Preparing to Bomb Hitler’s Reich, January 1942-January 1943

In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, most American air­men could not foresee the savage war of attrition that would soon transpire in the skies above Germany. Instead, as they prepared to mount an air campaign against Adolf Hitler’s “Fortress Europe,” most embraced the progressive views espoused by the Air Corps Tactical School and reflected on paper in awfd-i. Air leaders like Eaker and Spaatz intended to demonstrate that high altitude, day­light, precision bombing was not only the correct way to apply air power against an enemy nation, but also that its decisive ef­fects justified an autonomous American air force.

In June 1942, Spaatz arrived in Britain as the commander of Eighth Air Force, and he quickly shunned the night “area bomb­ing” campaign against German cities started by Air Marshal Ar­thur Harris and raf Bomber Command earlier that year. Spaatz had observed firsthand the German attempt to break British mo­rale with bombs during the Battle of Britain. He disdained the Brit­ish approach because he thought it much less efficient than the Americans’ precision efforts in daylight. “It wasn’t for religious or moral reasons that I didn’t go along with urban area bombing,” he later confided, but instead because precision attacks “could win the war more quickly.”10

Brigadier General Haywood “Possum” Hansell, a key archi­tect of awpd-i who twice commanded an Eighth Air Force Bomb Wing, agreed. “We preferred to avoid mass killings of civilians and we thought there was a better way to ‘fatally weaken’ an industrialized modern state,” he reflected.11 Hansell noted that “selective strategic air attack served to keep the losses of land war in Western Europe in World War II far below the levels they would have reached if decision had rested entirely upon victory on the battlefield.” American air commanders preferred “selective targeting” rather than area bombing to cripple “the entire war­supporting activity of the enemy nation, not simply making the Army’s task feasible and easier.”12

Hansell’s observation blended the notions of efficiency and effectiveness with the other great goal of American airmen—to achieve an independent air force. Hansell was not afraid to state that desire openly, and others did as well. Billy Mitchell’s former confidant, Frank Andrews, had worked hard for service auton­omy as commander of General Headquarters (ghq) Air Force before the war, and he continued his campaign once the war be­gan. As the Commanding General of Caribbean Command in July 1942, he implored Army Chief of Staff George Marshall’s deputy, Fieutenant General Joseph T. McNarney: “We must go further and place air power on an entirely equal footing with the

Army and Navy—and do it soon; a united Air Force entirely and completely coequal with the other two services, with one com­mander for all three.”

Andrews knew that his line of reasoning found a sympathetic audience. While ghq Air Force Commander, he had befriended Marshall and given him a favorable impression of air power, es­pecially air power in the form of heavy bombers. In addition, Mc – Narney, Marshall’s deputy, was an Army Air Forces pilot who had directed much of the St. Mihiel air offensive for Billy Mitchell in World War I. “I am firmly convinced that we must fight this Air Force question out now,” Andrews continued. “We are obliged to put our own house in order before we can win this war and you know as well as I do that our leadership in the Air Force is uncer­tain and worried and continually upset, and will remain so until this problem is solved.”13

Hap Arnold—the man at the pinnacle of the Army Air Forces pyramid—was indeed concerned about the status of the organi­zation that he led. Receiving his third star a week after Pearl Har­bor, he intended for the Army Air Forces to make the decisive con­tribution to victory over the Axis.14 To Arnold, the best way to achieve a telling impact was a bomber offensive against the Axis homelands. He wrote Robert Lovett, the Assistant Secretary of War for Air, in October 1942 that the mission of the Air Forces was “to destroy the capacity and will of the enemy for waging war,” adding that “no other offensive effort open to us can bring us this success.”15 Arnold emphasized air power’s ability to achieve “independent” results through strategic bombing, rather than its role in supporting ground or sea forces, not only because he be­lieved that strategic bombing could yield victory, but also because he thought that the success of the independent mission could lead to service autonomy. He told his commanders in June 1943: “Air power is still but an infant among the arms, and its useful growth

is dependent upon proper handling now. This is particularly true of heavy, long-range bombardment aviation which comprises the main striking power of air forces and which, alone, lifts an Air Force from the status of an auxiliary arm to that of an equal with arms which serve in other mediums.”16

Arnold worked relentlessly to assure that the strategic bombing mission spurred air force independence. No detail was too small to avoid his attention, and his intensity often rattled those who worked with him—one materiel officer fell dead from a heart at­tack after Arnold berated his performance early in the war.17 The non-stop parade of seven-to-seven days ultimately took its toll, and Arnold would have four heart attacks of his own in a twenty – three-month span from February 1943 to January 1945. As a re~ suit, Lovett and others close by, including relatively junior offi­cers like Lauris Norstad, Jacob Smart, and Hoyt Vandenberg, who served on Arnold’s handpicked Advisory Council, would some­times speak on Arnold’s behalf.18 All of them understood—and accepted—the Commanding General’s unwavering commitment to wrecking the Axis with air power—and to accomplishing that goal in such a way that air power’s contribution to victory would provide an unmistakable impetus for an independent air force.

