Air Service Companies

The air depot companies, like their ground counterparts, had as their principal mission the storage, surveillance, and preparation for issue 

Loading Liquid Smoke Into an MlO Smoke Tank for Aircraft, New Guinea. 

Air operations companies were not infrequently faced with unanticipated tasks. For example, companies in the SWPA used a newly developed spray tank (the E2B2J, produced by the Far East Air Force Service Command) not only for smoke operations but for the spraying of DDT over areas rendered hazardous by the presence of insect-borne malaria or typhus.  

In the last months of the Pacific war aerial incendiaries played an increasingly important role in both the strategical and tactical spheres. The assault on Iwo Jima, for example, was preceded by a lo-week bombardment by planes based in the Marianas incendiary bomb clusters formed a significant part of their load. Air operations com- 

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