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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
T H E A R M Y A I R A R M B E T W E E N T W O W A R S sponsible for the creation of the Air Ministry in England and, prop- erly nourished, for the Aviation Act of 24 July 1917 in America. Mitchell was unwilling to wait for disaster in war; as he told the Morrow Board in 1925, he and his followers had “appealed to the President and the American people to hear our cause.” 21 T h e people were more receptive than Harding or Coolidge. Having begun his educational campaign in I 9 I 9, Mitchell intensified his efforts as his cause weakened in the W a r Department. His energy was prodigious. H e poured forth a steady stream of articles and news- paper stories and found time to write three books on air power. His published testimony before committees alone constitutes a formidable corpus. H e became an indefatigable lecturer and a hardy after-dinner speaker; he courted interviews by the press.22 Read in quantity now that the battle has passed, his writings appear repetitious and not al- ways models of style. An ardent proselyter, he was capable of slanting an argument or of malting claims for air power hardly justified by the performance of aircraft then available. But of the vigor and sincerity of his message there can be no doubt or of its effectiveness in arousing widespread interest. Time has proved the essential soundness of most of his basic contentions. Because of the traditional importance of sea power in the national scheme of defense, Mitchell’s boldest attacks against the existing order were directed against the Navy. In that service, even more strenuously than in the Army, conservatives had resisted the development of the air arm. Mitchell ascribed that resistance to occupational jealousy of men who feared the intrusion of a new weapon which might upset the theories of Mahan. Since his return from France, Mitchell had insisted that an airplane could sink any surface ship by bombs or torpedoes. Hence submarines and land-based planes could defend the nation from any attack. At a time when economy in government was a magic talisman, his claims that money spent on battleships was a waste and that national security could be had at a lesser figure through creation of a unified and independent air force were bound to receive a t t e n t i ~ n . ’ ~Elis repeated requests for a test on suitable naval vessels were staunchly resisted by the Navy, which conducted inconclusive tests of its own in 1920, until congressional interest finally forced c o m p l i a n ~ e . ~ ~ T h e test, held off the mouth of the Chesapeake in July 192I , at- tracted widespread public interest. There, after naval aircraft in June 25
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