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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.
“Cairo”26 pages
T H E B A T T L E O F T H E A T L A N T I C damaging to the U-boat fleet.4oRather, aircraft made their contribu- tion by forcing the enemy to submerge so frequently and to stay down for such long intervals that their targets disappeared and their ac- tivity became handicapped to the point where the returns barely justified the expense. According to postwar statements by Admiral Doenitz, the balance sheet of profit and loss for activity in the western Atlantic favored the submarine for a longer period than the U-boat command had anticipated. The success of the first U-boats in American waters had been, as expected, very considerable. American defenders were in- experienced, whereas U-boat commanders had behind them more than two years of operations. Every available submarine had, therefore, been sent into the American zone. But it had been expected that the resulting successes would soon fall off, and it was a matter of some surprise to the Germans that until the end of September 1942 their efforts remained profitable despite the long inoperative passage out and back and despite the fact that the rapidly stiffening defenses off the northeast coast had long since forced the U-boats to look farther south for easy and economical v i c t ~ r i e s . ~ ~ Although driven from the home waters, and to a possibly decisive extent by air power (Admiral Doenitz tells us that air reconnaissance and attack was the antisubmarine measure most feared by the U-boat command), the enemy had by no means been defeated. H e had merely concentrated his efforts in other areas-and so effectively that in November 1942,two months after he had virtually abandoned the American home waters, he destroyed more Allied and neutral ship- ping than in any month since June.42 While I Bomber Command was helping to drive the U-boats from the home waters, and in the process was becoming an organization especially trained and equipped for antisubmarine warfare, other AAF units were also actively engaged against enemy submarines in other parts of the western Atlantic. A few Army B-17’s, seldom more than a squadron, continued during 1942 to supplement the Navy’s air arm in the Newfoundland area.43But it was in the Carib- bean that the Army units saw their most intensive and continuous action. Units of the Caribbean Air Force, organized on I March 1942 into the Antilles Air Task Force in compliance with an order from the parent organization dated I 6 February, devoted almost their entire effort for the remainder of the year to antisubmarine operations 5 3 5
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