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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.
“Nevers”44 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 I1 sympathetic disturbances of varying degrees of intensity in all other aspects. Economy of effort requires that each arm attack that phase against which its weapons are most potent.143 6. Modern war with its extravagant material factors places an especial im- portance upon a nation’s economic structure and particularly upon its “industrial web.” A nation may be defeated simply by the interruption of the delicate balance of this complex organization, which is vulnerable to the air arm and directly to neither of the other arms. It is possible that a moral collapse brought about by disturbances in this close-knit web may be sufficient to force an enemy to surrender, but the real target is industry itself, not national morale.144 7. Future wars will begin with air action. This fact makes it necessary to main- tain an adequate air force, since it would be impossible to build one if the enemy ever gained air control over our territory. Conversely we should strike at his industry as early in the war as possible. In such an offensive the chief limiting factors are the range of our planes and the location of our bases; obviously, we must place ourselves within striking distance of the enemy’s vital ~ 0 i n t s . l ~ ~ 8. With the present range of aircraft we cannot strike across the oceans against: any of those powers who are potential enemies. One remedy for that situation is purely technological: we may be able to extend the range of our planes. Another is political: “If we were dragged into a war which had been precipitated by other great powers among themselves, we would inevitably find allies. Those allies, being themselves within the sphere of air influence, could provide operating bases for our Air Force. It is pos- sible, with modern aircraft, to fly direct to such bases from the Western Hemisphere. Thus we could bring our military power to bear at once.. .. Such operations would be initially almost wholly dependent upon sup- plies furnished by our allies.” 146 9. Given such allies and the bases they could furnish, we would have freedom to choose between the enemy’s armed forces and his national structure as a target, and we should designate the latter as the primary objective. An attack against his industrial fabric requires more than random strikes at targets of opportunity, and so “it is a function of peacetime strategy to weigh the war potential of possible enemies and uncover those rela- tively defenseless areas that can be so profitably exploited by our at- tack.” 147 This then was, in essence, the doctrine of air war taught in the Air Corps’ most advanced school a t the time when the GHQ Air Force provided, on paper a t least, a suitable striking force. The influence of Mitchell’s teachings is apparent, but two variations were to be of great significance when World War I1 put the theories to actual test. Mitchell had talked of seizing island bases to extend the range of our striking force; instructors at the ACTS, in a changing political milieu, were looking toward allies, and even in the middle thirties those allies, in addition to our Canadian and Latin-American friends, could have
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