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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.
“Cairo”26 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 suggested to Arnold that one group of heavy bombers be sent to Egypt, even though it was realized that this reinforcement could be made only by borrowing from Task Force BR.’” Arnold had declined the request, and it was then agreed that the one group of heavies set up for CAIRO was to go out only after the initial BR increment.” O n z z February the British chiefs of staff proposed to the CCS a new “Policy for Disposition of US and British Air Forces.” l6 This memorandum greatly extended the scope of diversions from earlier agreements. T h e United States was asked to provide additional air strength for the Pacific, to conduct bomber operations from China against Japan, to assist the British with heavy bombers in the Burma- Indian Ocean theater and, if necessary, in the Middle East. Since these commitments could be met only by utilizing the two heavy bombardment groups scheduled for the AAF bomber command in the British Isles, it was suggested that for the present the RAF would assume sole responsibility for the air offensive against Ger- many, with the AAF joining in “at the earliest dates practicable.” T h e air deployments recommended in this memorandum received strong support in a long cable from Churchill to Roosevelt, delivered on 5 March, in which the Prime Minister reviewed gravely, almost pessimistically, the current strategic situation.“ T h e immediate pros- pect was indeed gloomy. T h e Japs had swept southward with hardly a check. Malaya was gone. The Netherlands East Indies and Burma, already invaded, were doomed. T h e Indian Ocean was open to Jap- anese warships and aircraft, and India itself was in danger. Rommel was building up his forces for another push toward the Nile, and the dreaded Axis pincers movement with a junction somewhere east of Suez seemed an imminent possibility. T h e additional threat of a Nazi thrust to the Caucasus in summer, and thence to meet the Japanese in India, made of the Middle East a crucial area. T h e British public, disappointed that promised victories in Egypt had been turned into defeats, had been profoundly shocked by the bold escape from Brest of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on 1 2 February and by the fall of Singapore on the r5th, and Churchill’s government was under bitter criticism. It is little wonder that the Prime Minister had lost something of his confident tone of ARCADIA days and had for the moment less concern for the war in northwestern Europe than in dis- tant parts of the empire. To gain additional air support for Australia, Burma, India, and Egypt, he was willing to postpone MAGNET, 561
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