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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
C O M M I T M E N T S T O C H I N A Similarly, misunderstanding developed regarding the movement of P-40's for the 23d Group. In the absence of exact information as to the rate of their progress across Africa, the W a r Department was in- clined to assume that unreported planes had reached India, when many were stopped along the way, some of them wrecked beyond repair and others requiring a major overhaul before they could con- tinue. Even when a plane had arrived at Karachi, its engine was probably burned out and would have to be replaced-at a time when aircraft engines were almost as scarce as the aircraft themselves.27 Exact figures for this early period are virtually impossible to estab- lish. But the whole story can be put in a capsule: in June, General Brereton left for the Middle East with virtually the entire striking force of the Tenth; in so doing, he took out the approximate equiva- lent of the tiny force of which he had assumed command four months before; and in the interval it had been possible to conduct operations only on the most meager scale. In March, the impending loss of all Burma and the threat to India itself had resulted in the selection of Karachi as a port of entry and a center for the preparation of incoming organizations. Located on the western side of India, it was free, for the moment at least, from the threat of enemy interference and was advantageously situated with reference to air and water routes upon which operations in the CBI would be chiefly dependent. T o General Brady was assigned the responsibility for establishing there a reception, classification, and training center that eventually, together with the installations of the Air Transport Command, became one of the major centers of AAF activity in the East.* 2 8 Brig. Gen. Raymond Wheeler, of the Services of Supply, came there from Iran to undertake, while preparing plans for theater supply, improvement in the docking and storage facilities of a port hitherto not fully de~eloped.'~Meanwhile, the several hun- dred AAF personnel who had recently arrived from Australia gave their attention to the completion of a partially prepared British en- campment for their own occupancy and to the inauguration of a training program. There was plenty to do, but morale inevitably reached an unusually low ebb. A thousand miles from the battle in Burma, their handful of planes was held in anticipation of enemy moves which might include attacks on the western ports of India; yet there were not enough aircraft even for training. Pilots and crews * See above, pp. 333, 340. 495
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