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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 Wash”17 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 Hudsons, and had killed a t least forty-five Dutch civilians and twenty American airmen.'og So ended, in still another terrifying demonstration of the cost to those who allow control of the air to pass to their enemies, the air phase of the Java campaign. For the American airmen, it had been a bitter and frustrating ex- perience. T h e pursuit unit, which carried a major share of the respon- sibility for defense of the island, rarely had more than twenty P-40's in commission at a time. Of some I 2 0 pursuit aircraft forwarded from Australia during January and February, only thirty-six reached their destination. Against a numerically superior and skillful enemy, the pursuit pilots shot down Japanese planes in excess perhaps of their own total numbers-claims were made for thirty-eight kills-but the battle ended with the American unit having lost literally all of its planes. Creditable as was the effort, pilots not previously seasoned in the Philippines a t times showed their inexperience and a lack of ade- quate training.'" The initial trial of American heavy bombardment had proved disap- pointing, though it was difficult to argue that the test had been a fair one. The planes had been built for operation from fixed and well- equipped installations, and while emphasis had been laid on precision bombardment in the training of crews, standard practice called for pattern bombing by relatively large formations against targets of the sort most frequently bombed in the Netherlands East Indies. The bombers originally withdrawn from the Philippines had been rein- forced by a t least thirty-seven B-17's and twelve LB-~o's,but some of these came late and rarely had there been more than fifteen of the big planes in commission at a time. Targets had been plentiful, in fact too plentiful, and the bomber command had been forced repeatedly to divide its attention, not always in accordance with its own choice, between varied and scattered objectives. Unfavorable weather, mechanical failures attributable to inadequate maintenance, the sur- prising effectiveness of enemy air defenses, the ineffectiveness of Allied air defenses, and sheer weariness-all took their toll. During January and February the bomber command dispatched approxi- mately sixty heavy bomber missions, for a total of over 300 sorties, the great majority of them against shipping targets. Of the bombers participating, more than 40 per cent failed to reach their targets. Those getting through claimed the sinking of one destroyer, eight 400
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