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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.
“Cairo”26 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 Of special significance was the Air Corps’ policy of conducting its own experimental program in an intimate association with the aircraft and allied industries. Established during the years immediately follow- ing the war, when as yet commercial aviation had not advanced to a point that would support the infant aircraft industry, that policy was continued thereafter as a means for maintaining in a state of readiness industrial facilities and staffs of great importance to the military po- tential of the nation. The Air Corps consistently opposed a popular view that planes designed for commercial purposes could be converted to military use, except for such an activity as air transport. But that conviction was regarded as strengthening rather than weakening the argument for experimental and educational contracts that would pre- pare the industry for conversion to military production in time of war, and that meanwhile would permit the Air Corps to borrow for its own purposes some of the enterprising spirit of a new industrial undertaking. The procedure established in the Air Corps Act of 1926 called for design competitions among manufacturers as a preliminary to the drafting of developmental contracts. It became a traditional policy to recognize the right of the contractor to amortize experi- mental costs with income from later production The funds actually devoted to research and development, in other words, were by no means limited to those which were specifically so budgeted. Indeed, the airman’s inclination to place the emphasis on experi- mental work met an early resistance from higher authority, even in the Air Service itself. For example, in October 1921 the acting chief of the Supply Group in Washington formally expressed this view: If we continue this policy of buying a dab of every kind of experimental type of equipment that the Engineering Division in Dayton passes upon with the idea of conducting a service test, it would not be long before the entire Air Service would be engaged in service test work, and, should an emergency develop, it would be impracticable to put any kind of an organization in the field with the standard type of equipment.lG0 The problem, of course, was fundamental, and one which at all times in some degree confronts authorities charged with responsibility for military aviation. Just how shall the requirement of an air force ready with standard equipment for any emergency be balanced against the demand for a timely anticipation of new developments in a field of the most rapid technological growth? When stringent budgetary limi- tations exist, the problem is particularly difficult. And when, in addi- 56
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