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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.
“King”32 pages
F O R E W O R D ning account of Army Air Forces participation in all military actions in all theaters.’’ The implementing directive contained the judgment of a young Air Corps general: “It is important that our history be recorded while it is hot and that personnel be selected and an agency set up for a clear historian’s job without axe to grind or defense to prepare.” * This action was followed in July by a directive from the War Department calling for the appointment by AAF Headquarters of a historian in accordance with the President’s express desire for an ad- ministrative history of all war agencies. To the Historical Division, established during the summer in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence, there consequently was assigned a twofold responsibility for the preparation of an organizational and an oper- ational history of the Army Air Forces. Responsibility for decisions involving professional questions fell initially, and indeed throughout the war chiefly, on Col. Clanton W. Williams,t who reported in September 1942 for duty with the His- torical Division on military leave from the University of Alabama. Under Col. Clarence B. Lober as military chief until January 1944 and from the spring of 1945 under Col. Wilfred J. Paul, Colonel Williams served in a capacity at first officially described as that of Professional Executive, later of Chief, and still later of AAF Historian. Whatever the official designation, he rightly saw his job to be that of interpreting professional needs and standards for the guidance of his military superiors in order to assure continuing and intelligent support for a type of operation that fell into no familiar category of military func- tions. In the academic world he would have been called a dean, for he undertook to build a staff of professionally qualified men and to provide for them conditions favorable to work that would meet the highest professional requirements. And though, like most deans, he found little time for scholarly work of his own, to his administrative skill and courage the accomplishment of the AAF Historical Program must be largely credited. At the time of Colonel Williams’ assignment to the Historical Divi- sion, Maj. Harold J. Bingham was already engaged in the organization of a program for the coverage of AAF activities within the Zone of * R&R,Brig. Gen. L. S. Kuter, AFDAS to AFMOP, 19 July IWZ. t For the ease of the reader the highest-attained rank of military personnel is used in this Foreword. ix
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