T H E B A T T L E O F T H E A T L A N T I C
of a French aircraft carrier a t Martinique continued to lend an air of
immediacy to the threat which originally had determined this mission,
and it was doubtless for this reason that the Antilles Air Task Force
never evolved, as did I Bomber Command, into an organization shaped
for the primary purpose of antisubmarine warfare. Indeed, by the
fall of 1942 plans were under way for extending the activity of
I Bomber Command, in its as yet unofficial capacity as the AAF
antisubmarine force, to bases in the Caribbean; and in August, a few
B-18’s of its 40th Bombardment Squadron had been in fact sent on
detached service to the Puerto Rican and Trinidad areas. This ex-
periment in sending antisubmarine forces to outlying bases on a
detached service status proved administratively unsatisfactory, but
plans nevertheless continued to point toward I Bomber Command as
the organization that would be responsible for AAF specialized anti-
submarine activity wherever it might be undertaken:’
When on 1 5 October 1942 the I Bomber Command became the
Army Air Forces Antisubmarine Command with a materially ex-
panded mission, it was still a comparatively small organization and
one as yet inadequately trained and equipped for its task. From a
high point of 216 planes in July, a point reached just after the
submarine menace within the area of its operations had begun to
decline, the I Bomber Command had suffered a decrease in combat
strength until in October it reported only 148 aircraft. Of these,
twelve were B-17’s, fourteen B-I S’s, thirty-five B-zs’s, and three
B-24’s; the rest, a mixture of A-ZO’S,A-zg’s, and B-34’s, lacked suffi-
cient range for anything except strictly coastal patrol. Some twenty-
seven planes were a t this time equipped with radar; this number, too,
represented a marked decline since July. But the command had made
great progress toward becoming an effective antisubmarine striking
force. It had accumulated the many benefits of a wide and varied
experience, and its personnel stood ready to provide effective leader-
ship in the definition of tactical doctrine, the shaping of training,
and the adaptation of equipment to the peculiar requirements of a
larger mission. It had come to be recognized that the long-range B-24
was especially well suited to the demands of antisubmarine warfare,
and in September the command had received the first of the planes
that would thereafter become the principal reliance in the AAF’s
antisubmarine effort.“O
537