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 Allied Air Transport
Operations South West Pacific Area in WWII - Volume II, 1943 - Year of
expansion and consolidation
by Robert H. Kelly
Book order form for Robert H. Kelly's Allied
Air Transport Operations South West Pacific Area in WWII - Volume II, 1943 -
Year of expansion and consolidation
Robert Kelly's Allied Air Transport Operations, Volume 2 , is very
impressive indeed. In this volume, one in a series projected to span the years
of the Pacific war, Kelly offers a chronicle of a single year of Allied
military transportation.
Good reference material – volumes which provide information in an accessible
form – is extremely valuable to military historians, particularly amateur
military historians. When I first opened Robert Kelly's volume, I was expecting
to find a work similar in scope and detail to Martin Middlebrook's commendable
Bomber Command War Diaries , which I keep close to hand on my shelves,
and consult with some regularity. Quite frankly, Kelly's volume surpassed my
expectations.
Allied Air Transport Operations focuses on 1943, as the full title suggests. It
provides not a chronicle of transport operations for the year, but a
less-than-brief presentation of each of the major Transportation Groups or
Wings providing support services for the Allied troops engaged against the
Japanese. In effect, Mr Kelly is providing the story behind the story of the
Pacific War. He does it very well indeed.
What can one find in this volume? I started making a list, and stopped before I
was overwhelmed by the variety of data Mr Kelly offers. Location and capacity
of airfields: covered. Tonnages: covered. Aircraft types and numbers: covered.
Flying personnel: largely covered, particularly when dealing with losses of
personnel. Orders and operations memoranda: provided as appropriate. Division
of cargo transport v. troop carriage: largely provided. Anecdotal stories:
inserted as appropriate. Air base layouts: provided as necessary. Maps:
provided (but, truthfully, not as fully as I would have liked). Photos:
included, but in insufficient quantity for my taste. In truth, this is an
exhaustive study of a very specific, very important part of the war against
Japan.
It is possible to study this volume – I won't say read, though that too might
apply – independently, because it has its own story to tell, and it tells it
well. Personally, however, I see Robert Kelly's book as a reference volume for
those who want to understand how and why the Allies were able to maintain
supply as they consolidated their offensive abilities in the middle year of the
Pacific campaigns.
There are other features of this volume which should be mentioned, because they
indicate the meticulousness of Robert Kelly's effort. The volume is, for
instance, hard-bound: it is a volume that is designed for frequent usage. It is
beautifully and strongly bound; the signatures stand out when the volume is
opened. There is a "silk" page marker – something I haven't seen for years in a
working volume. Mr Kelly has provided a book which is physically substantial:
he is assuming that his volumes will be used on a regular basis, and has given
them the strength to withstand the usage. These are not, I admit, indications
of the quality of the information found in Kelly's book. But they are
indications of Mr Kelly's desire to offer a volume which can stand up to
excessive and prolonged use.
There are, I admit, certain qualities I would like to see changed in the next
volume of the series, but I'm splitting hairs by raising them and there are
only three. From a purely cosmetic point-of-view, I would love to see a
dust-jacket carrying the photos now on the hard cover. A dust jacket would
protect the volume from the frequent use I would expect it to receive. I would
like to see the volume printed on matte, rather than "satin" finish paper; the
paper for volume 2 does not take either pen or pencil annotations well, and I
found myself wanting to make my personal annotations on the page. Third – and
this is a minor point indeed – I was torn between thinking the photos included
were simply badly reproduced and hoping that their quality was designed to
suggest the temporary status of the bases, activities and personnel included in
the book.
Not everyone can afford to have Mr Kelly's volumes in his personal library. But
I have trouble in believing that any library, and in particular any library
accessed by military personnel or military historians – professional or amateur
– could afford to be without the series he is creating. Mr Kelly is providing a
massive amount of information which explains how the Allies were able to
conclude the Pacific War so quickly and effectively.
Because of the complexity of this volume of Robert Kelly's series, a full
evaluation of Allied Air Transport Operation SWP will not be possible
for some time: reference books gain respectability only by continued reference
by scholars and interested parties. I feel confident, however, that this series
of reference volumes will prove to be of immense importance to those who wish a
full understanding of how the battles of the Pacific theatre were fought and
won.
Book order form for Robert H. Kelly's Allied
Air Transport Operations South West Pacific Area in WWII - Volume II, 1943 -
Year of expansion and consolidation
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Explanatory notes and conversion tables vii
Introduction ix
Chapter One
54th Troop Carrier Wing 1
Chapter Two
374th Troop Carrier Group 49
Chapter Three
317th Troop Carrier Group 97
Chapter Four
The Battle for Wau 413
Chapter Five
RAAF Air Transport Service 427
Chapter Six
The Nadzab Operation 487
Bibliography 537
Abbreviations and acronyms 540
Index 545
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