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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.
“Churchill”21 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 with the addition in time of “medium” and “very heavy” categories, became the rule. There was reassurance as to the future of heavy bombardment in the decisions leading by way of the 193I competition to the development of the B-10. Its many superior qualities, however, did not include a range in excess of what was generally accepted as useful for a supporting mission, and it was already becoming apparent that the real test of policy would come on a question of range. The problem of extending the effective range of the airplane had been a major concern of American aviation throughout the 1920’s. Witness the Army’s round-the-world flight of 1924 and its flight from California to Hawaii in the same year that saw Lindbergh and Byrd each span the Atlantic in a single hop. In such tests as the endurance record of 151 hours set in 1929 by Maj. Carl Spaatz and Capt. Ira C. Eaker, the Air Corps had contributed further to study of the complex problems of design and engineering which were fundamental, among other things, to the quest for greater range. Given the current effi- ciency of motors and design, range was a matter of size, and by the I ~ ~ o ’ s ,when aeronautical science had reached a stage in its develop- ment that brought a truly big plane within practical reach, an issue within the Army which first had been debated in terms of day and night bombardment, and which then had been restated by the Air Corps in terms of heavy and light bombardment, became almost imperceptibly a question of the long-range bomber. Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews, in writing a few years later on “Types of Airplanes Required T o Execute Air Force Missions,” prefaced his discussion by the following observation: The tactical and strategical employment of Air Forces and the status of development of aeronautical science exercise a profound mutual influence, each upon the other. The needs of employment spur the designers and manufacturers to produce equipment that can meet those needs, and likewise, the equipment on hand, or definitely foreseen, limits or extends the sphere of influence of Air Power.175 It is in the light of this fundamental consideration, perhaps, that the origins of the long-range bomber can most profitably be considered here. On an earlier page notice has been taken of doctrinal develop- ments within the Air Corps which by the 1930’s emphasized the need for a long-range bomber. That these developments depended partly upon the assurance that such a plane could be built is hardly less certain than that the new doctrine drew continuing support from the techni- 60
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