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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
C O M M I T M E N T S TO C H I N A carpenters, ditch diggers, and at whatever other tasks needed to be done. There was work for all at Agra; and this, plus the evident progress made, prevented development of morale problems com- parable to those existing earlier at Karachi.79 T h e service command would serve both India and China. T o assist in carrying out this large mission, the 59th Materiel Squadron (soon redesignated 59th Service Squadron) was divided into small base units to serve the needs of combat stations. T h e unit's headquarters was located at Allahabad, selected as base for the heavy bombers, and there, too, was stationed Base Unit Number One. Other base units were assigned to Kunming, Agra, Dinjan and Chabua, Chakulia, and Bangalore, the latter being the location of Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd., which was to be changed over by agreement with the British from a manufacturing plant to a repair and overhaul depot for American- made aircraft." During May additional personnel for the service com- mand arrived and received assignments. On 2 3 May, Lt. Col. Daniel F. Callahan was made chief, maintenance and repair division, and the following day Col. Robert C. Oliver reported to become chief of staff to General Adler, Hood taking the assignment as chief, supply division. No headquarters and headquarters squadron was created, personnel normally constituting such an organization being assigned to the Tenth Air Force and detailed to duty with the service By late June, Adler's infant command was beginning to function in the routine fields of receipt, storage and issue, distribution, mainte- nance, repair, overhaul, and salvage. Other duties requiring attention were local procurement, manufacture of certain items, and various responsibilities in connection with maintenance and repair work, which by that time had begun at the Hindustan plant at Bangalore. T h e command suffered with other organizations the common difficulties of the theater a t this time-poor communications, shortage of motor vehicles, dependence upon unskilled or semiskilled native labor, and always the weather.82 T h e combat force of the Tenth proper was still limited to a hand- ful of heavy bombers, some of them badly worn. Its combat opera- tions continued, therefore, on the scale set by its earlier missions to Burma. Turning on 2 5 May from its effort to assure the neutralization of Myitkyina airfield, it struck again that night with five B-17's at targets in the Rangoon area. One of the planes was forced to turn 509
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