Air Forces Eighth

Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol. I, p. 182 Craven and Cate (eds.). Army Air Forces, vol. Ill, p. 596. The Eighth Air Force was based in the United Kingdom and the Fifteenth in Italy. 

CWS computations of air chemical munitions requirements for the European theater were begun in the United States before the activation of the theater organization. Colonel Kellogg initiated the requirements work immediately upon his assignment as Eighth Air Force chemical... 

Eighth Air Force in September 1944 decided to drop fire bombs from heavy bombers on targets so well fortified as to have withstood high explosive bombardment. The air force initially requested 600,000 gallons of mixed fuel and in November increased that request to 1,000,000 gallons to be expended at the rate of 130,000 gallons per month. As an alternative to the availability of mixed fuel, the air force... 

The development of the new generator prompted attempts by CWS staff officers in England to get a smoke generator company for the theater. War Department inquiries about the requirements for such units got little response from the Eighth Air Force, which came to the conclusion that the advantages of airdrome concealment were equaled or outweighed by the interference of smoke with operations. But SOS authorities in the theater showed interest in smoke as a means of concealing supply installations and later included the ports in... 

Later, when the utility of RE/8 had been proven, operational research sections were established within the U.S. Army Air Forces. The impetus for this action came in the summer of 194a when the Joint Chiefs of Statf directed that a study be made of the British experience with operational research activities. General Arnold approved the resultant report and recommended that the commanding generals of the Army Air Forces establish operational research sections within their commands. The Eighth Air Force set up such a section in the VITI Bomber Command in October 1942. (i) Rpt, Lt Bradley Dewey, Jr., to Chief Tech Div CWS, 14 Sep 44. (2) Col John M. Harlan, The Opnl Research Sec at the Eighth AF, 18 Jul 44. Both in CMLHO. 

Loading 500-Pound Clusters of Magnesium Bombs Into a B-24 of the Eighth Air Force, somewhere in England. 

Other examples of items in which co-ordination of supply was effected were gas bombs and tropical bleach. Until May 1944 the British supplied the U.S. Eighth Air Force in England with ten thousand phosgene-filled 500-pound bombs. In the fall of 1943 USCWC representatives arranged for the procurement of fifteen thousand tons of tropical bleach from Great Britain, a measure which saved much valuable shipping space. In the summer of 1944 the committee representatives made plans for the supply... 

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