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The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

Air Force Historical Studies Office · 863 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

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“United Press”36 pages

  • p. 2 THE UNIVERSITYOF CHICAGOPRESS, CHICAGO8 LONDON The University of Toronto Press, Toronto 5, Canada Copyright 1948 by…
  • p. 48 …An Associated Press dispatch of 10 October gave a contemporary judgment of the importance of this…
  • p. 55 …Air Service (Corps) found it difficult to press vigorously for reorgani- zation and, by default, leadership…
  • p. 56 …In 1919the W a r Department was pressing for a drastic revision of the military establishment…
  • p. 61 …It held that there was no danger of an air attack on the United States and…
  • p. 64 …GHQ Air Forcq a trial than to press for more radical measures, and Howell’s group…
  • p. 75 …Powerful air attacks resolutely pressed home could never be completely stopped, but their effects could best…
  • p. 98 …based air operations in defense of the United States and its overseas posses~ions.’~T w…
  • p. 99 …General Westover’s report concluded that “all Air Force units could be concentrated on either coast…
  • p. 130 …the Admiralty began to press for control of naval air units, while the army attempted to…
  • p. 149 …basic and advanced Responsibility for crew and unit train- ing was vested in the GHQ Air…
  • p. 164 …A m y air units in the Territory existed primarily for the defense of this and…
  • p. 176 …no military alliances were made which would commit the United States to war; the plans only…
  • p. 278 …There were also grounds for hoping that heavy bomber units now based on Darwin might increase…
  • p. 285 …From 1938 the United States had invoked sanctions against Japan in the form of moral em…
  • p. 287 …Over-all Strategy and lmmediate Deployment On 2 2 December, the press announced dramatically the arrival…
  • p. 289 …ground units sent in that direction were not destined for immediate combat. No major invasion of…
  • p. 323 …Seizure of bases in Canada or Mexico for later attacks on the United States. Capture of…
  • p. 366 …United state^,^ and the British them- selves were forced to withdraw some pilots from combat units…
  • p. 380 …Upon the request of the Ferrying Command, the State Depart- ment again pressed for an answer…
  • p. 397 …the summer and fall, first as the United States Middle East Air Force and later as…
  • p. 430 …Attempts had been made to replace these obsolete craft by purchase from the United States, but…
  • p. 440 …But as the Japanese pressed forward the Americans were given no opportunity to get set. The…
  • p. 463 …personnel that would be reassigned to infantry units whose rosters already included many representatives of the…
  • p. 552 …pines and more recently of American air units operating in the Netherlands East Indies, he was…
  • p. 560 …Moreover, examination proved that most of the basic equipment of the units, including badly needed trucks…
  • p. 563 …Grady arrived from the United States for a comprehensive survey of Indian resources with reference to…
  • p. 564 …TO C H I N A graphic units, and unfavorable atmospheric conditions combined to make high…
  • p. 607 …Thus the AAF units engaged in the anti-U-boat war became almost a t once…
  • p. 628 …Army air bombardment units would operate offensively in collaboration with the Royal Air Force, primarily against…
  • p. 658 …was to operate in the United Kingdom.14' All air units initially based there were to…
  • p. 683 …of the units of the infant Eighth until their departure for the United Kingdom several months…
  • p. 691 …The RAF proposed that American fighter units be integrated with its own under a plan eventually…
  • p. 748 …533.) By 1928he was (Patrick, United States in the Air, pp. 190-91.) 38. Charges of…
  • p. 770 …y.W D Press Release, 2 1 June 1941. 9 1 . AR 95-5, 3a. 92…
  • p. 857 …Presque Isle, 344, 347-49, 641, 644-45 Press comment: B-17, 662-63; danger of…
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
material development in the period 1919-39will indicate how much
of the energies of the Air Corps was devoted to the search for a long-
range heavy bomber and how intimately that effort was tied to the
organizational and doctrinal issues which have just been described.
Evolution of the Long-Range Bomber
The Air Service emerged from World War I with a keen sense of
its responsibility for a solution to the related problems of what the
most effective air weapon might be and how that weapon should be
utilized. Perhaps it was the novelty of the air weapon itself and the
realization of its rapid rate of obsolescence that gave to the small group
of airmen who remained with the service a fresher approach than was
common in America’s peacetime military establishment. Perhaps it
was the impetus provided by a wartime experimental program which
bore its chief fruit after, rather than before, the termination of hostili-
ties. Perhaps, too, an additional spur to action came from the airman’s
desire to prove his case in the face of official disinclination to admit
the validity of his claims. At any rate, appropriations by the Air
Service for research and development during the three fiscal years
immediately following the war were higher than at any time there-
after prior to 1936. Indeed, they continued through the fiscal year
1926 to represent a greater percentage of the funds annually appro-
priated for the Air Service than would be allotted to these purposes
in any of the subsequent years.152
The figures taken alone are none too impressive: four and a half
million for 1920,just under six million for 192I , just over four million
for 1922, and a straight three million for 1924.But these sums acquire
significance when considered with the fact that direct cash appro-
priations for support of the Air Service had fallen precipitously from
the wartime peak of 952 million for the fiscal year 1919 to the round
figure of twenty-eight million for 1920.” Four years later the total
had been pared to twelve and a half million, and for the fiscal year
immediately preceding passage of the Air Corps Act of 1926 appro-
priations amounted to less than sixteen million.*53Thus in 1924 the
Air Service’s allotment for research and development represented
nearly 2 5 per cent of its total appropriation for that fiscal year.
These first postwar years-years of the initial struggle for recogni-
* The figures include only “direct” appropriations and omit sums expended by such
services as the Quartermaster and Finance for the benefit of Army aviation,
54

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