Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [11]
Well after the war, Hansell recalled the work of 1941. “In view of the world situation, the Strategic Air Intelligence Section naturally concentrated on the Axis powers. It was slow and tedious work, but ultimately we made a lot of headway with Germany and Italy. Japan, however, was a different story. The Japanese had established and maintained a curtain of secrecy that we found absolutely impenetrable. There were not even any recent maps available.”
At the time, few Americans were concerned with prospects for war with Japan, considered a land of polite, smiling people who bowed much and viewed the world through Coke-bottle glasses. “Made in Japan” was stamped on cheap, imitative products of little account, and whatever mischief Tokyo conducted in Asia was far removed from the national consciousness. As Hansell wrote, “The American people simply could not believe that Japan would challenge the United States in open warfare.”
Then came the events of December 7, which, as Hansell said, “in one blow destroyed the validity of all the Army and Navy War Plans. Naturally all strategic plans of any importance had embraced a major role for the United States Fleet. Suddenly the surface component of that fleet had lost its backbone. Not only were we suddenly at war but almost all the strategic planning for the conduct of our military operations had been nullified in one stroke.”
Strategic airpower doctrine resembled a three-legged stool. It depended equally upon targeting (material and psychological), bombing accuracy, and the viability of the self-defending bomber. Surprisingly, AWPD-1 touched upon the desirability of long-range escort fighters but AWPD-42 did not.
Airmen such as ACTS’s Kenneth Walker firmly believed in the concept of precision, daylight bombing from high altitude. The advantages were obvious: relative immunity to antiaircraft fire; the presumed difficulty of fighter interception; and better navigation and bombing accuracy than at night. However, by the time AWPD-1 was finished in 1941, the British had abandoned daytime operations over Germany, having learned that unescorted bombers could not survive in daylight. The Luftwaffe’s flak and fighters made nocturnal missions costly enough: throughout the war, about half of Bomber Command personnel were killed or captured, mainly flying at night.
Theory Versus Reality
Two of the most influential figures in American bombardment aviation were immigrants: a Russian flier and a Dutch engineer. Between them, they represented the enduring pattern that strategic bombing theory usually outpaced reality by more than twenty years. They were Alexander Nikolaivich Prokofiev de Seversky and Carl L. Norden.
“Air power is the American weapon,” declared Alexander de Seversky in his classic 1942 treatise, Victory Through Air Power. Seversky was an accomplished airman, having been taught to fly by his father at age fourteen in 1908. During the Great War the youngster joined the czar’s naval air service, losing a leg but returning to duty. Loss of a limb did not prevent him from becoming the nation’s leading naval ace. Appointed to a military mission to America in 1917, his stay overlapped the Bolshevik revolution in his homeland. Happy to spend the rest of his life in the United States, he quickly established relations with the aeronautic elite, including Billy Mitchell.
Seversky bore more credentials than any contemporary: naval officer, airman, fighter ace, engineer, and manufacturer. With that background he wrote widely and well—hundreds of articles appeared under his byline—and he lectured extensively. By one reckoning he addressed 100,000 military officers during his career.
Settling in New York, Seversky founded his own company in 1931 and became a factor in the aviation industry. (The surname represented a PR flack’s dream: “Sever the Sky!”) However, he proved a poor businessman, and in 1939 Seversky was voted out by his board of directors, who reestablished the