Marshall did little to curb Arnold’s zeal. After becoming Chief of Staff, Marshall had added the study of air power to the Ar­my’s Command and General Staff College curriculum.19 Following Pearl Harbor he emphasized his “desire to impress upon higher commanders especially their responsibility for taking all measures which will contribute to our control of the air.”20 Andrews’s pre­war overtures influenced Marshall’s favorable view of the Army Air Forces, but so too did a shared strategic vision with the aaf Commanding General. The Army Chief of Staff seldom overruled Arnold during the war, and in many respects the Army Air Forces had already obtained the autonomy that so many of its leaders

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sought.21 Arnold was free, for the most part, to direct his air com­manders as he thought best, and he kept especially close tabs on those like Spaatz and Eaker who controlled heavy bombers. Mar­shall commented after the war that he had intended to make Ar­nold “as nearly as I could Chief of Staff of the Air without any restraint,” but added that Arnold was “very subordinate” and complemented Marshall’s strategic inclinations.22 Indeed, Arnold once confided to Eaker, “If George Marshall ever took a position contrary to mine, I would know I was wrong.”23

Marshall’s support proved insufficient, though, to give Arnold and his cohorts a true appreciation for the magnitude of the task they faced at the start of their air offensive against Hitler’s Eu­rope; moreover, they could not envision how the momentum gen­erated by a war against an equally committed foe would trans­form their progressive notions about bombing. The men who had crafted awpd-i’s requirements had done so based on their faith in a uniquely American approach to applying air power, but had no empirical evidence to back their claims. They largely dismissed pre­vious examples of bombing because those episodes did not corre­spond to the theory, equipment, and techniques that they deemed essential for a successful air campaign.24 Instead, as they began to assemble a bombing force in England, they did so with the be­lief that their precision air offensive would quickly and efficiently wreck German war-making capability—and hence its will to re­sist—in contrast to the raf’s bludgeon aimed directly at German morale. They were reluctant to heed their British counterparts who sported more than two years of bombing experience, including a disastrous daylight effort against Germany in r939-40.25

In July 1942, Eighth Air Force finally received its first comple­ment of 180 aircraft, which included 40 в-17 “Flying Fortresses.”26 Those B-17S were “E” models and differed significantly from the “C” models that the British had acquired in 1941. Unlike its pre-

decessor, the “E” model boasted increased fuel capacity that ex­tended its combat radius to four hundred miles with a five-thou- sand-pound bomb load, plus it had an armament of eleven.50 caliber machine guns, many in electric-powered turrets, that of­fered far more protection than the “C” model possessed.27 The protection was vital for a bomber force that would rely on self – preservation rather than fighter escort to survive its most grueling missions during its first year and a half of existence.

The fighters that initially arrived as part of Eighth Air Force did so to protect friendly bomber airfields from German attack; awpd-i’s designers had intended them for that purpose, not to protect bombers in flight.28 Although Hansell and a few others argued before the war that pursuit aircraft (fighters) would prove useful as bomber escorts, their pleas fell on mostly deaf ears, and those who listened did not believe that a suitable single-seat fighter could be built with sufficient range to accompany bombers to tar­get.29 The в-17 and the в-24 (the other four-engine bomber that comprised Eighth Air Force’s “heavy” bomber force) would have to fight through the toughest German defenses alone, as would two-engine “medium” bombers such as the в-25 and в-26 that also were a part of the Eighth.

Spaatz, for one, expressed little concern about the challenges ahead. One week after the Eighth Air Force’s first bombing raid of the war, a 17 August 1942 attack by 12 B-17S against a marshal­ling yard near Rouen, France, he wrote Arnold that with 1,500 heavy and medium bombers, plus 800 fighters to defend his air­fields, he would have “complete aerial supremacy over Germany within a year, with the resultant insurance of her rapid defeat.” He added: “The force listed above is considerably less than that proposed in awpd-i. However, the experience so far in this the­atre and our experience in the Far Eastern theatre indicates that contrary to the assumption in awpd-i, bombing accuracy does

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not diminish under fire, but rather increases. As a result the force set up above, plus what the RAF may have, will in my mind ac­complish the objectives set forth in awpd-i.”30

The Rouen attack belied Spaatz’s optimism. He and Eaker, then Commander of VIII Bomber Command, had carefully selected the relatively friendly confines of French airspace for Eighth Air Force to make its first strike, and they had also picked their top crews to fly the mission. The pilot of the lead aircraft was one of the best in the Army Air Forces, Major Paul Tibbets Jr., and the gifted commander of the Ninety-seventh Bomb Group, Colonel Frank Armstrong Jr.—who would serve as the model for “Frank Savage” in the novel and movie Twelve O’Clock High!—flew as copilot. Eaker was also aboard one of the aircraft, despite having been stung by twenty-seven hornets while hunting the previous day.31 The target chosen was one that endangered few French ci­vilians, the weather was superb, and 108 Spitfires escorted the 12 “Flying Fortresses” to and from Rouen, which was well within their range. Yet, despite the fanfare resulting from America’s first bombing raid in Europe, few bombs hit the target, and the over­all results were marginal, though no bombers were lost.

