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By Root 867 0

to bombing business: translating previous work into a viable doctrine. The process lasted until the verge of America’s entry into the Second World War, being completed in 1940. It emphasized the self-defending bomber, operating in daylight (for better navigation and bombing accuracy), and attacking specific target sets: enemy industry, transport, petroleum, and other military-industrial facilities. ACTS shared Trenchard’s conclusion that without specifically targeting enemy civilians, depriving them of power, water, and other services would cripple their morale and, ergo, force the hostile nation into submission. It was also vintage Mitchell, who believed “the very threat of bombing” could expel civilians (i.e., factory workers) from industrial centers. Therefore, presumably direct air attack on enemy cities would result in a shorter war and fewer military casualties.

In twenty years of discussion and study, nearly 1,100 officers graduated from ACTS. Of those, nearly two-thirds attended between 1936 and 1940, and 261 served as generals in World War II. By 1941 the technology was forthcoming, with B-17s and B-24s in the inventory, providing the second generation of American airmen with the means to conduct strategic warfare. How well theory matched reality waited to be seen.

The Nine-Day Miracle

In August 1941 the newly semi-independent Army Air Force worked a miracle, and it took just nine days to do it.

As part of the overall Army plan for U.S. entry into the European War, which had begun in 1939, the service’s aviation branch was allowed to conduct its own planning. That was the good news. The bad news: the document was needed almost immediately to coordinate with British planning. Arnold tossed the hot potato to the Air Corps Tactical School.

Before Pearl Harbor, Arnold’s commission to ACTS was fourfold: determine what was needed to defend the Western Hemisphere; conduct strategic operations against Germany; hold the line in the Pacific; and support an eventual American-Allied return to Occupied Europe. The overall strategy was in keeping with what would become Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s “Germany first” policy, announced in January 1942.

Five exceptional officers were tasked with producing what became Air War Plans Division One, better known as AWPD-1. The team included Colonel Donald Wilson, Lieutenant Colonels Kenneth N. Walker and Harold L. George, and Majors Haywood S. Hansell and Laurence S. Kuter. All would become generals. Eventually Ken Walker and “Possum” Hansell held bomber commands in the Pacific: Walker received a posthumous Medal of Honor for his combat leadership while Hansell would feature prominently in the B-29 campaign against Japan.

The planners received the go signal on the 4th of August; they delivered on the 12th.

AWPD-1 was the starting point in a series of papers describing what was necessary to conduct a strategic bombing campaign against a hostile industrialized nation. The focus was almost wholly upon Germany, as lack of targeting information prevented a similarly detailed plan against Japan. Tokyo would figure in AWPD-42, which was issued the following autumn.

Among AWPD-1’s target sets were electrical power production, transportation hubs and networks, petroleum production, and enemy morale. Germany’s electrical grid was dropped from first to thirteenth place in eventual priority, under the mistaken impression that it was too widespread to be crippled. In wartime, enemy industry and petroleum processing would become the major objectives, with transport and troop formations outranking power generation. However, postwar examination confirmed the planners’ prescience, as the power grid was indeed vulnerable.

AWPD-1 detailed the force structure needed for a global air war: personnel, aircraft, bases, targets, and the operating doctrine to make it all work. The document’s major error was the number of aircraft to be ordered, as not even the airpower acolytes predicted the enormous capability of American industry. The plan’s postulated 239 combat groups (ninety-eight