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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.
“Churchill”21 pages
P L A N S , P O L I C I E S , A N D O R G A N I Z A T I O N the recommendations of the Anglo-American staffs that the principal war effort should be exerted first against Germany. The corollary proposal, that “U.S. Army air bombardment units [would] operate offensively in collaboration with the Royal Air Force, primarily against German Military Power at its source,”l was accepted as the AAF’s first and most important mission outside the Western Hemisphere. When the President and Mr. Churchill met with their military staffs in the ARCADIA conference they were still deter- mined, “in spite of recent events,” to knock Germany out of the war first. But any decision in respect to the bomber offensive had to be made with a cautious eye on the immediate situation in the Pacific.” At the first session of the conference, the two chiefs of state agreed informally and tentatively that AAF heavy bombardment units should be sent to England according to earlier designs.* When that agreement was formally adopted by the Anglo-American chiefs of staff on 1 3 January 1942, the phrasing ran simply that “the move- ment of US Army Air Forces to the UK should proceed as soon as forces and shipping become available so as to increase the weight of attack on Germany.” The date of deployment and the size of the force would depend upon a complex of factors, many of them rooted in the Pacific war. This meant, then, a delay of indeterminate length in the fulfilment of any long-term plan built, as had been AWPD/I, around a huge bomber force in England. It meant also scrapping earlier estimates of more immediate deployments. ABC- I had called for thirty-two AAF squadrons in the United Kingdom in 1941; the original RAINBOW No. 5 tables listed four groups of bombers and three of pursuits, to which an additional bombardment group was added in the revised tables of 19 November.“ T h e Air Staff would have preferred a more flexible and realistic commitment-“Those air forces as dictated by circumstance” ‘-but in any event it had been presumed that a t outbreak of war, or even before, a substantial air contingent should be sent to the British Isles. Now that war had come, there were more pressing needs. The British naturally were interested in the projected bomber force, but were anxious that it be provided without jeopardy to current allocation of heavy bombers to the RAF.6 N o immediate cut was contemplated; and on I January, General Arnold told Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal that it might be possible to send two See above, pp. 136-49,237-39. 559
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