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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 Invaders”15 pages
T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1 perial forces in Africa and India, as well as to the Russians and Chinese. The United States undertook not only to deliver these aircraft to such transfer points as were agreed upon but also to provide stocks of spare parts, certain forms of maintenance work, and such transition training as was required to familiarize Allied pilots with the operation of the planes. Until late 1942, when all ferrying operations over the southeastern route were militarized, the great majority of lend-lease aircraft that were delivered overseas by air were flown to their destinations by civilian crews of Pan American Air Ferries. Although the Pan Ameri- can Air Ferries contract had been drawn up in August I 941, deliveries did not exceed ten a month until February of the following year. The intervening time, however, had not been wasted. Throughout the fall and winter the organization had been busy recruiting and training flight and ground personnel in preparation for a greatly enlarged operation as soon as the aircraft began coming from the factories in quantity. As in the case of pre-Pearl Harbor deliveries, most of the aircraft ferried out by Pan American crews during the winter of 1941-42 were two-engine transports destined for the British or for Pan American Airways-Africa. An unusual assignment had been undertaken in December and January when four PBY flying boats, carrying loads of .50-cal. machine-gun ammunition, were ferried by way of the South Atlantic to the Dutch in the Far Deliveries began to pick up in March with the arrival a t the Florida staging point of the first numbers of a consignment of seventy-two lend-lease €3-z 5’s to the Russians.loOConsiderable work was required a t Morrison Field in putting these two-engine bombers in shape for overseas flight. They were then turned over to Pan American Air Ferries crews who flew them first to the Pan American base a t Miami for final flight checks and organization into flight echelons prior to take-off. For several months nearly all of the B-25’s were flown from Miami to Africa and thence to British airfields near Basra, Iraq, where they were carefully inspected, flight-tested, and prepared for transfer to Soviet representatives. In June, because of the crowded condition of the air bases on the Persian Gulf, the majority of the planes were routed through Habbaniya direct to Tehran and were there taken over by the Russian pilots.lol Between March and the end of 1942, a total of I O Z B-25’s were flight-delivered to the Russians over the southeastern route. Though most of these were ferried by civilian 3 38
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