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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.
“R.G.”33 pages
C H A P T E R 16 * * * * * * * * * * * PLANS, POLICIES, A N D ORGANIZATION N THE Pacific, the air war began with the surprise attack on Oahu. The Japanese, for reasons sufficiently cogent, had chosen I to launch the attack in the quiet of a December Sunday morning.It was sudden, all-out war. Within a matter of hours, or at most of a few days, American air forces in Hawaii and the Philippines were all but annihilated. In the European theater, the AAF went to war more deliberately, choosing the Fourth of July, 1942, as an appropriate day to strike. It was only a token blow-six Eighth Air Force light bomber crews flying borrowed Bostons in an RAF routine sweep against enemy airfields." During the seven months which had intervened since Pearl Harbor, the AAF's war against Germany had been confined to antisubmarine patrols. In the Pacific, pilots had become veterans and combat units had burned out before the first sortie was flown over the European continent. When, on 1 7 August, the Eighth Air Force dispatched the initial U.S. bombardment mission against occu- pied France, t the first phase of the Pacific war had run its course. The Jap, in a series of rapid thrusts, had reached his widest perimeter. He had been checked in the Coral Sea, defeated decisively at Mid- way, and had pulled back from his feint at Dutch Harbor to hibernate on Attu and Kiska. H e had conquered northern Burma, cutting the road to China; but already the Tenth Air Force with its newly formed China Air Task Force had begun the long struggle to maintain an air link with China. Port Moresby, key to the defense of northeastern Australia, had been saved from amphibious assault by the success of * See below, pp. 658-59. t See below, pp. 661-64. 557
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