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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 Natal toward the end of June, at which time the operation came under the control of the newly created Air Transport Command.la5 With the build-up of the two-engine services to Natal, it became possible to concentrate the four-engine transports on the Atlantic crossing where full advantage could be taken of their capacity for carrying heavy payloads on long-range flights. By June the Pan American Clippers were flying only the transoceanic leg of the route except for necessary trips back to New York for inspection and overhaul. In the same month five new B-qD's, flown by military crews of the Ferrying Command, were placed on the South Atlantic crossing. During the spring and early summer of 1942, heavy backlogs of cargo and pas- sengers had piled up at both Miami and Natal, reaching almost un- manageable proportions; but the increased number of planes in use by June and the more frequent schedules made it possible to reduce the backlogs gradually and to assure thereafter a more even flow of traffic to Africa, India, and China.166 Throughout the first half of 1942, and, indeed, until considerably later, the South Atlantic remained by far the most important of the overseas air transport routes, just as it supported the heaviest ferried traffic during the same period. Other routes, however, were being opened, and some eventually carried a heavier flow of air traffic than the route to Africa and southern Asia. In the North Atlantic, as we have seen, new contract services were inaugurated during the winter and spring of 1942 in order, first, to speed the completion of air bases in preparation for the movement of the Eighth Air Force, and, when this was accomplished, to support the movement itself and to estab- lish regularly scheduled services into Great Britain. Under terms of a contract of 3 I January I 942, Northeast Airlines, equipped originally with two C-53's, opened a transport service to Goose Bay in mid- February and to Greenland in the early spring. Northeast sent its first flight into Iceland in May, and in July, with more planes available, extended its operations to Prestwick, Scotland.'" American Airlines entered into a contract with the government, approved on 4 April 1942, to provide a transport service between New York and Rey- kjavik, Iceland. Originally undertaken for the Air Service Command, the operation passed to the control of the Air Transport Command early in July.168O n 13 April, Transcontinental & Western Air dis- patched its first Stratoliner flight over the North Atlantic to the United Kingdom, thus reopening a through service that had been 3 56
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