The Air War Plans Division (AWPD) was an American military organization established to make long-term plans for war. Headed by Harold L. George, the unit was tasked in July 1941 to provide President Franklin D. Roosevelt with "overall production requirements required to defeat our potential enemies."Futrell, 1989, p. 109 The plans that were made at the AWPD eventually proved significant in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The AWPD went beyond offering basic production requirements and provided a comprehensive air plan which was designed to defeat the Axis powers. The plan, AWPD-1, was completed in nine days.Air & Space Journal staff, 2003. The plan emphasized using heavy bombers to carry out precision bombing attacks as the primary method of defeating Germany and its allies. A year later, after the United States became directly involved in World War II, AWPD delivered a second plan—AWPD-42—which slightly changed the earlier plan to incorporate lessons learned from eight months of the war. Neither AWPD-1 nor AWPD-42 were approved as combat battle plans or war operations; they were simply accepted as guidelines for the production of materielHansell, 1980, p. 155. and the creation of necessary air squadrons. Finally, in 1943, an operational aerial warfare plan was agreed in meetings between American and British war planners, based on a combination of British plans and those from the AWPD, to create the Anglo-American Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO).Hansell, 1980, pp. 157–194.Rizer, Kenneth R. "Bombing Dual-Use Targets: Legal, Ethical, and Doctrinal Perspectives." Air & Space Power Journal, 1 May 2001. Retrieved on 6 November 2009.
Founding On 20 June 1941, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) were established as a way to combine and streamline two conflicting air commands: GHQ Air Force and the Army Air Corps. Major General Henry H. Arnold commanded the USAAF and formed an Air Staff to lead it; within the Air Staff, the Air War Plans Division was established with Lieutenant Colonel Harold L. George at its head. George was to coordinate his planning efforts with the War Plans Division (WPD) of the War Department.
Up to this point, the WPD was responsible for planning all aspects of Army and Army Air Corps expansion in the U.S.Cline, 1951, Chapter IV pp. 50–74. George was challenged by WPD, which contested AWPD's and Air Staff's authority to make strategic plans. WPD recommended that AWPD should be limited to tactical planning, and that the Air Staff, in a subordinate role, should advise the WPD rather than make its own operational or strategic plans. George pushed for greater autonomy—he wished to prepare all plans for all air operations.
On 9 July 1941, President Roosevelt asked Frank Knox, the Secretary of the Navy, and Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War, for an exploration of the total war production required for the United States to prevail in case of war. The WPD, in order to project long-term numbers, realized that the Rainbow 5 plan would be used as a basis for production quantities, but it lacked detailed air power figures. Stimson requested of Robert A. Lovett, Assistant Secretary of War for Air,Time magazine, 25 August 1941. "Army: Secretary of War," page 3. Retrieved on 7 November 2009. that the USAAF be tapped for their ideas about production numbers. After some bureaucratic delay, the AWPD received the request.
AWPD-1
In early 1941, American, Canadian and British war planners convened in Washington D.C. for a series of secret planning sessions called the American–British Conference, or ABC-1, to determine a course of action should the United States become a belligerent in the war. An overarching strategy of Europe first was agreed to, where American energies would primarily be directed against Germany, Italy and their European conquests, during which a secondary defensive posture was to be held against Japan. Royal Air Force Air Vice-Marshal John SlessorCrowder, Ed. "Pointblank: A Study in Strategic and National Security Decision Making." Airpower Journal, Spring 1992. Retrieved on 9 November 2009. and other airmen present at the conference agreed on the general concept of using strategic bombing by both British and American air units based in the United Kingdom to reduce Axis military power in Europe.Griffith, 1999, pp. 67–69. Incorporating this work in April 1941, the joint U.S. Army-Navy Board developed Rainbow 5, the final version of general military guidelines the U.S. would follow in case of war.Zabecki, David T. World War II in Europe: Section 5. Strategy, tactics, and operational techniques. Volume 2 of World War II in Europe: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, 1999, p. 1679.
At the beginning of August 1941, the AWPD consisted of only four officers: Harold L. George, Orvil Anderson, Kenneth Walker (each one a lieutenant colonel), and Major Haywood S. Hansell. To help answer the urgent need for planning, George could have sent a couple of his air officers to WPD to assist them, following the standard Army policy since air warfare first arose in World War I. An air plan would have been made emphasizing tactical air coordination with ground forces,Arnold, 2002, pp. 244–246. one which targeted Axis military formations and supplies in preparation and support of an invasion. George wished to implement the strategic bombing theories that had been debated and refined at the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) during the preceding decade, but was sure that the Army and the War Department would not accept a strategy that assumed air attack would prevail alone. Instead, he intended to implement a middle path which began with strategic air attack but contained allowances for the eventual support of a ground invasion. In requesting autonomy to make his own plans, George gained approval from General Arnold and from General Leonard T. Gerow, head of the overworked WPD, who approved as long as AWPD held to the guidelines of ABC-1 and Rainbow 5.
