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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 Invaders”15 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 the rate of about three tons of cargo a week. Since this force repre- sented the only ground unit, aside from guerrillas, actually engaged in fighting the enemy, it was decided to supplement its supplies and to provide reinforcements by air transport with a view toward launch- ing an attack against Lae and Salamaua. This project was somewhat delayed by bad weather and inability to provide fighter cover, but on 2 2 May a flight by the 2 1st Troop Carrier Squadron inaugurated a movement of about 300 troops and supplies. For more than a year thereafter, the rough and sloping 3,300-foot runway at Wau served as the most advanced terminal of Southwest Pacific transport opera- tions. At the close of June, the small force at Wau even undertook raids on the Japanese positions a t Lae and Salamaua.16 Efforts to make Lae and Salamaua as untenable for enemy bombers as was Port Moresby for Allied bombers had been inaugurated by the A-24’s of the 8th Squadron a t the opening of April. But prior to their withdrawal at the end of May to Charters Towers, the A-24’s flew only four combat missions, totaling twenty-nine sorties, from Port Moresby. Though only two were lost in combat as against claims of six enemy planes destroyed on the ground and two shot down, operational losses were high. On 4 April, of the forty-two dive bombers assigned to the Allied Air Forces, only twenty-two were in commission; two months later, only twelve out of twenty-six.17 Designed originally as a carrier-borne plane and seemingly unequal to the rough wear of imperfect fields, of relatively short range and slow speed, and highly vulnerable except when provided with better escort than was possible at Port Moresby, the A-24 was written off by AAF personnel as unsuited to the type of operations required in New Guinea, perhaps mistakenly in view of its subsequent record in Navy hands. Not unnaturally, the AAF came to place greater confidence in the more rugged B-25. The early “C” model of the Mitchell Army bomber had approximately three times the range of an A-24, could carry more than twice its bomb load, had two more .50-cal. machine guns, and was faster. Ever popular with Army flyers and locally dubbed a “luxury liner,” it proved well suited to the hazardous flights across the Owen Stanley Mountains. The only trouble was that there were not enough B-25’s. Only fourteen originally had been available under the Dutch contract, and by August there were still only seventeen on hand.I8 478
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