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
nothing to meet the problem of deploying land-based aviation effec-
tively in antisubmarine warfare. The trouble was that no single com-
mand, either in the Navy or Army, was solely responsible for the
conduct of the antisubmarine war. The result was that a multiplicity
of regional headquarters within a system constructed originally to
meet the needs of a static defense robbed the air arm of what the
AAF considered its primary advantage, namely its mobility as an
offensive striking force.
Most AAF units engaged in the campaign served under the opera-
tional control of the I Bomber Command, which remained the only
organization capable of co-ordinating such an enterprise. But the
I Bomber Command was still theoretically a bombardment force, and
as long as it retained a dual responsibility its training and tactical
development had literally to be carried on at two levels-for high-
level bombardment and for low-level attack against submarines. This
situation prevented it from concentrating as fully on the anti-U-boat
war as the nature of that conflict required. The system over which
it presided was, moreover, loosely integrated. The Civil Air Patrol
served under the I Air Support Command for operational control.
I Air Support Command, in turn, operated under the control of
I Bomber Command. Units of the Third Air Force, brought in as
an emergency measure t o meet the crisis in the Gulf area in May,
operated under the control of the Gulf Task Force of the I Bomber
Command. And this system, such as it was, as yet did not extend to
the Caribbean, where the Antilles Air Task Force operated inde-
pendently under the Caribbean Sea Frontier. Administratively speak-
ing, the situation was even more complicated because all units were
administered through either the First Air Force or the Third Air
Force, both of which had to go through their respective defense com-
mand headquarters before reaching Headquarters, AAF.e' Within
the Army itself, then, the organization was poorly adapted to meet
the challenge of an opponent that operated with extreme mobility
under a strictly unified command.
Another serious difficulty arose from the fact that the AAF units
were, according to joint agreement, allocated to the sea frontier
commanders. These allocations were treated by the Navy as more
or less permanent arrangements which, except in grave emergency,
would prevent the AAF units serving under one frontier commander
from operating in the territory of another. This tendency to tie
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