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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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 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 bat were cherished for transport purposes. For inter-island air trans- port, principal reliance was placed on two Navy PBY’s and a motley collection of craft-“a Duck, a Bellanca, and a Fairchild,” two Beech- craft, a Waco, and two decrepit P-35’s-which had been dubbed the “Bamboo Fleet.” But one by one these transports, like the combat planes, were lost to enemy action, to accident, or simply to wear and tear and the necessity of using for purposes of evacuation any plane that could fly to Australia. The Wac0 was shot down with loss of all its passengers near Del Monte; the Duck was forced down and destroyed by the enemy, as also were both of the P-35’s; by the time of Bataan’s fall in April, only the Bellanca was left. Flown by Maj. William R. Bradford, it made its last flight from Mindanao with a cargo of quinine for relief of the garrison on Corregidor, where it crashed in attempting a take-off for yet another mission of relief.’ If the Americans on Bataan and Corregidor symbolized a will to resist the Japanese aggression at all cost, those on Mindanao repre- sented a lingering hope that reinforcements could be gotten through. Early in January, General MacArthur, who clung to the belief that even with defeat on Luzon it might be possible to build up strong forces in Mindanao preparatory to a reconquest of all the Philippines, had directed that airfields be constructed with all haste throughout the Philippine Islands. Available air base personnel were sent out to enlist the aid of local leaders and to provide supervision for construc- tion undertaken. As a result, by I March the Americans had a t least seven all-weather-type fields capable of receiving any kind of aircraft on Mindanao, four on Negros, three on Cebu, and one each on Panay and Bohol. In addition, there were nine fields on Mindanao, two on Negros, and one each on Panay and Leyte suitable for use by pursuit aircraft, not to mention others recommended for use only in dry weather or for an emergency landing.8 The most extensive effort, as the above-given figures indicate, had been made on Mindanao, where Maj. Ray T. Elsmore subsequently reported a total of forty-two fields that had been completed between the opening of hostilities and I April 1942. Del Monte itself had been expanded into a complex incor- porating eight outlying fields, one of which had its operations control in a tunnel driven sixty-five feet into a neighboring mountain side. Another of the Del Monte satellites provided a 3,000-foot runway leading into a tunnel capacious enough to receive and park five P-40’s at a time, Other bases on the island offered facilities for distribution 406
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