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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 Wash”17 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 raphy of the British Isles and adjacent areas, and the vagaries of the weather over the Channel and the North Sea. Some had hoped that this familiarization process might be completed in a couple of weeks. As it happened, however, crews arrived in the United Kingdom with inadequate experience in almost all essential skills. Their training had consequently to be completed in the theater at the expense of an extra two weeks’ delay.2 The 97th Bombardment Group under Lt. Col. Cornelius W. Cousland, the first of the heavy bomber units to arrive in the United Kingdom, had focused on it the attention and hopes of all those most concerned with the projected day bomber offensive. Regret- fully, General Spaatz had decided to send it to the theater as soon as it was organized and equipped and sufficiently trained to negotiate the ferry route. The advisability of getting its crews into the United Kingdom outweighed the desirability of more thorough training before d e p a r t ~ r e . ~But this meant that crews arrived with little or no experience in high-altitude flying. Pilots and co-pilots had received little instruction in flying formations at any altitude, to say nothing of maintaining tight formations at the extreme altitudes planned for day bomber missions. Many of the radio operators could neither send nor receive the Morse code. Worse yet, the gunners proved to be almost completely unfamiliar with their equipment. Many of them had had little or no opportunity to shoot at aerial targets, and several had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency was especially disturbing to the Eighth Air Force experts because they felt sure that the ability of the heavy bombers to destroy enemy targets by daylight without prohibitive loss would depend in large part on their ability to defend themselves against enemy fighters4 Warned in advance of this state of affairs, General Eaker’s VIII Bomber Command headquarters had taken steps to set up a co- ordinated training program covering all aspects of bomber opera- tions, but concentrating especially on formation flying, bombing, and gunnery. In order to prepare for intensive gunnery training, it had procured gunnery range facilities, expert liaison officers, and a few tow-target planes from the British and had sent one officer to study British methods of gunnery instruction. These preparations made it possible to start work on the tactical units as soon as they arrived. But the deficiency in gunnery was not a thing that could be overcome 656
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