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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.
“King”32 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 1 the US.Navy in the Coral Sea, and the attack from over the Owen Stanley range, just inaugurated by the Japanese army, was soon to boomerang in the Allied drive for Buna. In New Guinea, then, and in the Solomons where the Marines had landed on 7 August, the Papuan and Guadalcanal campaigns were just ushering in the second phase of the Pacific war-that of limited and local offensives which might put American forces in position to initiate later the long drive northward. This order of things was not of our choosing; it stemmed from the complete success of the initial Japanese attacks. Prewar decisions to concentrate first against Germany had been based on the assump- tion that Japanese forces could be contained by a strategic defensive; the simultaneous destruction of Allied sea and air striking forces had gravely altered the situation. Hence, though Anglo-American strategists could reaffirm in general terms their earlier view of the paramount importance of Germany, they found it necessary to divert to the Pacific a heavy share of the immediately available air strength, with all that implied in shipping and logistical support. This reversal in priorities, though temporary, inexorably retarded the air effort in Europe-and so it was that the bomber campaign against Germany, conceived in 1941as America’s first offensive against the Axis, limped into action some thirty-six weeks after war began. In the meanwhile, however, preparation for the air war against Germany had gone on, somewhat hampered by successive reappraisals of over-all strategy. It is with those preparations and their first fruits that this section is concerned. The present chapter deals largely with plans-the general strategy, the mission of the Army Air Forces therein, and the means by which its leaders proposed to accomplish that mission. The following chapter will describe the actual estab- lishment in the United Kingdom of the Eighth Air Force and its logistical support. And finally, that this volume need not close with- out a t least one blow against Germany, the last chapter will tell the story of the first AAF bombardment mission over western Europe. The Bonzber Offensive in World Strategy When the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, the Army Air Forces was shunting air units to the Pacific in a desperate effort to bolster U.S. defenses in the Far East. But during most of 1941 the Air Staff in its planning had followed, enthusiastically and with few misgivings, 5 5 8
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