One Hundred Years of Flight USAF Chronology ... - The Air University

1941
September 12: Nine B–17 Flying Fortresses completed a weeklong flight
from Hawaii to the Philippines by way of Midway; Wake Island; Port
Moresby, New Guinea; and Darwin, Australia.
September 17: During the Louisiana maneuvers, the Army dropped paratroopers
for the first time in a tactical exercise. Thirteen DC–3s
acquired for the purpose dropped a parachute company.
September 20: The Army Air Forces activated the Philippine Department
Air Force—later called Far East Air Force and still later Fifth Air
Force—at Nichols Field, Luzon, in the Philippines.
December 1: By executive order, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established
the Civil Air Patrol to facilitate civil defense during World War
II. Including among its members 17-year-old men not yet of draft age,
the Civil Air Patrol flew small liaison aircraft on disaster-relief missions
or on missions to patrol the U.S. coasts to detect enemy submarine
activity. In the fall of 1943, the Civil Air Patrol became an auxiliary of
the Army Air Forces.
December 7: Japanese torpedo bombers, dive-bombers, and fighters from
six aircraft carriers attacked naval and air installations around Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii, crippling the U.S. Pacific Fleet. In two waves, the
Japanese airplanes sank four U.S. battleships and damaged nine other
major warships. The surprise attack, which killed some 2,390 personnel,
propelled the United States into World War II. Air strikes on
Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows Fields killed 193 members of the Army
Air Forces and destroyed 64 of the Hawaiian Air Force’s airplanes. Six
Army Air Forces pilots shot down 10 Japanese aircraft that day. Second
Lt. George S. Welch shot down four, 2d Lt. Kenneth M. Taylor shot
down two, and four other pilots each shot down one.
The Curtiss P–40 Warhawk, flown by the Flying Tigers (the American Volunteer
Group) in China, also claimed the first aerial victories for the Army Air Forces during
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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