United States Army Air Forces Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Operations summary=== The Air Force Historical Studies Office summarizes the execution of USAAF strategy during World War II:<ref name="sum"/> <blockquote> "Arnold's staff made the first priority in the war to launch a strategic bombing offensive in support of the [[Royal Air Force|RAF]] against Germany. The Eighth Air Force, sent to England in 1942, took on that job. After a slow and often costly effort to bring the necessary strength to bear, joined in 1944 by the [[Fifteenth Air Force]] stationed in Italy, strategic bombing finally began to get results, and by the end of the war, the German economy had been dispersed and pounded to rubble.</blockquote> <blockquote>"Tactical air forces supported the ground forces in the [[Mediterranean Theater of Operations|Mediterranean]] and [[European Theater of Operations, United States Army|European theaters]], where the enemy found Allied [[air supremacy]] a constant frustration. In the war against Japan, General [[Douglas MacArthur]] made his advance along [[New Guinea]] by [[Leapfrogging (strategy)|leap frogging]] his air forces forward and using [[amphibious warfare|amphibious]] forces to open up new bases. The AAF also supported Admiral [[Chester W. Nimitz|Chester Nimitz]]'s [[aircraft carrier]]s in their island-hopping across the [[Pacific Ocean Areas|Central Pacific]] and assisted Allied forces in [[Myanmar|Burma]] and China.</blockquote> <blockquote>"Arnold directly controlled the [[Twentieth Air Force]], equipped with the new long-range B-29 Superfortresses used for bombing Japan's [[Japanese archipelago|home islands]], first from China and then from the [[Mariana Islands|Marianas]]. Devastated by [[air raids on Japan|fire-raids]], Japan was so weakened by August 1945 that Arnold believed neither the [[Nuclear weapon|atomic bomb]] nor the planned [[Operation Downfall|invasion]] would be necessary to win the war. The fact that AAF B-29s [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|dropped the atomic bombs]] on [[Hiroshima]] and [[Nagasaki]], nevertheless, demonstrated what air power could do in the future. The [[United States Strategic Bombing Survey|Strategic Bombing Survey]] provided ammunition for the leaders of the AAF in the postwar debates over armed forces unification and national strategy."</blockquote> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page