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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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 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 centrated in and around S~erabaja.~'As for the interception of enemy planes, preparations again had fallen short. The Dutch pursuits were obsolete, and half of them were destroyed or put out of action by the close of another day. Only a handful of the American P-40's had reached Java from Australia, the first having come in on 24 January. Based at Blimbing below Djombang, the American pilots received a warning twenty to twenty-five minutes in advance of the enemy's approach to Soerabaja, but by the time their P-40'S had taken off and climbed to 21,000 feet the damage had been done. Although two Japanese planes were shot down a t the cost of one American plane, the enemy had come, done his work, and departed with little injury to himself.51 The Problem of Pursuit Reinforcement Plans for the organization and deployment of American pursuit forces in the Netherlands East Indies had engaged much of the time and attention of U.S. officers at Brisbane and of headquarters in Wash- ington throughout January. Australian and Dutch forces were weak; British units were committed in the western part of the ABDA area. There were problems of reconciling the urgent claims of NEI oper- ations with the no less urgent concern of Australian authorities for the immediate defense of their own territorie~.~~As the crucial battle for Java opened, the hope was to deploy a total of nine squadrons in the ABDA area in addition to providing three other squadrons which would operate under Australian control for a strengthening of the defenses of northeastern Australia and of Port Moresby in New Guinea." Allied plans had contemplated deployment of pursuit units at Koe- pang, Amboina, Kendari, Samarinda, Soerabaja, and Batavia, but those were days when sraffs frequently completed a plan only to find that the latest report of enemy action had already outdated it. They were days, too, of only the earliest beginnings of the American effort in Australia, where no well-established base was ready and organized for the purpose of pushing through reinforcements for the battle line but, instead, hastily assembled staffs and forces improvised an organi- zation as they went. The emphasis in Washington naturally had been placed on speed in getting out to the Southwest Pacific all assistance that could be provided, and the need for speed often led to confusion. Inventories and manifests for shipments made were a t times imper- 384
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