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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.
“Churchill”21 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 water and land to Soerabaja, where thirteen of the original seventeen planes had arrived by 2 5 January. For five days thereafter the squadron remained a t Soerabaja, engaging in flights and other activities de- signed to acquaint the pilots with the peculiar problems of local air defense. T w o days before the Japanese opened the attack on Java the 17th had occupied its permanent base a t Blimbing. The field, some- times known as Ngoro, had two 4,000-foot runways surfaced with smooth sod. Taxiways, offering natural advantages for camouflage, were cut into the surrounding jungle.6o When the Japanese attacked Soerabaja on 3 February, no other American pursuit planes were nearer than Darwin. The second pro- visional pursuit squadron to be activated in Australia, the zoth, had received orders on 24 January to move with eighteen P-40’s to Port Moresby, a key point in defense of the approaches to northeastern Australia. This order undoubtedly reflected the concern of Allied officials over the Japanese occupation of Rabaul, which had been ef- fected the preceding day and which gave a new urgency to the prob- lem of providing for the security of sea and air routes joining Australia to the United States. Within another three days, however, the fall of Kendari had emphasized the immediate urgency of the need in Java, and in accordance with representations f r o d General Brett the orders were changed. The 20th would move up to Darwin and thence would proceed to Java.61 But it was 4 February before thirteen of its pilots, most of whom had reached Australia during January as personnel of the 35th Pursuit Group, lifted their P-40’s from a field at Darwin and under the escort of a B-24 headed for Timor. This leg of the flight, difficult enough for the short-range P-40 even under the best of con- ditions, on that day presented the additional hazard of tropical thunder- storms. The planes got through to Koepang, however, and on the following day twelve of them were able to proceed to Bali.6z Fearing a Japanese attack on the field there, Captain Lane ordered his planes into the air as soon as they had been refueled. When seven of them had taken off, approximately twenty enemy planes were spotted overhead; three other P-40’S then hastily took off; and all were immediately engaged by the enemy. Lt. Gene L. Bound destroyed an enemy plane, but his own was so badly shot up that he had to bail out. Lts. William L. Turner and C.L. Reagan were forced into crash land- ings, the former having previously shot down one of the enemy. Lt. Larry D. Landry was killed early in the flight, and Lt. Paul B. 386
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