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
Genesis of the Army Air Forces Antisubmarine Conmaand
Meanwhile, the American high command was struggling with the
more fundamental problems of antisubmarine policy. As has already
been noted in this volume and will be noticed repeatedly hereafter,
the question of shipping proved again and again the most crucial of
those faced in attempts to meet the demands of our hard pressed
forces in the Pacific and to provide for an early assumption of the
offensive against Germany. And so threatening to the basic strategy
agreed upon for the conduct of the war was the submarine attack
that no possibility of taking effective action against it could be over-
looked.
T w o things the submarine crisis had immediately made clear: an
effective antisubmarine campaign would require more aircraft than
could be supplied from current production designed for Navy use,
especially in view of the many demands on naval air strength; and
a large proportion of the necessary aircraft would have to consist
of land-based types, admittedly better suited, because of their speed,
range, and firepower, for antisubmarine attack than the seaplane.”
It was soon evident, too, that these requirements could be met either
by turning over to the Navy a force of Army land-based bombers
sufficient to allow that service to accomplish the task by itself, or by
setting up a separate command within the AAF to be specially trained
and equipped for antisubmarine warfare and with that as its sole
duty. Thus the AAF units engaged in the anti-U-boat war became
almost a t once the subject of a jurisdictional controversy.
The issue first arose in acute form when the Navy acted early
in 1942 to secure a force of land-based bombers for its own use.
O n 1 5 January, the Air Staff had under consideration a request from
Rear Adm. John H. Towers, chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics,
for the transfer to the Navy from future production of Army-type
* O n 5 March 1942, Admiral King wrote to General Arnold as follows: “The
experience of the last two winters has demonstrated that naval aviation missions such
as convoy escort, observation, scouting and patrolling over the sea, and the pro-
tection of shipping in the coastal zones, cannot be accomplished by seaplanes based
on ice-bound bases in the North Atlantic and Pacific areas. In addition to this ex-
perience, a study of the purely naval operations of the Coastal Command of the
Royal Air Force has led to the conviction that for such missions, carried out from
prepared fixed bases, multi-engined landplanes have certain characteristic advantages
in increased range, ease of maintenance, and facility of operation, over seaplanes.”
The Navy’s carrier-based planes which lent important weight to the antisubmarine
war in its later phase were not employed in the Atlantic until March 1943.
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