Tenth Air Force Operations Policy

FORWARD ECHELON

HEADQUARTERS TENTH AIR FORCE 

U. S. ARMY

APO 689

9 August 1944.

SUBJECT:  Operations Policy.

TO       :  Commanding General, Tenth Air Force, APO 487

1.  In the interest of maintaining maximum air defense of responsible areas and of more closely supporting the ground effort against the enemy and of coordinating the use of the available air power of the Tenth USAAF to obtain maximum effect therefrom the following policies of the Tenth Air Force, Forward Echelon, are announced:

a.  It is henceforth the responsibility of this Headquarters to maintain an up to date status report of all assigned aircraft and their combat serviceability.

b.  This Headquarters will, through liaison with all allied units, secure information of the situation, both friendly and enemy, sufficient to permit the selection of suitable targets for aviation, and will evaluate this selection with requests for air action received from ground forces to assign missions to available air units.  The assignment of missions will include target identification and any pertinent supporting intelligence, such as desired bomb loadings, fuzing, ammunition, type and direction of attack, etc.  The omission of any of this information will indicate the desire of this Headquarters that the unit commander or flight leader exercise his own judgement in completing any of the details involving armament loadings, etc.

C.  In keeping with the primary objective of this Air Force, i.e., aerial defense of friendly installations within the responsible area against enemy air action, all assigned fighter aircraft all be kept immediately available, regardless of other assignment, to the fighter control organization for the purpose of taking defensive action against the enemy.  The fighter control system, including the associated Aircraft Warning Service, will be operated according to the standard operating procedures and changes thereto as announced by this Headquarters from time to time.

d.  Operation against 1st Phase targets of a strategic nature will be considered a mission of this Headquarters only in exceptional circumstances.

e.  This Headquarters, through coordination with all allied activities, will establish, maintain up to date, and disseminate to all units under its control a “standing target” list which may be sued by all units as secondary target in the event of occurrences prohibiting them from operating against primary targets.

f.  The establishment of Bomb Lines, Sanctuaries, and current changes thereto will be accomplished by this Headquarters and disseminated to all concerned.

g.  Every effort will be extended by this Headquarters toward the dissemination of intelligence reports, OPSUMS, etc. to higher and other interested headquarters.

h.  Reconnaissance request and photographic coverage as needed by this Headquarters will be made directly to units assigned or attached to this Air Force.  Circulation of target photographs, annotated mosaics, and similar material secured by such request will be made to all interested and using agencies according to the system of master filing and distribution as established by this Headquarters.

 

RUSSELL E. RANDALL

Brig. Gen., USA

Commanding.

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