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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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 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 condition, apparently still ignorant of the existence of the Umnak strip. Thus far, the Jap had enjoyed considerable success. One float plane was gone, another crashed near its cruiser, and one of the Ryujo’s fighters had made a forced landing on Akutan Island, but on the credit side damage had been inflicted on Fort Mears. The task force had steamed to a point only roo miles from Dutch Harbor; now after recovering its planes on the afternoon of the 3d, it retired to await better weather for its scheduled air attack upon Atka and Adak.13’ The morning of 4 June was rainy, with a low overcast limiting visi- bility. Search operations were difficult, but so were carrier operations and Admiral Kakuda spent the early part of the day in awaiting a break in the weather before launching a fresh attack. Finally, planes for the second day’s assault were sent off in weather so poor that only the best pilots on the two carriers were permitted to participate. Only one wave was launched, consisting of a total of fifteen fighters and eleven bombers from both carriers and six torpedo planes from the R y ~ j o . ’ ~ ~At 1800, ten of the fighters swept over the naval air station at Dutch Harbor in a strafing attack, followed by eleven dive bombers whose bombs inflicted considerable damage upon fuel installations and upon the Northwestern, a station ship then in use as barracks. At I 8 2 I , three more bombers attacked, but without achieving success; and at 1 8 2 5 , five more were overhead, killing four naval personnel as their bombs struck an AA emp1a~ement.l~’This time the enemy did not fare so well in his retirement. The Junyo’s striking group, which had not learned of the Umnak strip, had selected as its rally point the west end of Unalaska Island, and there four dive bombers and four fighters were met by eight P-40’s of the I I th Squadron’s forward echelon. The action occurred directly over Umnak, and the enemy’s lack of advance information on that island’s installations cost him no less than 50 per cent of this force. T w o enemy dive bombers and two fighters went down, destroyed by Lieutenants Chancellor, Dale, White, and J.J. Cape. Unfortunately Cape, for whom Cape Army Air Field was named, fell before a Zeke, while one other P-40 crashed on the island, but its pilot, Lt. Winfield E. McIntyre, walked unaided into camp.133 One more Junyo bomber failed to reach home apparently because of failure of its radio receiver, which had been knocked out in the action at Umnak, but the Ryujo recovered all her planes. While Japanese planes headed for Dutch Harbor, PBY’s, B- I 7’s) and 467
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