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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 P R O B L E M O F N E W G U I N E A at Lae, Salamaua, and Rabaul. Presumably, the best-equipped plane at the disposal of the Allied Air Forces for this purpose was the A-24, but its range did not carry to the main routes of enemy shipping at this time. T h e B- I 7 had the range, but the normal priority assigned to counterair operations and the special priority given to reconnaissance left few planes for the purpose. Moreover, pilots trained in high-level bombardment showed no inclination to experiment with low-level attacks. In anticipation of an expected need, a detachment of the L zd Group went through some training with especially equipped B-26's in torpedo-dropping, but they never would be put into All told, the record was spotty, but there was much to support General Arnold's contention during the summer and fall that, given a complete build-up of the assigned forces, the Pacific commands possessed enough air strength to hold the Certainly, the Allied Air Forces was holding its own; at no time since April had the Japanese enjoyed numerical superiority, and this despite depart- ure of some AAF units to strengthen the South Pacific. From April to mid-July, American units lost in combat sixty-one fighters and twenty-two bombers, an additional ten bombers and one fighter on the ground to enemy action, and the depressing total of fifty-four fighters and twenty-three bombers to accidents. During the same period, claims were made for more than eighty Japanese planes shot down; others were destroyed on the ground, and there is reason to believe that unrecorded planes were lost as a result of combat damage on the way back to their bases. It also seems to be a reasonable assumption that operational losses were high."j A discouraging factor to American airmen in the Southwest Pacific was the delay in the arrival of reinforcements and replacements. Here the enemy, with interior lines of communications, presumably had the advantage. T h e arrival of American fighters and short-range bombers depended on the critical item of shipping, and even the bombers arriving by the ferry route came in more slowly than had been expected. There was cause for foreboding in figures which showed that during May and June 106 fighters and 42 bombers had been lost, while gains listed no fighters and only sixty-two But American production was now reaching a point that soon would permit it to provide the remedy. Another cause for concern was the unsatisfactory state of morale. 48 1
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