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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 Wash”17 pages
T H E B A T T L E O F T H E A T L A N T I C What gave particular point to these arguments was the radical divergence in strategic policy existing between the AAF and the Navy with regard to the employment of land-based antisubmarine aviation. That difference in concept helps explain both why the AAF was concerned to create an antisubmarine coastal command of its own, and why it hoped to secure an interpretation of the Navy’s operational control in terms comparable to those governing RAF Coastal Command. Almost from the beginning, the question had arisen whether aircraft of the AAF should be employed defensively, that is, primarily for the protection of convoys, or as a mobile striking force capable of carrying the battle to the enemy wherever he might be hunting. Naval doctrine emphasized the basically defensive functions of con- voy escort and the patrol of more or less fixed sectors of the coastal waters. In June, Admiral King expressed the official Navy position on this point with the utmost clarity in a letter to General Marshall dated the ~ 1 s t :“I might say in this connection that escort is not just one way of handling the submarine menace; it is the only way that gives any promise of success. . . . W e must get every ship that sails the seas under constant close protection.” 6 5 AAF students of the problem expressed an equally marked preference for the offensive. Defensive measures, they maintained, while essential to the immediate task of protecting shipping and for that reason deserving a high priority, could never dispose of the U-boat menace but must be supplemented by a vigorous offensive campaign in which the strategic movement of the submarine fleet could be promptly countered by a corresponding shift in the weight of air attack. Admittedly, the airplane as it was equipped in the summer of 1942 lacked the killing power necessary to destroy many submarines. But it was improving; and in the meantime, it possessed great searching power by means of which it could render an area unprofitable for the enemy to work. Whenever a sinking occurred or the presence of a submarine was detected, long-range planes should be sent to the spot for intensive search, a policy which required a highly mobile force.s6 Here again RAF Coastal Command lent the support of its experience. Air Marshal P.B. Joubert, when asked in August 1942 for a statement of the principles upon which his command operated and to which it owed its success, replied in part that “while a certain amount of close escort of convoys, particularly when threatened, is a necessary feature 545
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