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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.
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 the latter policy had in effect already been adopted, as General Eaker well understood. It had been decided in December 1941that American bomber units, a t least initially, would be based in the general area of Huntingdon and East Anglia, a section of England lying above London and known to Americans chiefly as a principal source of the Puritan emigration to New England in the seventeenth century. Because of the time required for the construction of airdromes and their fundamental importance to any plan for combined operations, the British and American staffs had given the question consideration at an early date. According to information used by the American Air Staff in August I 94 I , when it was engaged in the drafting of AWPD/ I , there would be available for American use after the RAF had reached maximum strength 105 airdromes for bombers and 2 5 for pursuit planes.s6 Told of the scale of operations contemplated by the Americans, the RAF notified the AAF in the following December that airdrome accom- modations for 2 , 3 0 0 American heavy bombers could be made ready by June 1943." American officers had undertaken in October and November a survey of airfields proposed for our use in the United Kingdom, where a total of 1 5 airdromes-8 in England, 2 in Scotland, and 5 in Northern Ireland-were earmarked for American use by the RAF." In December, plans finally narrowed the selection of air- dromes to be prepared for the first American bomber units to 8 fields then under construction for No. 8 Group of RAF Bomber Command in the Huntingdon area.ss Though not completed until well into 1942, they were ready to receive the American flyers in June. While the construction of bases proceeded, Generals Arnold and Eaker raised the question of the advisability of locating the American forces in the more northerly region of Yorkshire. There the bombers would be closer to projected supply and maintenance facilities in the neighborhood of Liverpool. In addition to the saving on transporta- tion, Arnold and Eaker felt that the York area possibly offered greater room for expansion.goThe suggestion received some support among responsible officers of the RAF, but it would have involved readjustment of plans to which considerable commitments already had been made and a sacrifice of advantages to be derived from the close proximity of the American and British bomber commands. Accordingly, by early May the question had been definitely decided in favor of the Huntingdon area.g1 In this area and adjacent parts of 630
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