Documents / Document
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 CCS and the governments they represented, but initial planning was carried on independently by several staffs. The views of the Eighth Air Force were incorporated in a paper which Spaatz submitted to Arnold, requesting that he recommend it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Spaatz’ plan adapted to the European theater certain features of the new War Department structure, others from the Combined Chiefs of Staff organization. It placed the Army air component in the United Kingdom on a level with that of the British (i.e., Eighth Air Force = RAF; VIII Bomber Command = RAF Bomber Command) ; and while it provided for integral national forces each with its own conventional chain of command, Spaatz proposed that in matters per- taining exclusively to aviation, air commanders be allowed to settle problems directly and “on the spot” with their British opposite members. Arnold approved this scheme in principle, and on the eve of his departure for the London conference of 26 May, suggested that it be co-ordinated with OPD * before it was sent up to the JCS.13s OPD objected to a number of provisions, including the last named, and on 4 June submitted its own counterproposal^.^^^ Before these divergent views came to the attention of the Joint Chiefs, the latter had received from the British Chiefs of Staff Committee a memorandum on the over-all command for the ROUNDUP/SLEDGEHAMMER opera- tions, with several alternative suggestions for control arrangement^.'^^ The Joint Chiefs found no one of these satisfactory, and they felt that the British had wrongly subordinated the main problem-combined machinery for control of the theater-to that of command for what was, after all, only a task force of unusual size. They felt also that the as yet unnamed supreme commander should have some voice in determining his own organi~ation.’~~So it was that final decision was repeatedly postponed through June and July while the Combined Chiefs debated the relative merits of ROUNDUP and TORCH.13g The choice of T O R C H did result in the appointment of General Eisenhower as Allied commander as well as theater commander, but it was to be weeks before the air organization for T O R C H was per- fected. That involved the creation of a new air force, the Twelfth, and the story of its formation may be told more appropriately in * On 23 March 1942, War Plans Division (WPD) of the War Department General Staff had been redesignated Operations Division (OPD). 588
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 863 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.