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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.
“Churchill”21 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 himself and a small staff, called for a tremendous force of 1,500planes- the largest air show of the whole war. Of the I ,48 I actually engaged, only 609 were from American squadrons, the remainder being made up of aircraft from the RAF’s Independent Force, the whole of the French Air Division (strategic reserve), and Italian and Portuguese units. Preparations for so large a battle could not be hidden completely, but a certain degree of tactical surprise was achieved. Only about a third of the aircraft were attached to the ground forces. The rest, divided into two air brigades, struck alternately a t the right and left flanks of the salient and at communications and supplies at the rear. Local air superiority was maintained according to plan throughout the battle, and the air component contributed effectively to the American victory in spite of unfavorable eath her.^' Mitchell’s skill in marshaling and controlling so large and heterogeneous a force was surprising; in short, St.-Mihiel was as promising a debut for the Air Service as for the First Army. In the more extended Meuse-Argonne offensive of 2 6 September-I I November, Mitchell was unable to rally so large a force, being usually dependent upon American units only. The principle of concentration which had been so successful at St.-Mihiel continued, however, to guide his tactics. In the Meuse-Argonne it was the Americans who occupied the salient and the German air force which struck at the flanks, trying, in Mitchell’s words, to “make our infantry insist on splitting up our pursuit aviation so as to give local protection every- where.” Mitchell refused to “spread a thin veneer of airplanes all along the front through which they could break easily a t any point with a large group formation.” To intercept German “battle squad- rons” of attack planes, the Americans organized a special branch of their forces known as “low-flying pursuit.” Patrols of five planes each were assigned ten-kilometer fronts. Flying at two levels and using friendly antiaircraft fire to spot enemy intruders, the patrols proved successful in breaking up their attacks on ground troops. The rest of his offensive forces Mitchell concentrated along the axis of the American advance. Since the Germans had numerical superior- ity in the air and were flying in large formations, he used where pos- sible a force of two groups of pursuits and one group of day bombers. These struck at troop concentrations and communications and attacked airdromes behind the lines with the purpose of destroying the enemy’s installations and planes on the ground or forcing him to come up and ‘4
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