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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 I R S E R V I C E I N W O R L D W A R I flared up, and friction occurred with air officers who had been in France for some time. There was as well mutual antipathy between air and ground officers. The Air Service was loath to take advice from men who resolutely refused to enter a plane; ground officers accused the aviators of being temperamental, lacking in the “garden variety of home-made discipline,” of substituting a “hodgepodge of independent personalities for an ordered administration.” 2 5 Pershing spoke of Foulois’ staff as comprising a “lot of good men running around in circles.” 2 6 At any rate, they proved incapable of building an effective organization; their failure, aggravated by production delays at home and tardiness in French deliveries, threatened to wreck all projected aviation schedules. It was I April 1918 before the first combat squad- ron was assigned to the front. By the time the 1st Division got its baptism of fire a t Cantigny on 28 May, Pershing could write in his diary, “Our aviation doing well a t the front.” Only six squadrons had then been sent forward; by promises of the previous spring, achieve- ment of the 4,500-plane objective should have been in sight.27 Pershing, at the instigation of some of the air officers, instituted a thorough reorganization which followed immediately that in the United States. O n 29 May he appointed as Chief of Air Service Brig. Gen. Mason M. Patrick, an engineer who had nzver been in an air- plane. Other officers were transferred, lines of authority were made more precise, and the whole administrative structure of the Air Serv- ice was revamped.zs A more modest objective of 2 0 2 combat squad- rons was substituted for the AEF Aviation Project of 386.’’ The reorganization proved salutary, and with renewed efforts at home the Air Service was able to accelerate the rate of deployment of combat units. By Armistice Day forty-five squadrons had been assigned to the front.” But with delays at home and in the AEF’s Zone of the Interior, the combat echelon could hardly assume the decisive role so confidently predicted in the spring of 1917. Even a t the war’s end the American air force was dwarfed by that of the Germans, the British, and the French. Air Service units were in combat just seven months; during that time the weekly average of squadrons assigned to the front was about nineteen. The official Air Service record carried a score of 781 enemy planes shot down for a loss of 289.31 If the scale of combat activities was limited, the ratio of victories was remarkable for a fledgling air force. When war was declared, the Aviation Section was I 1
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