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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.
“Churchill”21 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 flew two missions a day for this purpose over New Guinea and New Britain and on occasion to the Solomons and the Netherlands East Indies. Indeed, reconnaissance flights continued to levy heavily upon the bombers of all classes available for offensive operations; even the 3d Group’s B-25’s flew better than 1 2 0 reconnaissance sorties in the month of May, when the presence of the enemy’s fleet in the Coral Sea created a special demand for this type of service.21 The B-26’s were based in the Townsville area, and for the mission to Rabaul each plane was fitted with a 25o-gallon bomb bay tank and took on a bomb load usually of 4 x 500-lb. bombs or 2 0 x Ioo-lb. bombs prior to the 6oo-mile flight to Port Moresby. Having arrived there, preferably about dusk, an advance detachment of the group readied the planes for the next day’s mission under cover of darkness. They would take off in the early morning, unless the start was delayed for the purpose of confusing the enemy’s defense, and normally would follow a route that took them for forty or fifty miles along the New Guinea coast, then across the Owen Stanley range at approximately 7,000 feet, and through equatorial weather which frequently proved as dangerous as enemy fighters. Over Rabaul, the Marauders made their runs at something under 10,000 feet, after which they turned for the 1,300-mile flight, broken again at Moresby, to their bases.” Between 6 April and 24 May, the 22d Group completed sixteen missions for a total of more than eighty sorties against Rabaul. Hits were claimed on three transports, two merchant vessels, and one air- craft carrier in addition to the destruction of at least sixteen aircraft on the ground and ten in the air. The targets provided by the Lakunai and Vunakanau airfields and the near-by harbor were vital ones, but the distances were actually too great for the B-26. The last mission was flown on 24 May-indeed it would be October 1943 before Rabaul was attacked again by medium bombers-and the job was turned over entirely to the heavies. During April, May, and June the 19th Group itself mounted eighteen missions against Rabaul for a total of approximately sixty sorties. Though unfavorable weather and darkness often prevented anything like an accurate assessment of results, gratifying fires and damage to at least two vessels were r e p ~ r t e d . ~ ~Bombing missions to Rabaul, as to other points, also served in a highly important way the ends of reconnaissance. Through these months there had been few antishipping strikes, except during the Coral Sea action of May and against vessels lying 480
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