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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 Wash”17 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 the Army and the Navy (the latter organized its own Naval Air Transport Service on I Z December 1941) was for land planes or fly- ing boats capable of long-range operations with sizable payloads. Although some 406 multi-engine transports were operated within or beyond the continental limits of the United States by American com- mercial airlines before Pearl Harbor,15zall but a handful of these were two-engine planes, incapable of carrying a payload over such long overwater jumps as that from Brazil to Africa, from California to Hawaii, or from Newfoundland to Britain. When the United States entered the war the only types of four-engine transport planes in being and ready for use were the Boeing Clipper and the Martin M-I 3 0 flying boats, the Boeing Stratoliner land plane, and the modi- fied B-24 Liberator. Only twelve Clippers were in existence, of which three had already been sold to Britain and one to the War Depart- ment, while eight were still owned by Pan American Airways. Pan American also owned the two existing Martin flying boats, while Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., held title to the Stratoliners, of which there were only The Ferrying Command was oper- ating eleven B-24’s on the eve of Pearl Harbor.154This list completes the inventory of four-engine equipment ready for use; and it had to be divided between the Army and Navy. On the first Sunday following Pearl Harbor, the Assistant Secre- tary of War for Air called into conference a special aviation com- mittee to consider the air transportation requirements of the Army, Navy, and the commercial airlines and to arrive at a fair and just allocation of available equipment. Representatives were present from the Ferrying Command, the Navy, Civil Aeronautics Administration, Civil Aeronautics Board, Pan American Airways, Transcontinental & Western Air, and other interested government and private agencies. At the meeting, an informal agreement was reached between the War and Navy departments whereby five of the eight Clippers which Pan American had already agreed to sell to the War Department and the two Martin flying boats would be turned over to the Navy. Later, when other long-range aircraft could be substituted for them, the other three Clippers, plus the one that the War Department had purchased in August 1941, were likewise to be transferred to the In the way of four-engine equipment the War Department was left, then, with four of the Boeing Clippers, the five Stratoliners which were purchased from T W A by terms of a contract of 24 3 5 2
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