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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 ment was ordered to report at the Alameda Naval Air Station, on San Francisco Bay, with a stopover a t the Sacramento Air Depot, where twenty-two aircraft arrived by the ~ 7 t h . ~ ~Four days later the planes reached Alameda; as yet no aircrew knew its ultimate ob- jective. While the crews trained at Eglin, negotiations proceeded through the CBI command in an effort to make certain that Chinese fields would be prepared to receive the B-2 5’s. Extreme secrecy surrounded the project, making it impossible to impart full information to Chiang Kai-shek, who only reluctantly gave his final consent to the project on 28 March without ever knowing the details, except that by z April he was informed that at least twenty-five B-25’s would be employed and that he should have fuel and flares ready at Kweilin, Kian, Yu- shan, Chuchow, and Li~hui.~’The Chinese leader sought to delay the flight until late in May, which would give him opportunity to arrange his troops so as to prevent Japanese occupation of the Chuchow area, and right to the end he refused to permit the use of the field at Chu- chow. But the machinery was under way, and once the carriers had put to sea, it no longer was possible to alter the original plan. Back at Alameda, on I April, sixteen B-zs’s, instead of the twenty originally scheduled, were lifted aboard the Hornet, where they were lashed down on the flight deck. Next day, carrying 71 AAF officers and 1 3 0 enlisted men, the Hornet passed out through the Golden Gate, accompanied by two cruisers, four destroyers, and an oiler. After a rough voyage beset with foul weather most of the way, north of Midway the task force joined a similar one which had come up from Pearl Harbor, and together the two, consisting of two carriers, four cruisers, eight destroyers, and two oilers, headed west toward Japan under Vice Adm. William F. Halsey in the Enterprise. Doolittle hoped to reach a point 450 statute miles from Japan but believed it possible, if necessary, to take off from 5 5 0 miles. H e felt a point 650 miles from Japan would be the outside limit of any reason- able prospect for success.41Presumably the airfields in Chekiang were to be made ready for arrival of the planes not earlier than 0400 on 2 0 April. If they were not readied, the aircrews could not be warned- nor could the Chinese be informed of the time of take-off from the carrier-because Navy task forces followed a policy of absolute radio silence when at sea on such missions. On the 16th, when the B-25’s were spotted for the take-off, the leading bomber-Doolittle’s-faced 440
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