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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.
“Williams Air Force Base”12 pages
T H E E I G H T H A I R F O R C E gated to him by General Chaney. Before Pearl Harbor, his activities had been conditioned largely by deployment plans stipulated in the W a r Department strategic plan RAINBOW No. 5 and by the im- plications of air lend-lease. Preliminary and necessarily tentative plans, made in consultation with British officials, had centered on such questions as the accommodation of American air units, the training of AAF technical personnel by the RAF, and the establishment of US.-managed depots to service the RAF’s American-built planes. T h e progress made toward a common understanding of some of the more fundamental problems greatly facilitated collaboration between the air arms of the two nations after December 1941. As early as February 1942,the British Air Ministry had prepared for its guidance a comprehensive statement of policy and procedure which was circulated under the title of Joint Organization and Main- tenance (United States). This document provided a sound foundation for Anglo-American co-operation in the establishment of the Eighth Air Force, and was kept current through the ensuing years by a series of amendments shaped in conferences between British and American officials. Its constructive contribution to a solution of the problems involved in receiving, accommodating, and servicing an American air force was promptly supplemented by the practice of establishing special sections within the major divisions of the Air Ministry for handling American question^.^^ Recognizing the tremendous impor- tance of the effort to build a great American air force in the United Kingdom, the Air Ministry prepared to play its part by the most care- ful and detailed planning. General Eaker’s bomber command plan of 2 0 March contributed a further clarification of the problems to be faced. Setting forth an “Ideal Method” that would have required the development of an independent system of supply and maintenance, complete with base depots, before the initiation of combat operations, the plan recog- nized that a consequent postponement of our active participation in the European air war until the end of 1942 could hardly be coun- tenanced. T h e alternative, which called for extensive use of British facilities and assistance at the outset, on the other hand, would permit an earlier inauguration of operations against the enemy and the build- ing of an American logistical organization concurrently with their d e ~ e l o p m e n t . ~ ~There was of course little room for debate. Indeed, 629
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