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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 Invaders”15 pages
L O S S O F N E T H E R L A N D S E A S T I N D I E S enemy planes appeared overhead, and in the middle of the afternoon the Pecos also went down. Meanwhile the Edsall with the remaining pilots had headed for Java, never to be heard from again.Io6 T h e evacuation of Java was already in full swing. Since 2 5 Febru- ary all aircraft which possessed the necessary range had been pressed into service for the evacuation of military personnel not required for the operation of remaining aircraft. At Broome, on the northwestern coast of Australia, an evacuation center was hastily organized under the direction of Col. E. S. Perrin.lo7One by one the air bases in Java were abandoned for demolition by Dutch authorities until on the evening of I March Jogjakarta alone remained in Allied hands. T o it had come the surviving personnel of the 17th Pursuit to be flown out that night to Broome. O n the following night, 260 officers and men still awaited evacuation and only five B-17’s and three LB-30’s were available, but each LB-30 took off with thirty-five passengers and each B-17 carried out thirty-one. As the last plane took off just before midnight, the Japanese were only eighteen miles away, and Dutch troops stood ready to explode their demolition charges.*” T h e eight American bombers reached Broome early in the morning of 3 A4arch. Broome had been a major port of entry for evacuees from Java; and transport pilots were straining their endurance in an attempt to ferry one load of refugees after another down the coast of western Australia to Perth. In anticipation of an enemy attack (a Japanese reconnaissance plane had been sighted during the night), all aircraft had been warned to leave before 1000that morning. At just that hour a crowded B-24 transport cleared the field. When it had climbed to only three or four hundred feet, approximately a dozen Japanese fighters swept in over the harbor. Their fire punctured the gas tanks of the helpless B-24, which crashed into the sea, broke in two, and all of its passengers except one enlisted man were drowned. Waiting for take-off in the harbor were several Dutch flying boats already loaded with evacuees, mostly Dutch women and children. Other ships on the airfield stood ready for take-off or were the objects of hurried preparations by their crews. T h e personnel on the field who reached the cover of near-by scrub bush watched every plane on the field explode or burn to the ground, and from the harbor came sounds of the destruction wrought among the helpless seaplanes. T h e enemy had destroyed twelve flying boats, two B - I ~ ’ s ,two B-24’~,and two 3 99
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