Documents / Document
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.
“Williams Air Force Base”12 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 from the several official sources are difficult to reconcile, but a fair estimate might include about 7,800 trainers and 3,500 service planes, largely DHq’s, built in U.S. factories by 11 November 1918, and 5,000 planes bought abroad.20At that date 499 DH-4’s were assigned to squadrons a t the front. Of 2 , 9 2 5 planes reaching the AEF’s Zone of Advance during the war, only 696 were of American make. Perhaps about 30,000 service and training engines were produced. The rate of production was rapidly accelerating a t the end of the war, standing then a t 260 DH-4’s per week, or about 13,500 per year.’l Six months more of war might have seen an Army air force such as had been promised in June 1917; but actually the “regiments and brigades of winged cavalry mounted on gas driven flying horses” never arrived to “sweep the Germans from the sky.” Air Service, AEF The activities of the Air Service in the AEF were inevitably affected by the poor showing made at home. When General Pershing arrived in France in June 1917 he had only the most rudimentary elements of an air staff. Nevertheless, an ambitious AEF Aviation Project was formulated and dispatched homeward in a cable of 11 July. As amended on 18 September, this plan called for the deployment in France by 3 0 June 1919 of 260 tactical, 36 training, and 90 replace- ment squadrons. With auxiliary services it would require about I 2 5,000 men.22Preparations were initiated to care for this large force. Pershing as early as June 1917 had removed aviation from control of the Signal Corps, setting it up as the Air Service, AEF, with a chief and with separate divisions for the Zone of Advance and the Zone of the In- terior. He arranged for the purchase from the French government of some 5,000 aircraft, largely pursuits, and for the establishment of air- fields, depots, and training schools.2s The administration of the ambitious project was far from perfect. Liaison with the Aviation Section in the States was poor, and air commissions sent to Europe sometimes acted without co-ordinating with the AEF. In November, Brig. Gen. Benjamin D. Foulois, an aviator who had been prominent in instigating the $640,000,000 pro- gram at home, arrived to become Pershing’s Chief of Air Service. Foulois brought a large staff which included more recently commis- sioned civilians than Regular Army 0ffice1-s.~~Individual ability hardly compensated for lack of experience in staff work. Internal jealousies I 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.