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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
R O U E N - S O T T E V I L L E N O . I from the United Kingdom, aimed at Germany’s war potential, had been envisaged in the early war plans as a prerequisite to the invasion of Europe and the ultimate defeat of Germany. T h e USAAF had contended consistently that given adequate forces they could, in co- operation with the RAF, carry out such an offensive and do it, more- over, so effectively that an assault on Festung Europa could be accomplished with the least possible loss in men and ground ma- t e ~ i e l . ~ ~But it was clear that to do so the AAF would need aircraft in unprecedented numbers. This meant, in effect, a top-if not an over- riding-priority for the air program in American war p r o d u ~ t i o n . ~ ~ But the higher authorities, faced with the problem of adapting limit- less demands to resources that were strictly limited, had of necessity to allot priorities carefully and in accordance with very long-term strategic plans. If the air program was to be implemented in full, clearly the programs of the Ground Forces and the Navy could not be. And in the summer of 1942 it was anything but a foregone con- clusion that the weapons of air power should be given precedence over those items-tanks and battleships, for example-which carried with them the reassuring weight of military tradition. Here again it was up to the exponents of air power to demonstrate the feasibility of strategic bombardment. Thus, both strategic and logistical planning, insofar as they in- volved air power, depended to a great, possibly even to a decisive, degree on the ability of the Allied air forces to prove that they could bomb Germany successfully. With reference to the USAAF, in particular, since it had become committed to a policy of bombing precision targets in daylight from high altitudes, long-range planning depended on the ability of the Eighth Air Force to show that it could do the job and do it economically enough to make it a practicable operation of war. So far, the confidence of American and British air- men in the soundness of their strategic and tactical doctrines arose out of deep faith in the potentialities of air power rather than from an adequate store of experience. T h e German effort to cripple Britain in 1940-41 had demonstrated what ought not to be done rather than what might reasonably be expected from strategic bombardment. O n the other hand, the subsequent bombing of Germany by the RAF had as yet been conducted on a scale too limited and in a manner too specialized to answer conclusively the opponents of air power. As for 667
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