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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 1 GYMNAST, and the build-up of the AAF striking force in England. Such changes in scheduled air deployments and the strategy implied thereby were vigorously opposed by the AAF-first by General Arnold in a White House conference on 6 March, and later in a more elaborate statement prepared by the Air Staff and incorporated into the President’s reply.ls In general the Air Staff‘s stand was for con- centration, against dispersal, of forces; specifically, it advocated send- ing minimum reinforcements to the Pacific and Middle East and throwing into England all units previously intended for GYMNAST and MAGNET. This attitude followed that currently entertained by the War Department; essentially based on the strategy of ABC-r as modified a t ARCADIA, Army planning in February and March was more deeply concerned with the Russian front than with possible dangers in the Middle East. The situation on the eastern European front was difficult to evalu- ate in Washington. Early pessimism concerning the Soviets’ chance of survival had been somewhat allayed by their successful defense of Leningrad and Moscow, and by their winter counteroffensive. But it was understood that the German withdrawal had not been the rout described by Moscow, and it seemed highly probable that with spring Hitler would try to finish off the U.S.S.R. before the United States could bring to bear in Europe its full strength. Earlier plans had con- ceived the main American effort as an assault on the continent from bases in the United Kingdom, to be delivered only after a powerful force had been established there and after Germany had been weak- ened by an inten’sive bomber offensive. Now it appeared that the danger of a complete German victory on the eastern front might war- rant a more immediate diversionary invasion of the continent by a smaller force. In America, as in Britain, military strategy could not be divorced entirely from political considerations. Popular demands for a second front in Europe, already strong in England, were becoming increasingly vocal in the United States. For national morale, offensive action on some front was certainly needed. Opponents of the ad- ministration were critical of the evident determination to subordinate rhe Japanese to the European war; ignoring the utter impossibility of getting troops to the Philippines, they coupled demands for the relief of MacArthur with protests against the dispatch of “large” forces to the inactivity of Northern Ireland. The decision to have a go at the Nazis first had been made on sound military grounds, but it required 5 6 2
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