The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
coast at any one time. O n the whole, however, it was a creditable
effort, considered as an emergency measure. By the end of January,
I Bomber Command aircraft available for antisubmarine duty num-
bered a total of I 19. Only forty-six of the aircraft could be considered
in commission, but of this effective strength, nine were B-17’s capable
of long-range patrol, and the rest were B-18’s and B-t5’s,l5 both types
capable of covering extensive stretches of the threatened sea lanes.
Even so, Army forces were themselves seriously inadequate. In addi-
tion to the insufficient number of AAF forces available, Army units
began antisubmarine operations under serious handicaps of organiza-
tion, training, and equipment. Hunting submarines was a highly spe-
cialized task, as all concerned found out during the next few months.
Yet little had been done prior to the outbreak of hostilities to train
and equip Army units for work of this sort or to establish a system of
joint Army-Navy control. Some steps, it is true, had been taken to
provide the means of co-operation between the services, with the
result that a joint control and information center was ready for opera-
tion at New York four days after the opening of hostilities. For-
tunately, the delay of nearly a month in the enemy’s invasion of
American waters gave the I Bomber Command time to organize some
sort of wire communication service to all its bases, and to establish
an intelligence system through which information could be relayed
from headquarters to squadron operations rooms. But to the end of
January the problem of transmitting intelligence remained a vexing
one.’’
In addition to the fact that most of the Army air units involved in
the antisubmarine war were still in a training status, those best trained
having been taken away for service in the west, they brought to their
task equipment and experience conditioned almost entirely by the
requirements of ordinary bombardment, which had little in common
with antisubmarine attack. It is hardly surprising, then, that Army
planes at first flew in search of U-boats armed with demolition bombs
instead of depth bombs and manned by crews who were ill trained in
naval identification or in the techniques of attacking submarine
targets. Moreover, the aircraft themselves, although intrinsically
better suited to this type of operation than most of the available Navy
planes, nevertheless fell far short of maximum efficiency in antisubma-
rine patrol. All, with the exception of the few B-I~’s, possessed
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