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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.
“Independence Day”9 pages
T H E P R O B L E M O F N E W G U I N E A the P-40, P-39, and P-400, of special suspension gear for bomb shackles on the same planes, and of interchangeable bomb bay tanks for the B-26 and the A-zo. Labor was more readily available, and gratifying progress marked vital construction in the advanced area.31 A beginning made on the improvement of airstrips in the north, to- gether with the prospect for better maintenance, carried the promise of reduction in a hitherto appallingly high rate of a c ~ i d e n t . ~ ' Preparations were still incomplete, but the time had come for a move forward. O n zo July, General Headquarters moved from Mel- bourne, where it had been located since April, to Brisbane. Air service activities at Townsville were increasing. Additional fields were com- ing into use on Cape York and around Port Moresby; engineers had reached Milne Bay for the purpose of developing airstrips there, and orders had been issued to secure the area about Buna, farther north on the coast of N e w Guinea, for a still more advanced airfield that would strengthen the Allied Air Forces in its effort to restrict Japa- nese activity on the Huon Gulf, and at the same time would place the American planes in a better position to co-operate with our naval forces in the fulfilment of task But before these orders could be executed, the enemy on z I July landed at Buna in preparation for a push across the mountains against Port Moresby. By the time the Marines went ashore on Guadalcanal to begin a fight for the Solomons, the forward movement in Australia had been accelerated to meet a new challenge for the possession of New Guinea. T h e two contests would be fought bitterly and simultaneously, and from them men would date the beginning of the collapse of the world's newest empire. 48 3
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