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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.
“Independence Day”9 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 the British. This plan provided for the ultimate occupation of five areas, each of fifteen airdromes, in the region extending eastward from Huntingdonshire through East Anglia."O The shortage of British labor had made necessary the provision of American aviation engineer battalions. They were slow in arriving and sometimes came without their equipment, but a similar delay in the build-up of combat units served to prevent the development of any immediate crisis.180As construction at Langford Lodge and Warton fell behind schedule, Burtonwood assumed increasing importance and some of Lockheed's civilian recruits went to work there on their arrival in July pending the completion of facilities in In addition to Burtonwood, there were now added three small special depots for Chemical War- fare and Ordnance at near-by Poynton, at Sharnbrook in Hunting- donshire, and at Barnham in East Anglia. Still dependent largely on storage space made available temporarily at RAF stations, the Eighth in July refigured its long-range requirements at 4,000,000 square feet, much of it to be provided through the new depot construction pro- gram.lSz Of immediate concern was the question of advance air depots for the bomber sector. It had been proposed in June that one mobile air depot should be established for every three operational airdromes, and early in July, General Spaatz, on the basis of the currently anticipated flow of combat units, was thinking in terms of twenty mobile depots for the entire air force.lS3 It was decided in August, however, to impose a heavier burden on the individual airdromes and the base depots, and on the suggestion of General Frank it was decided to provide only three advance depots, two for the bomber command and one for the fighter command, with the additional pro- vision of such genuinely mobile depots as might be required during intensive periods of pera at ion.^^' The service command selected Honington and Watton, both in East Anglia, as sites for the bomber areas; a final decision in the case of the fighter command awaited settlement of the more fundamental question of its mission and Thus the advance air depots which in 1943 became a func- tioning part of the Eighth Air Force were considerably larger than the traditional mobile air depot on which they originally had been patterned. It will be readily apparent that in August 1942,while great progress had been made over the preceding six months toward the establish- 650
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