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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 as ill informed of the combat as of the materiel phase of aeronautics, and it was necessary to learn from the Allies all but the very rudiments of flying. By Armistice Day the basic lessons had been absorbed, and the Air Service, AEF, had shown some evidence of boldness of con- cept in the application of air power; here, as in production, there was great promise if only limited achievement. It is no reflection upon the bravery and skill of American pilots to suggest that both achievement and promise owed much to the genius of Brig. Gen. William Mitchell, who was in a very real sense the founder of American air power.32 Mitchell, after a varied career in the Signal Corps, had become interested in military aeronautics in its infancy and had followed its progress in the European war through such information as was avail- able in Washington. He had learned to fly in 1916and, as a major, had for a while been in charge of the Signal Corps’ tiny Aviation Section. Sent to Spain as a military observer in March 1917,he had moved up to Paris with the American declaration of war. With characteristic energy and disregard of military protocol, he had plunged immedi- ately into the task of learning a t first hand the true nature of the air war. Until Pershing’s arrival he was something of a free lance, and his inspections took him to various headquarters, to depots and airfields, to-and over-the front lines. Sentiments which were later to stud his public utterances began to appear in his diary: “The only real defense against aircraft is other aircraft.” “A very significant thing to me was that we could cross the lines of these contending armies in a few minutes in our airplane, whereas the armies have been locked in the struggle, immovable, powerless to advance for three years. , . .They get nowhere, as far as ending the war is concerned.” After experienc- ing a night raid by German planes, he had come to have a wholesome respect for the material and morale effects of bombardment: “NOone can ever tell me that there is nothing in airplane bombing. It will have a great effect on all the operations, if efficiently carried out.” “Several generations will have to be born and pass away before people can adopt and maintain the same attitude toward this form of warfare as they exhibit toward the old familiar ones.” ’’ In May, Mitchell visited Maj. Gen. Hugh M. Trenchard, then com- mander of the Royal Flying Corps, and was profoundly impressed by his advanced ideas of air power. Mitchell quoted approvingly Tren- chard’s dictum that “an airplane is an offensive and not a defensive weapon” and the views the latter expressed on behind-the-line bom- I 2
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