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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.
“Natal”13 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 If the Japanese had achieved their objective in the Aleutians, they had fallen far short a t Midway, where the outcome of the battle cut deeply into the war potential of the enemy. The air-sea engagement had been critical and disastrous; its immediate magnitude was con- cealed from all but a small handful of individuals in the imperial gen- eral staff and in the two service ministries, while its ultimate effect could only become apparent as the war progressed.14s Midway had levied against the Japanese naval establishment a series of deficits whose cumulative effect was to become increasingly painful as the Japanese faced heavier commitments in the Solomons and New Guinea, and which lay beyond the nation's capacity to overcome. Four of the most efficient carriers had gone down, carrying with them the hopes of Admiral Yamamoto to bring about a major fleet engage- ment a t a maximum distance from home waters; henceforth, the fleet would not roam the western and central Pacific with relative impunity. Its future operations would be more difficult, and they would be pri- marily defen~ive.'~'Furthermore, Midway had forced the Japanese to recognize that the center of gravity now lay in the carrier divisions, despite the resistance of older officers who clung to the traditional battleship as the major ~ e a p o n . ~ "But even more important was the loss of pilots, for the Midway forces had carried the most highly skilled flying and technical personnel in the Japanese navy. N o w many of them were gone; perhaps 3 0 per cent of the pilots had been lost with the estimated 2 5 0 planes destroyed, and almost half the survivors were sent to staff a fresh Third Fleet. Before their scheduled two- month training could be completed, Guadalcanal had been invaded and it was necessary to commit them to Rabaul, where they were con- sumed in the running sore of the Solomons. Yamamoto now had his perimeter anchored in the Aleutians, but the attempt to fix its eastern terminus a t Midway had dealt his naval air forces a keen blow; until the carrier groups were restored, his navy would be confined to the range of shore-based planes moving from island to island across the Pacific.' I s 470
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