National Experiences - British Commission for Military History

342 ai r p o w e r in 20 t H Ce n t u ry do C t r i n e s a n d em p l o y m e n t - nat i o n a l ex p e r i e n C e s
need to defeat Nazi Germany. In this period before America’s entry into World War II,
the precision strategic bombing concept became established as the official doctrine,
not only of the Air Corps but of the U.S. Army as a whole. It had been Arnold’s
program of steady progress and advocacy of the bombing theories and the Air Corps’
careful investment of limited aviation funds into a heavy bomber—the B-17— that
could truly fulfill the promise, that helped convince the U.S. Army leadership to
accept precision bombing doctrine as a key factor in planning for the war budget
and national industrial mobilization. 23 In 1940 Air Corps planners started thinking in
terms of an American production capability of 50,000 aircraft per year—something
in the realm of fantasy only two years before. In fact, the seemingly fantastic figure
of 50,000 aircraft produced in one year was reached in 1942.
The Air Corps was renamed and reorganized as the Army Air Forces (AAF)
in 1941. While still part of the army, it had status closely approaching service
independence. Arnold say the oncoming war as an opportunity to prove the theory
that airpower could provide the decisive win. The practical expression of the theory
was Arnold’s creation of a special strategic planning group on the Army Air Forces
Staff, the Air War Planning Division (AWPD). In the summer and fall of 1941 a
key group of officers, most of whom had taught at the faculty of the ACTS and who
would go on to serve as senior officers in World War II, developed a plan for creating
and deploying a vast American air force that would employ strategic bombing as its
main method of defeating Germany if war came. 24 The Air Corp’s strategic war plans
also included fighter forces for air defense, and light bombers for tactical support of
the army—but the main resources were to go into the strategic heavy bomber force.
The AWPD -1 Plan, the Army Air Forces component of the Army’s strategic war
plan, was approved in late 1941 by General George Marshall, the U.S. Army chief
of staff. That such as concept was readily approved shows not only Marshall’s broad
vision, but also how American airpower concepts that had once been derided by the
Army leadership were now broadly accepted by the American military and civilian
leadership.
The expanded AAF would be organized around units equipped with large numbers
of heavy bombers, the existing B-17s and B-24s, which would be supplemented by
the very heavy bomber in development since 1939. The very heavy bomber would
have an intercontinental range, fly very high and fast, and carry a large bombload.
This bomber, being developed as the B-29, would become the characteristic symbol
of American airpower theory and doctrine by 1945.
World War II served as a laboratory for the American airpower concepts
developed since the First World War. In Europe, at least, the idea that Germany
could be defeated through airpower alone proved fallacious. The American bombing
23 Crane, 22-27.
24 Lawrence Kuter, Harold George, Haywood Hansell and others who developed the AWPD-1 Plan
had been instructors at the ACTS in the 1930s. See Budiansky, pp. 177-180.