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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.
“Pacific Ocean”16 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 demonstrate the necessity of a preparedness program for our air force.” * The present history has no such dogmatic aim. Its authors believe with one of the wisest military leaders of our generation that “in our democracy where the government is truly an agent of the popular will, military policy is dependent on public opinion” and that the historian can render “the most essential service in determining the public policy relating to National Defense.” But they have taken to heart also his warning that historians “have been inclined to record victories and gloss over the mistakes and wasteful sacrifices” and that it is very important that the true facts, the causes and consequences that make our military history, should be matters of common knowl- edge.” t The present authors make no claims to have succeeded in following this counsel of perfection, but they have tried to set down as they have understood it the story of the Army air arm for the people to whom that arm belongs. This book, then, may be considered as a final report to the American public on the activities of the AAF in World War 11. It is not an official report in the ordinary sense of that term-one to which the Air Staff necessarily subscribes in all its details and final conclusions. Rather it is the report of a group of professionally trained historians who during the war enjoyed an unusual opportunity for access to the files of the AAF while those files were still active, and who since the termination of hostilities have received the co-operation of Head- quarters, United States Air Force, in plans to provide for the American public a comprehensive account of their findings. It is pertinent, there- fore, to include here a brief account of the historical program of which this history is an end product and to tell something about the back- ground of the book and its authors. After the United States entered World War 11, the Army Air Forces was among the first organizations to display an active interest in maintaining a historical record. The first hectic months after Pearl Harbor left little time in a military headquarters for consideration of anything beyond the ways and means of meeting each successive emergency call. But in June 1942 the Chief of the Air Staff directed that a professional historian be secured for the preparation of “a run- < c * * H. A. Toulmin, Air Service, AEF, 1918 (New York, 1 9 2 7 ) ~Foreword,. p. v. +‘‘National Organization for War,” an address before the joint meeting of the American Military Institute and the American Historical Association, Washington, 28 Dec. 1939, in Selected Speeches and Stntements of General of the Army George C. Marshall, ed. Maj. H. A. DeWeerd (Washington, 1945), pp. 35-39. viii
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