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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.
“Italian Air Force”14 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 against sea power, for a maneuvering ship could be hit only by the most precise bombardment. Mitchell preached accuracy in strategic bombing, but it was against naval craft that he scored his most spec- tacular successes. Until 1926 or later, the Air Service maintained the World War I distinction between day and night bombers as separate types, the former designed for use against ships or tactical targets on land, the latter for strategic objectives.” 179 In 1926 the Air Service Tactical School was still teaching, in respect to the latter: “While under favorable conditions day bombardment may be used, it is in raids on such objectives as these that night bombardment comes into its own.” lSo Within a few years, the same school had gone over to the daylight precision idea. Its instructors had been led on by the logic implicit in their arguments for strategic bombardment,lS1 but their conversion came only as technological improvements gave some realism to the theories. Mitchell, as his critics liked to point out, had scored his hits under ideal conditions-at slow speeds and from low altitudes against defenseless ships a t anchor. Antiaircraft artillery was but lightly re- garded then, but even so it seemed unlikely that in actual combat level bombers could operate with impunity in daylight at altitudes of 3,000 feet or less. Dive bombing, early advocated by Mitchell and funda- mental to Navy tactics, found little support in the Air Corps;1s2 level bombing to be reasonably safe in the face of heavy defenses must be conducted at greater speed and from higher altitudes, and to reach precision standards an improved bombsight was required. In the development of the plane and the bombsight around which Air Corps doctrines were to be built, it was the antishipping role rather than strategic bombing which was the decisive factor. In October 193I, Army observers were greatly impressed with Navy tests against the USS Pittsbzlrg with a new bombsight, the Mark XV. This had been developed by Mr. C.L. Norden, a civilian con- sultant whose earlier models had been in use by the Navy since 1920. The Chief of the Air Corps in 1932 requested the Navy to secure twenty-five Mark X V ’ s for Army use.lSsAir Corps tests in the follow- ing year increased the initial enthusiasm, and seventy-eight additional items were ordered.lS4It is significant that the Mark XV was designed primarily for use against ships in motion and that its superiority over existing Army models (D-I, D-4, C-3) was most keenly appreciated See above, pp. 59-60. 598
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