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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.
“Independence Day”9 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 important contract ferrying operation to the Middle East. In 1941,in fact, the concept of air transport as one of the principal channels of supply for the military forces in the field had not been fully grasped. Probably no one then foresaw that a network of long-range transport routes, supporting the daily movement of hundreds of tons of supplies and thousands of passengers, would spread over the world and that daily flights to such remote areas as the Aleutians, Australia, the Philippines, India, and China would become commonplace. Indeed, a limited view of the role of long-range air transportation in the war persisted for some months after the United States became an active belligerent. Not until the late spring and summer of 1942, when large backlogs of supplies awaiting air shipment to the front began to build up a t ports of embarkation and when it became clear that almost un- limited demands would be made in the future for air cargo space for the rapid movement of urgently needed materials and personnel, did the idea of air transport as a major instrument of logistics begin to take shape. In the weeks immediately following Pearl Harbor, the major air transport job was that of establishing and maintaining air communica- tions with those combat areas in which the tactical situation was most critical. It was obvious from the first that maximum use would have to be made of the planes, men, and facilities of the civil airlines. T h e Ferrying Command was in no position to expand its own military transport services. The B-24 bombers modified for transport use were subject to requisition by the Air Force Combat Command, which necessarily enjoyed an overriding priority, or by the theater com- manders in the field. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, most of the Ferrying Command’s four-engine crews were transferred back to the combat units from which they had been borrowed. Of those remaining, some continued for a time to operate an emergency service to Africa and the Middle East, while others were absorbed into a project for training four-engine crews for ferrying replacement heavy bombers to the Far East.146The civil airlines, in addition to having the available flying personnel and physical equipment, had another equally valuable though less tangible asset. They had the wealth of practical knowledge in conducting scheduled air transport operations, the administrative competence, and the mastery of techniques that came from long ex- perience. For these there was no substitute; neither were there means by which they could have been created in a hurry if they had not 3 5 0
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 863 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.