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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.
“King”32 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 Virtually all operations were flown from areas that were remote from the more thickly settled sections of Australia; living conditions were primitive, the food was chiefly an unfamiliar Australian ration, the incidence of dengue fever and malaria was high, and facilities for hospitalization and recreation were more than inadequate.2s In these circumstances, the strain of unusually difficult operations took a higher toll. Personnel who had fought through the Philippine and Java campaigns suffered effects of fatigue that at times approached a defeatist attitude; even those who had flown their first combat mission in April had to fight a feeling of disillusionment. Long overwater flights, the dropping of a few bombs with unobserved results, the loss of friends to combat and accident, the lack of opportunity for leave and rotation, the slowness of promotion, and a rather confusing system of operational control, all added up to a trying experience that seemed to have little if anything to do with the outcome of the war. Personal relations with the Australians were generally excellent, for the two peoples had much in common, but the American flyer tended to resent the extent of RAAF control and to find in its administrative forms, as with any unfamiliar government form, a ready source of grievance.” With the inevitably limited perspective which modern war imposes upon the individual participant, dependent upon the leadership of officers who often were as yet young and inexperienced, and lacking the assistance of effectively organized informational services, he had trouble in assessing his own part with reference to the whole or even in recognizing that he and his im- mediate fellows were beginning to function like a team. Responsible officers were alert to these and other needs, and some of them had occasion for satisfaction with the progress made.30 Air Services still suffered because of an insufficient number of trained personnel and the necessity of resorting to cannibalizing aircraft in order to get spare parts, but through the agencies of the Australian government an increasingly effective liaison had been established between the Allied command and Australian industry. Some parts and very helpful maintenance facilities were now available from Australian sources. It was possible to provide a complete overhaul for all types of American engines. With local assistance in the pro- vision of materials and tools, the supply and maintenance section of Air Services, under Col. Carl Connell, was pioneering in the design and development of a fifty-gallon steel interchangeable belly tank for 482
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