Air War Plans Division
[2] The AWPD went beyond offering basic production requirements and provided a comprehensive air plan which was designed to defeat the Axis powers.
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 materiel[3] and the creation of necessary air squadrons.
[1] 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,[7] that the USAAF be tapped for their ideas about production numbers.
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.
[9] 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.
[10] 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.
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.
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.
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.
[13] 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.
[1] 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.
"[15] 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.
[11] 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.
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.
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.
[16] The individual AWPD-1 team members had been reassigned to a wide variety of posts and duties, so to perform the reassessment Arnold recommended Hansell, recently made brigadier general.
[18][19] Marshall ordered Hansell to hurry back to AWPD and that "the results of the work of this group are of such far-reaching importance that it will probably determine whether or not we control the air.
"[17] Hansell brought with him VIII Bomber Command Chief of Intelligence Colonel Harris Hull and RAF Group Captain Bobby Sharp, as well as the little data compiled from five UK-based raids which had been flown by U.S.
[16] Hansell was assisted on a consultative basis by George, Kuter and Walker, old AWPD-1 hands, and by Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm Moss, who was a sharp businessman in civil life.
The Navy's intention to divert 1250 land-based heavy bombers from AAF requirements, to use for long-range patrol and for attacking enemy vessels, was dismissed in favor of USAAF flights to achieve the same goals.
[8] An arbitrary time frame was given, suggesting that six months after the strategic bombing forces were ready for large-scale attacks, the enemy targets would be destroyed.
[24] More methodically, USAAF General Ira C. Eaker assembled an Anglo-American planning team to take the COA's list of targets and schedule them for combined bomber operations.
This unnamed group, sometimes called the CBO Planning Team,[4] was led by Hansell and included among others USAAF Brigadier General Franklin Anderson and RAF Air Commodore Sidney Osborne Bufton.
