Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
folders. It was with some relief that he got the cargo hauled back to Washington
in a bomber.“’
On July 9, 1941, some two weeks after Hitler attacked Russia, President
Roosevelt asked the Secretaries of War and Navy to prepare an estimate of the
overall production requirements required to defeat America’s potential enemies.
After some delay, the AWPD, headed by Colonel George, was brought into the
problem to determine the maximum number of air squadrons the AAF would
ultimately require to garrison a great number of geographic sites and to hold
what the officers termed reserves of opportunity. George assigned this task to
Lt. Col. Kenneth Walker, head of the War Plans Group of the AWPD. Walker
brought together a small task force including Hansell, now back from Great
Britain and assigned to the War Plans Group, Lt. Col. Max F. Schneider, an able
logistician, Lt. Col. Arthur W. Vanaman from A-2, and Lt. Col. Laurence S.
Kuter from G-3. The group conceived their task as being to determine air
requirements to accomplish the strategy laid out in ABC-1, which had been
incorporated into the U.S. strategic war plan RAINBOW 5. A thick study known
as AWPD-1, “Munitions Requirements of the AAF,” was bound on August 12,
1941, after only seven working days.123
The air mission outlined in AWPD-1 followed that defined in the earlier
ABC-1. It called for a sustained air offensive against Germany pending a land
offensive if an invasion of the continent became necessary. The air planners
thought it improbable that a surface invasion could be mounted against
Germany for at least three years. If the air offensive was successful, a land
offensive might not even be necessary. Three lines of air action were open
against a Getman economy and society supposedly already strained to support
the military campaign in Russia. The first, which would accomplish the broad
air mission in Europe, required disruption of Germany’s electric power and
transportation systems, destruction of her oil and petroleum resources, and the
undermining of the morale of her people by air attack against civilian concentrations.
The second possible line of air action, representing intermediate
objectives that might be essential to accomplishing the principal effort, required
neutralizing German air power by attacks against air bases, aircraft factories,
and aluminum and magnesium production centers. A third line of action, which
might be necessary to protect the operating base in England, included attacks
against submarine bases, surface seacraft, and possible invasion p~rts.’’~
AWPD-1 called for neutralizing the following target systems and targets:
electric power, 50 generating plants and switching systems; transportation, 47
marshaling yards, bridges, and canal locks; and synthetic petroleum, 27
production plants. The GAF targets included 18 airplane assembly plants, 6
aluminum plants, and 6 magnesium plants. The air offensive against Germany
would precede any operations against Japan. Destruction of the GAF thus
became the intermediate objective in the European war. The plan envisioned
B-17 and B-24 strikes from England and the use of bases in Egypt and
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