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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.
“United Press”36 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 Mitchell, sent to the Orient to quiet down after the battleship tests of September 1 9 2 3 , returned in the following July to renew his fight.33 In October 1924 a joint congressional committee was appointed to investigate alleged irregularities in the contracts and expenditures for Army and Navy aviation. The Lampert Committee went far beyond its designated mission, bringing under review the whole province of military aeronautics. Its hearings lasted nearly a year, during which time a hundred and fifty witnesses were examined. Proponents of re- form in the handling of air power were received sympathetically, and the hearings became especially a public forum for the dissemination of Mitchell’s H e continued to urge the establishment of the separate unified air force but conceded that a unified Department of Defense with coequal air, ground, and naval forces would probably serve sati~factorily.~~In 1 9 2 3 Harding had suggested, as an economy measure, unification of the armed services-though without any special reference to the autononious air This solution to the problems of organization gained in popularity, eventually being accepted even by the cautious Ailitchell did not confine his testimony to recommendations for changes in the administrative structure. H e elaborated upon specific evils in the current conditions of the Air Service and denounced those in authority who were responsible. Archconservatives who controlled the General Staff, the W a r Department, and the Navy, he charged, were deliberately hostile to improvements in the air arm, refusing to heed the suggestions of air officers and attempting to control their public testimony by more or less veiled intimidati~n.~’T h e virulence of hilitchell’s attacks in the hearings and in widely read magazine articles led Secretary of W a r John Wingate Weeks to replace the troublemaker as Patrick’s a s ~ i s t a n t . ~ ~In April 1 9 2 5 Mitchell was trans- ferred to San Antonio as air officer for the Eighth Corps Area, a de- motion so transparent as to lead his friends to speak, with fine disregard for climatic conditions, of his exile to Siberia.4o O n 5 September he used the recent disaster to the Navy’s dirigible Sheizandoah as an oc- casion for releasing to the press a statement containing a grave indict- ment of those in the Army and Navy responsible for the neglect of aviation. His intent was deliberate, and his blast attained results he must have expected-a summons to Washington to stand trial before a general court-martial. T h e trial, lasting from z s October to 1 7 De- cember, was not a model of judicial procedure. Testimony again 27
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