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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 I 1 the coast over an element heretofore regarded as almost exclusively the Navy’s responsibility. A t the same time, the airplane offered to the Navy a new weapon of growing potentialities in the performance of such traditionally naval functions as patrol of coastal sea lanes. Placed aboard a carrier, the airplane could be regarded merely as a new ele- ment of the fleet, but the land-based plane carried ceriain advantages in the fulfilment of some missions at sea. In the development of service aviation, consequently, there was a tendency for the Navy to move ashore and for the Army to extend its activities beyond the shore line.177 In the resultant disputes-which focused from time to time on the right of the Army to engage in seaward reconnaissance, on the right of the Navy to acquire land-based planes, and increasingly on its right to expand shore facilities for land-based planes at the risk of duplicat- ing existing Army facilities-traditional delineations of function and responsibility became blurred. Efforts to secure agreement all too frequently ended in the airing of irreconcilable views, and such was the peculiar perplexity of the problems raised that attempts to secure some authoritative and definitive settlement had proved futile.”’ Readily understandable, therefore, is the very evident satisfaction with which the W a r Department announced on 9 January 1931 the conclusion of an agreement between Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff, and Adm. William V. Pratt, Chief of Naval Operations, intended to leave the air force of each service “free to develop within well defined limits and each with a separate and distinct mission.” In his annual report a few months later General MacArthur defined the agreement in these terms: Under it the naval air forces will be based on the fleet and move with it as an important element in performing the essential missions of the forces afloat. T h e Army air forces will be land based and employed as an element of the Army in carrying out its missions of defending the coasts, both in the homeland and in overseas possessions. Through this arrangement the fleet is assured absolute freedom of action with no responsibility for coast defense, while the dividing line thus established enables the air component of each service to proceed with its own planning, training, and procurement activities with little danger of duplicating those of its sister service.180 Before a congressional committee the following year, General Mac- Arthur expressed the opinion that the question of coastal air defense had been “completely and absolutely settled.” In that same year the War Plans Division of the General Staff 6 2
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