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
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 another volume." But in the meantime, before the diversion to Africa had won out over ROUNDUP, the Eighth Air Force had been incorporated into the theater command system. On 8 June the European Theater of Operations was established by presidential directive and General Chaney, as commanding general of USAFBI, was designated as commander of all U.S. forces therein. His mission was to make preparation for and to carry on military operations against the Axis powers in the European theater in accord- ance with strategical directives issued by the Combined Chiefs of Staff and through the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army.14' No specific reference was made to the air arm, but on 10 June Arnold sent to Eisenhower, and to Chaney and other commanders in the United Kingdom a description of the AAF's current concept of the air force organization for BOLERO during the period before the formation of the invasion task Substantially, this repeated the ideas ex- pressed by Spaatz in May. Arnold expressed confidence that Chaney was "in full accord" with these views, but that was now a matter of little import. General Chaney's incumbency in his new office was brief-hardly more than an honorific reward for a year of service in England. H e left for the States on 2 0 June 14' to serve successively in several posts in the Zone of the Interior, and to finish the war as island commander of Iwo Jima. On V-J Day, probably few Arner- icans remembered that General Chaney had once held, in another island, what was potentially the most important command in any theater. At any rate, it was left for his successor to establish the Eighth Air Force within the ETO structure. When Generals Eisenhower and Spaatz arrived in London, they each bore a guide for that task in the form of their respective letters of instruction. Spaatz had received verbal instructions from Arnold and his letter was brief; dealing exclusively with channels of com- munication, it authorized direct correspondence between Spaatz and Arnold, Spaatz and Lord Louis Mountbatten (as chief of combined operations), and between the Eighth Air Force intelligence section and the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, A-2, in W a ~ h i n g t o n . ' ~ ~Eisen- hower's letter, more detailed, constituted the real directive under which the AAF was to operate in the United Kingdom.14' All air units initially based there were to be integrated into the Eighth Air Force. General Spaatz as commander was to have his own headquar- * Volume 11. 5 89
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.