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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.
“King”32 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 below on vulnerable bomb bay tanks.fi8Such lessons of experi- ence would prove of great value to the AAF in later days of the war, but there was little comfort for those who provided the experience. T h e weather continued bad, the fields were muddy, and mechanics worked for twenty-four hours at a time to keep the big planes in re- pair. From 9 February to the I 8th, not counting reconnaissance, ferry, or courier flights, the bombers attempted a total of sixteen missions involving seventy-two B-17 and fifteen LB-30 sorties. O n fifty-one of these sorties, the planes turned back, a few of them for mechanical reasons but most of them because of impenetrable weather. Of those which got through to the target areas, only a few could claim success. All too typical was the report of a flight of three bombers on 1 2 Feb- ruary that they “believed they hit a boat.” Perhaps the best day came on I 5 February, when five B- I 7’s claimed one hit on an auxiliary vessel and another on a cruiser. T h e following day claims also were made for hits on two transport^.^' T h e weather was bad for the Japanese, too, but the enemy had the advantage of numbers and somehow the weather seemed to break clear over his targets more frequently than over those selected by the Americans. Lacking any advantage of numbers or of fighter escort, the bombers usually made their runs at high altitude, as standard procedure directed. T h e inadequate air de- fenses of the fields in Java frequently made it necessary between missions and during daylight hours to put the bombers into the air to prevent their destruction on the ground, a necessity which added greatly to the mounting strain on all personnel. For low-level attack on the lucrative targets provided by the Japa- nese as they closed in on Java, the A-24’~of the 27th Bombardment Group (L) had started a movement up from Australia on 9 February when three of the dive bombers took off in company with a flight of the 3d Pursuit Squadron. As already recorded, only one of these three, that flown by Capt. Edward N. Backus who commanded the 91st Squadron, reached Java, but eleven others headed out over the Timor Sea from Darwin on I I February in what was destined to be the last ferry flight by short-range planes from Australia to Java. T h e flight, having lost one plane by crack-up at Waingapoe on Soemba, arrived late in the afternoon of 1 2 February at Modjokerto in Java where, approximately I O O miles west of Malang, a new airfield was under con- s t r u ~ t i o n . ~ ~On land formerly given over to rice fields, some 1,200 natives had laid a base of bamboo matting which then was covered 390
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