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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.
“King”32 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 power, but, shorn of details, the proposals for reorganization followed one of four patterns. Most radical was the independent air force, usually drawing heavily upon the RAF and its Air Ministry for prece- dent. This scheme called for a new cabinet agency on a par with the War and Navy departments. Since in most plans of this type the De- partment of Aeronautics was to control all government aviation-cur- rently divided between the Army, the Navy, and civilian agencies- the terms “independent,” “separate,” and “united air force” were used interchangeably. Various expedients were suggested to govern the employment of aircraft by this department in operations over land and sea, but none offered an acceptable solution to the problem of unity of command. An alternative plan, which seemed compatible with current ideas of command and potentially more economical, gained popularity after 1923. This entailed creation of a single Department of National Defense with co-ordinate subdepartments for Army, Navy, and Air. When this plan was rejected, some Air Service officers, cautious by nature or discouraged by constant rebuffs, were willing to settle for a degree of autonomy within the War Department equivalent to that enjoyed by the Marine Corps in the Navy. And, when that was not forthcoming, as a last resort they accepted as a poor compromise such tactical control as might be achieved by assigning the bulk of offensive air units to General Headquarters. The War Department resisted in turn every proposal to eliminate or diminish its control over military aviation. The Secretary of War was supported in this resistance, overtly or tacitly, by each Chief Executive during the period under consideration, by the powerful military and naval affairs committees in Congress, and by most general officers. Similarly, the Navy Department, its General Board, and most admirals objected strenuously to any organizational change which would establish a different control for overwater aircraft or which threatened to disturb the dominant role of the battleship. Service academies and colleges followed service lines. In 1925 Secretary of the Navy Curtis D. Wilbur could say: “I think there is not a man in either service, outside of those connected with the aircraft-I do not know of any in the service, with one or two exceptions in the Army possibly- who would regard the Air Service as a principal service.” Certainly that unanimity existed within the Army’s General Staff, and it was in this agency that proponents of air reorganization found their most potent antagonists. As late as 1926 an official poll taken for 2 0
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