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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.
“United Press”36 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 highest councils: where were they to draw the final perimeter with its outermost line of defenses? The question was of vital importance, for it determined in large part the locale of the initial clashes with U.S. forces as soon as the inevitable counterattacks began. Generally, it was the imperial navy which stressed the advantages of establishing a perimeter at the maximum possible distance from the industrial heart of the empire; for not only would this plan provide additional time and space in which to fend off American assaults which were sure to come, but it served Admiral Yamamoto’s strong conviction that his only hope of success lay in bringing about an early full-dress naval engagement with American forces. The aggressive commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet favored this decisive fleet action at the earliest possible date, because he realized that with the passage of time American production would outstrip that of Japan, thereby creating a fatal disparity between the two naval establishment^.^^ The Japanese army, on the other hand, seems to have opposed this tend- ency toward overexpansion in the Pacific, stressing the advantages of maintaining a tight, compact empire operating along interior lines, fed by the resources of the Netherlands East Indies and defended on the east by a naval force whose commitments were more nearly in proportion to its strength. The latter plan did not prevail. It was the navy’s theory which gradually gained ascendency, and by March and April both army and navy were examining their outposts in the east and south with a view to strengthening them. If the Japanese in their planning conducted prior to the war had hesitated to rush too far afield in fixing the limits of empire, the results of the first four months of fighting indicated that their initial calculations and timetables had been exceeded; the victories had come easily, the cost had been inconsiderable, and Allied resistance had proved unexpectedly light.5oThis very ease and rapidity of conquest seems to have been a strong factor in influencing the Japanese navy toward fresh ventures in the spring of 1 9 4 2 . ~ ~The first step occurred in connection with the defense of Rabaul, the strategic base located at the junction of New Britain and the upper Solomons which the navy had marked out as one of its goals prior to the outbreak of the war. The place had been taken on 23 January, together with Kavieng on New Ireland, but there was a difference of opinion as to how it should be strengthened; the question was not whether the Rabaul base should have its own advance posts, but how many and at what 446
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