George sought out men he knew were bombing advocates. He obtained temporary help from five more air officers: Lieutenant Colonels Max F. Schneider and Arthur W. Vanaman, and Majors Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Laurence S. Kuter, and Samuel E. Anderson. All but Samuel E. Anderson had passed through ACTS, where precision bombing theories were ascendant.Finney, Robert T. (1998) Air Force History and Museums Program. History of the Air Corps Tactical School 1920–1940. Third imprint. Retrieved on 3 November 2009. Orvil Anderson was assigned to continue with ongoing projects while the rest of the men concentrated on the new request. On 4 August 1941, the augmented AWPD set to work.
George, Walker, Kuter, and Hansell provided the key concepts for the AWPD task force. George's vision was that the plan should not be a simple list of quantities of men and materiel—it should be a clear expression of the strategic direction required to win the war by use of air power.Overy, 2005, p. 62. The main feature of the plan was the proposal to use massive fleets of heavy bombers to attack economic targets, the choke points of Axis industry. Hansell, fresh from a fact-finding mission to England in which he was briefed on British appreciations of German industrial and military targets, immediately became immersed in the job of target selection.
Munitions Requirements of the Army Air Forces to Defeat Our Potential Enemies, or AWPD-1, standing for "Air War Plans Division, plan number one",Nalty, 2003, pp. 187, 233. was the first concrete result of AWPD; it was delivered on 12 August after nine days of preparation. The plan used industrial web theory to describe how air power could be used to attack vulnerable nodes in Germany's economy, including electrical power systems, transportation networks, and oil and petroleum resources.Futrell, 1989, p. 109 The civil population of Berlin could be targeted as a final step to achieving enemy capitulation, but such an attack was optional: "No special bombardment unit [would be] set up for this purpose."Griffith, 1999, pp. 73–74.
The plan also described, in less detail, how to use air power to draw a defensive perimeter around the Western Hemisphere and around America's interests in Alaska, Hawaii, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean. In the Atlantic, AWPD indicated bases be developed in Iceland, Newfoundland, and Greenland to augment bases in the United Kingdom. Elsewhere, bases were to be established in India and staging areas arranged in Siberia.
Finally, the plan detailed large tactical air formations to assist in an invasion of Europe and to fight in the land campaigns to follow, to be ready by Spring 1944—the same time that invasion forces would be ready.
Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall approved AWPD-1 in September, as did Secretary of War Stimson. Army planners were worried that both the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom would be defeated, and that an invasion of Europe would become remote. The strategy of weakening Germany by bombing, long before an invasion could be prepared, gave hope that America would not lose any allies in the interim.
AWPD-2 On 9 September 1941, the president asked for more detail regarding allocation of aircraft based on estimates of peacetime production for the next nine months. In AWPD-2, Arnold and George designated two-thirds of the aircraft to be pooled for anti-Axis purposes such as Lend-Lease and one-third to be sent to the USAAF.
Public knowledge
Roosevelt incorporated the Army's, Navy's and Air Staff's detailed plans into an executive policy he called his "Victory Program". Roosevelt hoped to engage public opinion in favor of the Victory Program because the increase in production it promised meant more jobs and a healthier economy. Opponents of the policy included a powerful supporter of the isolationist America First Committee, Senator Burton K. Wheeler. Wheeler obtained a copy of the Victory Program, classified Secret, from a source within the Air Corps, and on 4 December 1941 leaked the plan to two isolationist newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald. Vocal public opposition to the plan ceased three days later on 7 December, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Congress soon passed the Victory Program with few changes.
German agents monitoring American newspapers wired the compromised secret program to Berlin where Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff, realized its critical importance. On 12 December, Adolf Hitler issued Directive 39 which countered the American strategic bombing and invasion plans by massing air defenses around key industries and by greatly increasing Atlantic Ocean attacks so that an Allied invasion fleet could not be formed. Hitler directed his forces opposing the Soviet Union to go on the defensive so that they could hold their ground at least cost. Four days later, after visiting the Eastern Front and seeing the extent of his strategic failures there, Hitler "angrily and irrationally rescinded Directive 39" and focused his armies once again on the attack.
AWPD-4 After 7 December, all of America's former plans required revision—none had projected such early involvement in direct combat. Orvil Anderson was asked to rewrite the air plans. On 15 December, Anderson submitted AWPD-4, mostly a restatement of the goals of AWPD-1, but with augmented quantities to meet the greater needs of a two-front war. The number of combat aircraft was increased by 65%, and total aircraft production was more than doubled.
AWPD-42