies where they can be employed most effectively.” 98 This
decision, to distribute arms in accordance with strategic needs, had
formed the basis for the diversion of heavy bombers originally con-
signed to the British in the Middle East to American forces in the
Southwest Pacific; it also assured continued support in the form of
twin-engine bombers, fighters, and transport aircraft to British im-
3 3 7

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