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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.
“Churchill”21 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 all planes-forty-nine B-I 7's, eighty P-38's, and fifty-two C-47's- would proceed to Presque Isle, where they would be organized for the movement into squadrons of three flights each, each flight to comprise two elements, and each element to consist of one B-17 and four P-38's. The B-17's not required for escort under this arrangement also would make the flight in small elements.14' The hardy C-47, as befitted its mission, in addition to getting itself to England, would carry a cargo of freight. The first planes, eighteen B-I~'s,took off from Presque Isle on 2 3 June for Goose Bay, where before the day was over all of the big bombers had come in.148Three days later these planes left for BLUIE W E S T I and 8, but only nine reached their destination safely, six having turned back to Goose Bay and the other three having been forced down along the coast of Greenland. The crews of the wrecked bombers were all saved, but weather and communications were fully revealed as the major difficulties governing the use of the route. Also on 2 3 June the first flights of P-38's safely negotiated the initial leg from Presque Isle to Goose Bay. Additional flights proceeded, as weather and other circumstances permitted, without mishap until I 5 July, when six P-38's and two B-17's came down on the ice cap on the eastern coast of Greenland. For this misfortune, which all crews survived, unfavor- able weather and misleading directional broadcasts by the enemy were blamed."g O n I July, the first American-operated tactical aircraft to reach the United Kingdom by air in World War 11-B-17 No. 19085- landed a t P r e ~ t w i c k . ~ ~ ~Twenty-six days later, Col. Newton Long- fellow brought into the British terminal the last planes of this first BOLERO air movement.151The AAF had estimated that losses would run as high as 10 per cent;152 yet despite extremely unfavorable weather which seriously delayed the mo~ement,"~it had been accom- plished with the loss of few planes and with no serious injury to any of the personnel engaged in it. A second movement followed hard upon the first, so close, in fact, as already to suggest the parallel of a pipeline extending from Presque Isle to Prestwick. The ground echelons of the 92d and 301st Bom- bardment Groups (H), of the 14th Fighter Group, and of the 64th Troop Carrier Group had moved to the port of embarkation in July and left for the United Kingdom late that month and in early Simultaneously, their air echelons moved into a north- eastern concentration area preparatory to a take-off from Presque 644
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