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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.
“The Wash”17 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 was the Takao, whose gunners shot down Mansfield’s B-17; only one survivor of the aircrew was recovered by the Japanese.138 The final attempt to attack the task force came when Captain Marks informed the B-26’s on Umnak of the target’s precise location. Five B-26’s took off a t 2040 led by Captain Meals, and three aircraft located the carriers. T w o torpedoes were launched, and it was believed at the time they had scored a t least one hit on a cruiser. Actually they failed to hit, and the carrier escaped as well.lS9So ended the Dutch Harbor episode. For the US. forces on Unalaska Island, it represented a loss of 2 2 , 0 0 0 barrels of Diesel oil, some destruction from fire, forty-three dead a t Dutch Harbor (thirty-three of them Army personnel), and about fifty wounded.14’ For the AAF, it meant the loss of two P-40’s in action, one B-17 down in combat, one B-26 lost, one damaged by antiaircraft fire, one wrecked in landing, one LB-30 wrecked at Kodiak on its return from Elmendorf. Perhaps the most critical loss was that of radar equipment, for which spare parts were not available except a t the cost of sets scheduled for delivery to the South Pacific bases.141The Navy’s patrolling PBY-sA’s had suffered very severe losses to the Zekes, ko severe that on 4 June, after forty hours of almost continuous operations in wretched weather, pilots and crews were at the limit of their endurance and only fourteen planes remained operative.”* On the side of the enemy, it is probable that he achieved about all he had hoped for; losses were light, no damage had been incurred in any of the attacks, and the way was open for landing on the outer Aleu- tians. After recovering all surviving planes, the task force retired to a point about 600 miles south of Kiska where it was joined by the carrier Zuiho plus the Kongo and the Harum, which had come up from Midway, and together these forces cruised south of Kiska for ten days to screen the landing These, including a special naval landing force of 5 5 0 men and 700 labor troops, had gone ashore on Kiska on 6 June, but only after some debate on the part of Admiral Yamamoto, who had seen his carriers destroyed a t Midway on the 4th. Well aware of the significance of the grievous losses at Midway, ap- parently he had canceled the entire Aleutian landing operation, then yielded to his staff, which persuaded him to return to the original plan, with the result that the Kiska landing proceeded without further opposition, followed by additional landings on Attu on 7 June.144 469
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