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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.
“R.G.”33 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 the bomber offensive was viewed by most members of the Anglo- American chiefs of staff committees as a means by which the German war machine could be trimmed down to size. Strategic bombardment, then, was a form of attrition to be used simultaneously with others- the blockade, economic pressure through neutrals, subversive activi- ties, psychological warfare, and commando raids.15’ Developed in 1940 by the British, this concept of war was grounded in realistic appraisal of current capabilities. British manpower was pitifully weak in comparison with that of Axis and satellite nations, and imperial policies dictated a wide dispersal of forces as well as an impregnable defense of the home islands. Materiel losses sustained in the Battle of France had hardly been recouped by 1941,and a return to the con- tinent in that year was unthinkable. The strategy was sanctioned, too, by ancient tradition. For centuries England in her European wars had relied on the Royal Navy, a small professional army, and the land forces of allies. In 1914-18 that tradition had been broken; large citizen armies had fought in France and Belgium, and the losses had been appalling. That experience had strongly affected British military thought between the wars,152and lessons drawn therefrom seemed painfully substantiated by the fortunes of the British Expeditionary Force in 1940. The new strategy, then, was but a return to the old, with Bomber Command thrown in as the only offensive weapon. Even during the Battle of Britain, Churchill could tell the House of Commons that “there seems to be every reason to believe that this new kind of war is well suited to the genius and the resources of the British nation and the British Empire and that, once we get properly equipped and properly started, a war of this kind will be more favor- able to us than the sombre mass slaughters of the Somme and Pas- schendaele.”’53 It was in accordance with this view that heavy bombers had been given, next to the requirements for home security, highest priority in the British production program;154 and that Bomber Command had stepped up the tempo of the operations begun on a modest scale in the summer of 1940. So when Hitler’s attack on the U.S.S.R. reduced the imbalance of forces, the new situation was viewed as an aid to current strategy rather than as an invitation to open a second front. This attitude is epitomized in a remark attributed to Air Minister Sir Archibald Sinclair, to the effect that “our two mightiest weapons are the Russian army and the RAF.” 1 5 5 It is significant that this strategy had evolved before there was any 5 9 2
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