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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 Wash”17 pages
C O M M I T M E N T S TO C H I N A ranking United States Army officer should be sent to the Far East to provide liaison between Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the ABDA Command, and early in February, Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stil- well, who had once served as military attach6 at Peking, received notice of his appointment as commander of US. Army forces in the newly created China-Burma-India Theater of Operations.'l Fol- lowing the assignment of the recently activated Tenth Air Force to this theater, an advanced bombing detachment, known as FORCE AQUILA, was prepared under the command of Col. Caleb V. Haynes for a flight across the Atlantic and African routes to Karachi, with the eventual mission of bombing Japan from Chinese bases. Even as the end of resistance in Burma approached, plans were car- ried forward for another bombing project in China, one that was somewhat similar to Doolittle's Tokyo mission in that there was pro- vision neither for reinforcement nor replacement. Called HALPRO for its commander, Col. Harry A. Halverson, its departure was so de- layed that it reached the Middle East during the crisis there in June, was pressed into service against the Germans," and never reached the CBI." Colonel Haynes had reached India in early April, but with a force insufficient for, and under circumstances unfavorable to, the execution of his original mission. The air force over which General Brereton assumed command on 5 March was largely an organization existing on paper. H e had eight heavy bombers, the six brought up from Java and two B-17's which had come in from Africa, eight bomber crews, and a few staff officers. The entire force was put to work three days later, not as bombers but as transports which from 8 to 1 3 March in an emergency opera- tion transported 474 troops and 2 9 tons of supplies from India to Magwe in Burma, evacuating on the return flights some 4 2 3 civilian^.'^ Toward the close of this initial operation, reinforcements arrived from Australia, but instead of a fully equipped pursuit group, as expected, there were only ten P-40's. Moreover, examination proved that most of the basic equipment of the units, including badly needed trucks, had been left in Australia, and for safety it had been consid- ered necessary to send the ships around to the western port of Karachi.'* The British had evacuated Rangoon during the preceding * l'n fact, the Halverson Detachment, together with the detachment flown in from India by General Brereton, formed the nucleus of the Ninth Air Force, which from 1942 to the fall of 1943 fought in the Middle East under Brereton's command. (On HALPRO, see above, pp. 341-42. 49 3
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