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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 A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I I against the U-boat at sea. Patrol and hunting operations had time and again proved futile, he asserted. T h e “killer” system, whereby contact with a submarine is followed continuously and relentlessly, required more vessels and planes than were available. The only way he believed it possible to eliminate the U-boat menace was to wipe out the German building yards and bases-“a matter which I have been pressing with the British, so far with only moderate success.’) * But even this form of offensive strategy would do little more toward making the Atlantic safe for Allied shipping than a complete system of convoy cover and escort could achieve.“ H e therefore proposed extending and intensifying the convoy sys- tem as the most effective step toward reducing the submarine menace. Specifically, he urged the Army to make available as air cover for escorted convoys a total of 500 planes, 2 0 0 of which should be deployed in the Caribbean and Panama Sea frontiers, where the convoy system was being extended in order to protect the vital oil and bauxite shipping from South America. These 500 planes, he felt, were a bare minimum, but they would effectively supplement the total of 5 5 0 patrol and 300 observation planes the Navy hoped to employ in the four western Atlantic sea On 7 July 1942, in a memorandum to the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of War reopened the question of antisubmarine or- ganization with a fresh proposal. H e called attention to the increasing rate of shipping losses and to the current antisubmarine effort which, he said, had proved “largely ineffective.” The trouble, he continued, lay primarily in an inefficient system of command and control with regard to ASV-equipped aircraft: Authority and responsibility is at present divided between many commands and echelons of command. The flow of communications through so many channels inevitably consumes time and effort and interferes with the most effective employment of the forces available. Centralized control to enable the instant concentration of available forces at points of major threat is re- quired. This situation has assumed such a critical aspect that drastic measures should be taken immediately.*6 In order, therefore, to provide a greater degree of flexibility “than appears to exist under the Naval District system and our Eastern De- fense Command set-up,)’ and to take advantage of the mobility of ’It may be noted in this connection that from October 1942 until June 1943 the Eighth Air Force had as its objective of highest priority the bombing of German submarine shore facilities. 548
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