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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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 pages
A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G Brereton during the summer and fall, first as the United States Middle East Air Force and later as the Ninth Air Force, reached their battle stations in large part by use of the South Atlantic and trans-African ferry routes. T h e Middle East had been recognized originally as an area primarily of British responsibility, and the British indeed con- tinued to carry the main burden there. But meanwhile the region had acquired such extraordinary strategic importance with reference to life lines upon which our own forces depended, not to mention plans for assistance to other hard pressed allies, that there was no choice but to send such help as could be provided to the British during the crucial contest with Rommel in the latter half of 1942. That help would be limited chiefly to assistance in the air, and it was made possible by the progress already achieved in the development of strategic air services by the southeastern route. American air combat in the Middle East began in June 1942 with the arrival in that theater of the so-called Halverson Detachment under Col. Harry A. Halverson. HALPRO, as it was known in code, was a carefully chosen task force of twenty-three B-qD's and picked crews originally intended for service from Chinese bases in bombing operations against Japan." When the detachment reached the Middle East it was held, temporarily it was believed at the time, for the pur- pose of carrying out a single mission against the Ploesti oil fields of Rumania on I Z June; but following Rommel's success in breaking through the British defenses at Cyrenaica, aircraft and crews were assigned permanently to General Brereton's newly created Middle East Air Force and were absorbed eventually by the Ninth Air Force. In helping to prepare HALPRO for overseas movement by air and in controlling the flight along the way, the Ferrying Command gave clear indication of having learned much about its job in the months that had passed since Project X moved over the southeastern route to the Far East. T h e HALPRO ferrying operation was handled smoothly and efficiently, without a single accident or loss and with very few delays of individual aircraft en route. Sufficient time was taken at the assembly point at Fort Myers, Florida, to train the crews and to put the aircraft in first-class mechanical shape. About two weeks before the detachment was ready to leave Fort Myers, Ferry- ing Command representatives from Morrison Field met with Colonel Halverson and his staff to work out in advance details for the staging + See below, p. 493. 34'
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