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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.
“Natal”13 pages
T H E B A T T L E L I N E I N T H E P A C I F I C shipment to the Fijis were 1,660 Army service troops, naval forces totaling 1,800 (1,500 for an air base detail, including personnel for one aircraft carrier group and for twenty-five PBY's, and 300 for local defense of ships and installations), and the flying echelon of the 70th Bombardment Squadron (M), which was expected to arrive in July.24Already the ground echelon of the squadron had sailed from Brisbane on 17 May.z5 With the gradual establishment of strong American forces in New Caledonia, in the adjacent New Hebrides, which once had been con- sidered as an alternate to New Caledonia, and in the Fiji Islands, the prospects of holding the lines of communication between Australia and the United States-and consequently the outlook for the forces in Australia-became much brighter. In order to make the Allied position even more secure, a joint Army-Navy plan was instituted for re- inforcing Tongatabu, 500 miles southwest of Samoa and the southern- most island of the Tonga group. So long as the line New Caledonia- Fiji-Samoa was maintained, it was improbable that Tongatabu would be attacked by a major enemy force; but the base could be of extreme strategic importance as an alternate staging point between the United States and the Southwest Pacific Area, and as an outpost to prevent enemy attacks upon the Fijis and Samoa from the south.*' It was therefore planned that Army troops totaling 292 officers, 6,189 enlisted men, and 52 nurses, and naval forces totaling 83 officers and 1,689 enlisted men who would be withdrawn upon completion of the air base, would sail from the United States about 6 April, while air force units totaling 58 officers and 606 enlisted men were to be taken from the American forces in Australia and dispatched in order to arrive at Tongatabu by 1 5 May. In conformance with this plan, the 68th Pursuit Squadron sailed from Brisbane on 8 May, disembarking at Tongatabu on the 17th; seventeen days later, the last of the squad- ron's twenty-five P-40Es had been assembled and test-flown." T h e Qziestion of lsland Defense As the ground, naval, and air forces moved to their stations along the island chain, it was apparent that there was no clear agreement in Washington as to the ultimate strength necessary to hold these bases. This confusion over the statistics of defense arose from a larger disagreement over the relative importance of war in the Pacific with respect to the global war. Even prior to the Japanese attack which 435
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