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The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

Air Force Historical Studies Office · 863 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 43 …cavalry mounted on gas driven flying horses” never arrived to “sweep the Germans from the sky…
  • p. 46 …Mitchell never received an American air force commensurate with the ambitious idens of air power which…
  • p. 49 …This project, like so many others, had lagged, and the Air Service was never equipped during…
  • p. 50 …the Army or the Air Corps?” but never, “Are you in the Army or the Corps…
  • p. 55 …any Air Service officers, and I have never heard anybody yet-any Air Service officer-against…
  • p. 69 …But one axiom, with its corollaries, never varied. T o him the airplane was first and…
  • p. 75 …Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be completely stopped, but their effects could best…
  • p. 94 …rate for the time being, the decision never- theless left an open question as to how…
  • p. 121 …large-scale warfare; production of combat types never exceeded 300 aircraft a month. The pattern of…
  • p. 122 …the German Air Force, the Regia Aeronautica never exhibited sufficient power to be decisive in the…
  • p. 133 …Except for a few raids against French factories, the force had never been employed in a…
  • p. 140 …into a complete war economy production was never equal to the demands of our own forces…
  • p. 150 …Long-term needs of the Air Corps and the sudden availability of funds in quantities never…
  • p. 181 …Actually, the Air Staff had never approved of the method followed in RAINBOW No. 5 . l…
  • p. 217 …Members of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had never flown heavy bombers, began to receive intensive…
  • p. 219 …were not then satisfactory for permanent garrisons. Never- theless, the commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lt…
  • p. 227 …T h e planes never reached their destination. Other bombardment units were being prepared for transfer…
  • p. 241 …responsible officers, a few crucial points have never been satisfactorily explained. T h e general pattern…
  • p. 277 …motors, sole- noids, and gun mounts-were never found. After many hours of fruit- less search…
  • p. 288 …planners and from which AAF Headquarters was never to deviate. The translation of the accepted grand…
  • p. 303 …the principal features of the plan were never challenged, it was subsequently revised in a draft…
  • p. 309 …W a r Plans Division was never incorporated into GHQ and remained a potential rival to…
  • p. 336 …the shooting and wrote that they were never able to make out an airplane.g6It is…
  • p. 412 …As it happened, the B-24's never returned to India, but, instead, remained in the…
  • p. 457 …Meanwhile the Edsall with the remaining pilots had headed for Java, never to be heard from…
  • p. 492 …Squadron was assigned, but which it would never reach, going from Australia to Tongatabu; ( 3 ) Christmas…
  • p. 500 …deck of a carrier presented a problem never before challenged by Army planes. Hence an accelerated…
  • p. 502 …the bows and wetting the flight deck. Never before had this been accomplished, yet now it…
  • p. 509 …Island, in the Louisiade Archipelago.” They were never needed, for on 7-8 May the two…
  • p. 513 …exist, it was at a point which never reached the aircrews, for on the operational level…
  • p. 524 …handicaps under which AAF planes had operated. Never were more than fourteen B- I 7’s…
  • p. 527 …AAF planners clung firmly to their belief that proper observance of economy of force would never…
  • p. 531 …Crews which had previously never loaded torpedoes now for the first time fitted these weapons into…
  • p. 544 …But the Japanese never at any time based their bombers in appreciable numbers a t either…
  • p. 548 …26's in torpedo-dropping, but they never would be put into All told, the record…
  • p. 556 …until it had been thoroughly trained and never to com- mit it piecemeal. General Magruder had…
  • p. 560 …pressed into service against the Germans," and never reached the CBI." Colonel Haynes had reached India…
  • p. 606 …reason that the Antilles Air Task Force never evolved, as did I Bomber Command, into an…
  • p. 614 …that reason deserving a high priority, could never dispose of the U-boat menace but must…
  • p. 635 …In Washington the Munitions Assign- ments Board t had never considered this schedule as more than…
  • p. 670 …they bombed from 39,200 feet, and never below 30,000. By AAF standards they had…
  • p. 672 …Goering had never put enough bombers over England, nor had he concentrated his forces on the…
  • p. 690 …of co-operation and combined action probably never before equaled by the military forces of two…
  • p. 729 …shoot at aerial targets, and several had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency…
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
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