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The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

Air Force Historical Studies Office · 863 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 430 …The Dutch had also constructed modern air- fields on Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, and Amboina, and suitable…
  • p. 437 …The bombers returned that night to the Lhoknga emer- gency field in northern Sumatra, from which…
  • p. 438 …And so on the morning of 16 January, the day of Combs’ return from Sumatra, the…
  • p. 446 …The invasion of Sumatra began on 14 Feb- ruary with a paratroop drop at Palembang, where…
  • p. 452 …Possessed now of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Celebes, Amboina, and Bali, the Japanese by the…
  • p. 783 …This shows that British forces were concentrated in Burma, Malaya, Sumatra, and Borneo. The Aus- tralians…
A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G
subject of frequent representations by that organization and the Army
Air Forces. In response to these representations, the War Department
published a directive on 6 June 1942 which attempted to bring some
order into the relations between the Ferrying Command and the
theaters. The Ferrying Command was declared to be “a War Depart-
ment service agency” under the direct control of the Commanding
General, Army Air Forces, who served as agent of the War Depart-
ment. Theater commanders were enjoined to limit interference with
Ferrying Command operations or appropriation of its facilities to
occasions of specific emergency.2o2
This letter, as General George soon pointed out, was entirely toh
weak. The same difficulties continued to be encountered by the Air
Transport Command. It was not easy to convey to theater com-
manders an entirely new concept of control, one which ran contrary
to the traditional understanding of theater prerogatives. Upon the
request of General George, a stronger statement was published in
September 1942, but not until February of the following year would
a War Department directive be issued that was sufficiently forceful
and c o m p r e h e n ~ i v e . ~ ~ ~By the summer of 1942 it was already becoming
clear that, so far as long-range air transport services were concerned,
the world was a single theater of operations.
365

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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.