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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 F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1 ( I S ~ O ) , Mitchell gave what is perhaps the clearest statement of his doctrine. H e starts with a familiar concept: War is the attempt of one nation to impress its will on another nation by force after all other means of arriving at an adjustment of a dispute have failed. The attempt of one combatant, therefore, is to so control the vital centers of the other that it will be powerless to defend itself. The vital areas consist of cities where the people live, areas where their food and supplies are produced and the transport lines that carry these supplies from place to place.98 So far he has followed Clausewitz, but he now breaks sharply with the latter’s thought. Armies and navies were developed as a means of pre- venting an enemy from getting a t those vital spots, and war had be- come largely a matter of attacking the enemy’s military forces, a slow and bloody affair since the machine gun had given so great an ad- vantage to the defense. [But the] advent of air power which can go straight to the vital centers and entirely neutralize or destroy them has put a completely new complexion on the old system of war. It is now realized that the hostile main army in the field is a false objective and the real objectives are the vital centers. The old theory that victory meant the destruction of the hostile main army, is untenable. Armies themselves can be disregarded by air’power if a rapid strike is made against the opposing centers, because a greatly superior army numerically is at the mercy of an air force inferior in n ~ m b e r . 9 ~ Hence, in any future war “aircraft will project the spear point of the nation’s offensive and defensive power against the vital centers of the opposing country.”1ooIn spite of its horror the new weapon would humanize war. “The result of warfare by air will be to bring about quick decisions. Superior air power will cause such havoc, or the threat of such havoc, in the opposing country that a long drawn out campaign will be impossible.” A strong air force in being would discourage any potential assailants, but “woe be to the nation that is weak in the air.” lo* There is no need here to assess the merits of Mitchell’s theories; such a critique properly should follow rather than precede a narrative ac- count of World War II.lo3That Mitchell’s missionary zeal led him to exaggerate the potentialities of she airplane of the 1920’s is apparent from even a cursory analysis of his books. But he wrote no Buck Rogers literature; his theories were grounded in sound technological knowledge and wide personal experience. It was precisely in those areas in which his own experience and that of his time was inadequate that his ideas were to prove least tenable. H e was not alone in underrat- 42
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