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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.
“The Invaders”15 pages
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 by Army aircraft shows a rough correlation with the density of U-boats in the coastal waters and with the rate of merchant vessel sinkings. Since May the Germans had shifted the weight of their effort steadily southward until, by September 1942,they had virtually abandoned the Eastern and Gulf Sea frontiers. After 4 September, no sinkings occurred in those waters as a result of enemy submarine action during the remainder of the year. June 1942 had witnessed the pattern of sinkings moving toward the Gulf and Caribbean areas. By August, the Gulf was practically free of sinkings, which by that time were heavily concentrated around Cuba and in the waters off Trini- dad. By September, the enemy had given up attacks around Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico but continued in the Trinidad area, where since February of 1942 a group of submarines had been consistently successful in the vulnerable oil and bauxite shipping lanessB This gradual withdrawal of the enemy reflects the steady increase in both the weight and quality of the American antisubmarine effort. That effort involved the operation of Navy and Army units, of surface and air craft, and it would be futile to try to evaluate pre- cisely the relative importance of any one factor. The coastwise con- voy system, which the Navy was able to inaugurate in May, made it possible for shipping to move in the American waters with greater security, and it thereby did much to reduce the margin of profit the U-boat command might expect from its activity in the western At- lantic. But it is also true that this margin of profit was cut drastically by the extension and increasing effectiveness of air patrol. In the eastern Atlantic, the U-boat captains had demonstrated their unwill- ingness to operate in areas systematically covered by aircraft, and it appears that they continued to follow this policy in the western Atlantic as well. Their decision, to be sure, did not result directly from the damage sustained from attacks by American aircraft. In the course of 59,248 operational hours flown between January and October 1942, the I Bomber Command reported not many more than 200 sightings, in only eighty-one of which instances did attacks of any sort ensue. These attacks resulted in the destruction of one U-boat, the probably serious damage of six, and the less serious damage of seven more. Attacks by naval aircraft occurred with in- creasing frequency, amounting in all to well over half the total made by aircraft during the period and in the area under review. But it is still doubtful whether the total weight of air attack proved decisivdv 5 34
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