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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.
“Churchill”21 pages
A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G sidered in another connection." Here it will be sufficient merely to note its relation to the development within the AAF of a centralized control of ferrying and transport operations. By action of the Eighth Air Force which was confirmed by the AAF in a directive of 17 May, Brig. Gen. Frank O'D. Hunter of the VIII Fighter Command was given full operational control of the air movement of all units.'42 T o this action the Ferrying Command raised serious objections. Brig. Gen. Harold L. George insisted that unified control of all operational facilities and air movements over the route should be vested in the Ferrying Command in order to avoid the dangers of divided authority and to take advantage of the wider experience of its personnel. H e recommended specifically that the North Atlantic Sector at Presque Isle be expanded into 3 wing of the Ferrying Command with di-ect control of operations over the route, that Col. Benjamin F. Giles, an Air Corps officer then commanding the Greenland Base Command, be appointed wing commander, and that the regional weather and communications officers be made directly responsible to the wing.143 All of these recommendations were approved by the AAF except for a decision to avoid 3 last-minute change in the command of the Eighth's initial movement. During its first phase, General Hunter re- tained operational control of the aircraft, with control officers repre- senting both the VIII Fighter Command and the Ferrying Command being stationed along the But Colonel Giles assumed com- mand of the new North Atlantic Wing on 8 June, the regional weather and communications officers were assigned to his staff, and by late July the Air Transport Command, successor to the Ferrying Com- mand, had taken over an undivided operational control of the 9 The Air Transport Command Air transport services conducted by the Ferrying Command before Pearl Harbor, first to Britain and later to Cairo, had been little more than courier services and were entirely secondary to the major job for which the command was created-that of ferrying British aircraft from American factories to Canada or to ports of embarkation within the United States. T h e prewar Pan American transport services to and across Africa were also small-scale operations and, as pointed out earlier, were regarded principally as a means of supporting the more * See below, Chap. 17. 349
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