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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
C H A P T E R 10 * * * * * * * * * * * LOSS OF THE NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES Y THE end of December 1941 the Japanese, in addition to striking the United States Navy a crippling blow at Pearl Har- B bor, had destroyed for all practical purposes the Far East AirForce, had driven the American Asiatic Fleet, together with the rem- nants of Patwing 10, from its Philippine base to the Netherlands East Indies, had accomplished the virtual isolation of General MacArthur’s troops on Bataan and Corregidor, and were well on the way to com- plete encirclement of the Philippines. Already they had landed in Borneo as a part of the encircling movement and as the initial encroachment on the fabulously wealthy Netherlands East Indies. Simultaneously, they had forced the capitulation of the British garrison a t Hong Kong and had penetrated Thailand, where, meeting only a token resistance, they promptly began to assemble the forces for drives into Burma and the Malay States that would end in the fall of Rangoon and Singapore. As much as the Americans would have liked to put the issue to a test in the Philippines, the battle now was for Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. Hope of barring the way to further advances in the skillfully directed and sensationally successful Japanese drive depended upon an effective co-ordination of effort by hastily assembled and ill-prepared American, British, Dutch, and Australian forces. Unhappily, prewar consultation among the interested staffs had not been advanced to a point comparable to that reached in the American-British conversa- tions regarding common problems in the Atlantic. Through the months immediately preceding Pearl Harbor, however, significant steps toward effective collaboration had been taken. Agreements had been reached for the use of Australian bases in the ferrying of heavy 366
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