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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.
“The Wash”17 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 air forces. But whereas the W a r Department had been able to deter- mine the official pronouncements on employment of air forces as it had the organizational structure, the Air Corps had also developed its own combat doctrines. Long considered heretical, these doctrines were to be accepted as orthodox in World War 11, and their develop- ment therefore should be described briefly here. Army air doctrine, like the Army air arm itself, had started from scratch in April 1917.Poorly equipped and limited in tactical experi- ence to a not-too-glorious chase of Pancho Villa through northern Mexico, the Aviation Section had previously found little incentive to formulate combat principles for a handful of obsolete planes. Ameri- cans had followed eagerly the highly publicized exploits in France of individual aces and of the Lafayette Escadrille, but the revolutionary implications of the new weapon were but dimly appreciated. In June 19 I 7 requests for the large appropriation for aviation were bolstered by loose talk about “blinding the beast’s eyes” and of a plan for “driv- ing the German fliers out of the air and maintaining a constant raiding patrol [to] tear up the enemy’s communication line.’’ 6 5 But the plain truth is that Americans, whether in the Aviation Section or out, had no definite idea of how to accomplish those laudable ends-nor did they know whether there were other ends still more desirable. Writing in 1920, General Mitchell contrasted the situation of the older military arms, possessed of a rich tradition and accepted stra- tegical and tactical doctrines, with that of the Air Service: “All of our fighting tactics, methods of operation, organization, traditions, and cohesion had been evolved and developed on the European battle- fields.” 6 6 T h e initial lessons, he frankly admitted, had come from the Allies, and it is highly significant that the Air Service, with few pre- conceived ideas on aerial combat, had arrived in France a t a time when many of the basic principles of air power were beginning to emerge in articulate form. American aviators, proving apt pupils, had modified the original lessons in light of their own problems and combat experi- ence and, by Armistice time, had developed reasonably clear ideas of what they wanted to do in the air and how they proposed to do it. While war lasted, there had been little time to reduce those ideas to formalized doctrines, but Air Service veterans returning to the States in 1919 had distilled the fruits of their experience into training manuals which were already under revision when Mitchell wrote.’? T h e po- tentialities of air power had been sensed rather than tested in 1918, 34
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