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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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 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 in Hawaii, where the only likely bombardment targets were enemy ships.ls5 In keeping with regular procurement policies which sought to secure alternate sources of supply, the Air Corps let contracts with the Sperry Gyroscope Company in 1933 for other improved models, the C-3X and C-4.ls6 With the successful tests of the B-17 in 1935, the Air Corps had the materiel prerequisites for precision bombardment: a long-range plane of unusual stamina capable of flying above the effective range of flak, and bombsights of unrivaled accuracy. The relatively small bomb load of the plane enhanced the need for accuracy. During the next few years, tactical procedures were refined, with special emphasis on pattern bombing from tight formations. And as the GHQ Air Force shifted its interest more and more toward counterair activities and industrial objectives, tactics originated for strikes a t shipping were adapted to land objectives. Scores achieved in training were impres- sive. This accuracy was exaggerated in the legend of “pickle-barrel” bombing which arose during that period, to the later discomfiture of the AAF. But the results were clearly superior to those obtained by European air forces during the first two years of war, a fact which seems to have been accepted by the RAF. The moot point in AAF- RAF debates was whether comparable accuracy could be maintained, within acceptable attrition rates, under combat conditions in the ETO. The issue was squarely faced in AWPD/I. According to the de- tailed analysis of the bomber campaign against Germany contained in that plan, the AAF was to avoid to the extent possible diversionary operations of the sort which were weakening Bomber Command’s offensive, T h e full weight of American attacks should be concen- trated against a limited number of designated targets: l S 7 Intermediate Objectives: Primary Objectives: 3 0 aircraft and light-metals industries 5 0 electric power plants 47 transportation centers 2 7 petroleum and synthetic oil industries -‘54 Some of the objectives listed were already under night attack by the RAF, but to AWPD they appeared as precision targets to be de- stroyed by approved AAF methods. Only when the industrial fabric of Germany began to crack should the AAF turn to area bombing of cities for morale purposes.188 599
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