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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.
“Natal”13 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 Atlantic Current policy was dictated by the concentra- tion of profitable targets within easy range in the Ruhr, by the tie-in between the blockade and the increased strain on inland transporta- tion, and by the small force of bombers then available. The British professed, on humanitarian and military grounds alike, a distaste for indiscriminate bombing of nonmilitary targets; but they laid great stress on the effect of bombardment on civilian morale. They did not hope to frighten Germany into surrender, though they did believe the civilian temper less staunch there than in England; rather, they expected that the interruption of normal patterns of civilian life in- cident to prolonged bombardment would eventually disrupt German war industry. T o attack congested transportation centers surrounded by sprawl- ing factory districts, they chose area rather than pinpoint bombing, and stray bombs-“overs” and “shorts”-were absorbed by adjacent residential districts. Because targets thus defined were large, and more importantly because German defense was rugged, attacks were de- livered at night from medium or high altitudes. Bomber Command was proving that its Stirlings and Manchesters (as later its Lancasters and Halifaxes) could deliver a heavy load of bombs in the general vicinity of a transportation-industrial complex without prohibitive losses. In view of lower costs of construction, the greater bomb load, and the smaller crew demanded, the night bomber seemed more eco- nomical than the day. The clinching argument was the factor of lower operational losses. Even before the war, RAF preference had run to night tactics for strategic bombardment, an attitude which must have influenced the design of British planes. Wartime experience had strengthened this view. The English, for all their stout reaction to the air blitz, had a healthy respect for the psychological effects of area bombing. They knew also the heavy cost of daylight bomber operations against con- stantly improved defenses, both from their defeat of the Luftwaffe in 1940 and from their own missions over the ~ 0 n t i n e n t . l ~ ~The RAF continued to deliver small daylight attacks against precision targets, but these were exceptional. The low-level raid on a Diesel engine factory at Augsburg on 1 7 April 1942 may be cited as an exarn~1e.I~~ Success in hitting a vitally important target may have justified the loss of seven out of twelve Lancasters dispatched, but the percentage was too high for routine practice. So while the British were willing to 596
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