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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 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 of the lower Solomons. Task two, under command of General Mac- Arthur, would involve seizure of the upper Solomons and of Lae, Salamaua, and the northeast coast of New Guinea. The way then would be prepared for task three, which was the seizure, again under MacArthur’s command, of Rabaul and adjacent parts of New Britain and New Ireland. Control over the composition of forces, the timing of each task, and the “passage of command” would remain with the Joint Chiefs.8 Thus did the American chiefs of staff set the stage for the bitter drama to be enacted on Guadalcanal, where the Marines would land on 7 August. If the Army had yielded to the Navy’s persuasion regarding strategy in the Pacific, its own strategic concept of the war as a whole remained official policy. General MacArthur had been forced to surrender the hope of attack in strength on the enemy to the north, but that enemy nevertheless would be heavily engaged over the ensuing months. Meanwhile, the Southwest Pacific command would be free with available forces to undertake appropriate steps preliminary to the inauguration of operations in fulfilment of task two. T h e Operational Record of M a y and June Since one of the prerequisites to an undertaking of task two was the ability to assert control of the air over upper Australia and the lower extent of New Guinea, there was a good deal of reassurance to be found in the recent record of Allied air operations. The bombers were still forced to operate from bases well to the rear, and to stage through Port Moresby for attacks on Lae, Salamaua, and Rabaul. But Allied intelligence indicated an approximate balance between our own and enemy forces in the general area of combat. On 19 May the Japanese were credited with forty-five fighters and forty bombers in New Britain and New Guinea, and with a comparable number divided between Timor and Bali, as against an over-all total of 302 American fighters (operational and inoperational) at the end of May. The figures were substantially unchanged two months later, though 167 enemy planes credited to Celebes were obviously within easy reach of either Timor or Bali. On 1 8 July the Americans had in the combat area eighty P-40’s of the 49th Group stationed at Darwin and eighty-three P-400’s belonging to the 35th Group, two of whose squadrons were based at Port M0resby.O The enemy still enjoyed 474
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