Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Intelligence Implications for the Strategic Air
Campaign in Europe
According to AWPD-1, American air power in the European Theater would
“wage a sustained air offensive against German military power, supplemented
by air offensives against other regions under enemy control which contribute
toward that Whether that objective still obtained in the summer of
1942 was open to debate, for harsh reality had replaced theoretical assumptions.
The United States was not only at war, but the early months of that war had
gone quite differently than had been anticipated, with the Axis powers
seemingly dominant in every theater. In the midst of these military, political,
and economic pressures, the AAF had to rearticulate the role of air power and
identify the resources necessary for this role.
In August 1942, President Roosevelt requested the AAF, through General
George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, to advise him of the total number and
types of combat aircraft required to gain “complete air ascendancy over the
enemy.” These calculations would be part of a larger reassessment of “the
proper relationship of air power to the Navy and our ground forces.”177
Accordingly, Marshall and Arnold directed Brig. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell, a
principal in the drafting of AWPD-1, to return from England “within 48 hours”
to determine the “objectives[,] the destruction of which will guarantee air
ascendancy over [the] Hansell, accompanied by Major Hull (VIII
Bomber Command A-2), Lt. Col. Richard Hughes (Eighth Air Force Assistant
A-2), and RAF Group Captain A. C. Sharp (RAF liaison with HQ Eighth Air
Force), landed in the United States in late August, and in eleven days they
hammered out what became AWPD-42.I7’
AWPD-42 was, like its predecessor, primarily a requirements document
intended to determine the aircraft, manpower, and matkriel needed to defeat the
Axis. Its planners identified a total of 177 targets in Europe that, if attacked with
a fully mature force in 66,045 bomber sorties over a six-month period, would
produce destruction of the GAF, depletion of the Geniian submarine force, and
disruption of the German war economy. Where AWPD-1 had suggested that
strategic air operations might themselves bring about Germany’s collapse,
AWPD-42 accepted the air offensive as a prelude to an ultimate ground assault
that could come only after the enemy had been sufficiently weakened through
air bombardment. Accordingly, American strategic air forces were to concen-
trate on the “systematic destruction of selected vital elements of the German
military and industrial machine through precision bombing in daylight,” while
the RAF continued its “mass air attacks of industrial areas at night. . . .’’lXO
In addition to conceding an eventual amphibious assault on Fortress
Europe, AWPD-42 differed somewhat from the earlier plan in its selection of
vital elements of the German war effort. According to AWPD-I, the priority
assigned targets in Europe was the GAF, the electric power system, transporta-
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