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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 Invaders”15 pages
T H E A R M Y A I R A R M B E T W E E N T W O W A R S neither independent nor strategic as those terms were already under- stood in 1918.By that time the British Air Ministry had evolved a concept of the use of air power to enforce a decision, independent from or supplementary to the action of armies, through long-range bombardment of selected targets in Germany. Originally evoked by German air raids on London, this policy had gone far beyond mere retaliation. The mission of the Independent Force, as defined by its leader, Trenchard, contemplated nothing less than “the breakdown of the German Army in Germany, its Government, and the crippling of its sources of supply.” With the forces available in 1918,Trenchard’s efforts were perforce limited in scope. Sustained operations against large industrial areas were out of the question. Target selection, in- volving careful appraisal of intelligence, was based on the assumption that scattered raids could slow down production by fostering un- certainty among workers. Thus Trenchard could write that “at present the moral effect of bombing stands undoubtedly to the material effect in a proportion of 2 0 to I.” 73 In 1919Trenchard might have had in the Inter-Allied Independent Air Force sufficient power to give a real test to the concept of air power entertained by the Air Ministry, and in that test the Air Service was to have participated. But because of the failure of the Anglo- American Handley-Page production program the Air Service had experienced flo actual practice in strategic bombardment. Thus, how- ever conversant Mitchell may have been with the activities of Trenchard’s force, his thinking in 1918 seems to have been geared closely to the advance of the ground armies. His boldest plan, a project for a huge airborne operation scheduled for 1919,was designed as a means for reducing infantry casualties in the capture of Metz.‘* In the light of subsequent controversy it is significant that, although Mitchell’s operations had been confined to support of ground troops on a stabilized front, his tactics had been too “independent” for the generals. Of the Meuse-Argonne battle Pershing wrote: “The tend- ency of our air force at first was to attach too much significance to flights beyond the enemy’s lines in an endeavor to interrupt his com- munications,” whereas in battle the proper function of aviation was “to drive off hostile airplanes and procure for the infantry and artillery information concerning the enemy’s movements.” 7 5 When Mitchell published in 192I his first book on air power-Our Air Force: The Keystone of National Defense-he had begun to con- 37
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