Four similar missions against French targets followed, again with no bombers lost. When Arnold received Spaatz’s glowing assessment of the Eighth’s first week of activity—which claimed that fifty-eight of seventy-two B-17S had hit their targets, drop­ping 107 tons of bombs at twenty-two thousand feet—the aaf Commanding General proudly announced to a gathering of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in early September: “I realize that these operations were too limited to permit the drawing of definite con­clusions but the following statements are of interest: (1) Precision bombing can be conducted against the continent with B-i7’s from high altitudes. (2) These operations lend encouragement to a belief that daylight operations may be extended into the heart of Ger­

many, with or without fighter protection—if the proper size force is used.”32 Arnold aimed his ebullient declaration to mollify Brit­ish colleagues skeptical about the prospects for daylight bombing and eager for Americans to join the raf’s night campaign against Germany proper. Still, he wanted to see more such updates, which he considered tangible revelations of progress.

As the first week of Eighth Air Force operations drew to a close, President Franklin Roosevelt asked for an estimate of the num­ber of combat aircraft that the United States and its Allies should produce in 1943 to have “complete air ascendancy over the en­emy.”33 Arnold turned to Possum Hansell to provide the answer. Hansell, who served in England as air planner for Eieutenant Gen­eral Dwight Eisenhower, relied on his expertise in crafting awpd-i after he returned to Washington DC along with Eaker. Ten days later, Hansell and a small staff produced AWPD-42.

Much like awpd-i, AWPD-42 estimated America’s air needs in broad terms that went beyond the scope of the original request, and it also hearkened to the progressive notions that had guided the earlier plan. Hansell concluded that the United States would need to produce 139,000 aircraft in 1943, which the Army Air Forces would require 63,000 combat aircraft, organized into 281 groups. In the Pacific, defensive operations would dominate, but in Europe Hansell envisioned that 78 groups would fly from Great Britain, and many of those would begin a bomber offen­sive against Germany. That campaign would destroy German war­making capability in six months of constant bombing once the at­tacking force reached maturity.

AWPD-42 “contemplated a degree of destruction of internal Ger­many which would make invasion feasible and relatively inexpen­sive in terms of U. S. lives,” Hansell reflected.34 The destruction of the Luftwaffe again received emphasis as “an intermediate objec­tive with overriding priority,” followed by submarine yards, trans­

portation systems, electric power facilities, oil installations, and aluminum and rubber plants. The U-Boat scourge during the Bat­tle of the Atlantic dictated second billing for the submarine yards, but the remainder of the list differed little from awpd-i’s priori­ties. Hansell estimated that forty-two groups of heavy bombers, composed of 48 aircraft each and totaling 2,016 aircraft, would arrive in the United Kingdom by 1 January 1944, along with 960 medium bombers. The plan estimated 2,500 fighters as well, but did not consider them as bomber escorts. “Our heavy bombers are far superior in fire power and capacity to absorb punishment to the bombers used by the Germans,” AWPD-42 observed. “Our daylight penetration of German defenses has up to this time in­dicated a relatively low attrition rate to our bombers and a rela­tively high attrition rate to German fighters.”35

Despite awpd-42’s optimistic appraisal, prospects for bomb­ing Germany were dim, and the Rouen raid set the pattern for the next five months of Eighth Air Force operations. Spaatz never came close to receiving the 1,500 bombers he had mentioned in his prediction to Arnold and was unwilling to risk his meager force against targets in Germany. President Roosevelt had spurred bomber production with his May 1941 order to build 500 “heav­ies” a month, but it took time for assembly lines to gear up for that total. By March 1942 American industry topped the 4,000 mark in monthly aircraft production, yet 40 percent were train­ers, and transport aircraft and fighters consumed a sizable chunk of the rest.36 In October, just as the Eighth Air Force had gained four more groups of heavy bombers, each containing 35 aircraft, Spaatz received word that he had to surrender 1,250 airplanes and their crews to help create Twelfth Air Force for the invasion of North Africa.37 Eighth Air Force would have only seven “heavy” groups remaining, and of those, only two were fully operational at the end of October.38

Moreover, many crews arriving in Britain had minimal training in the types of missions they would have to fly. Most bombardiers trained at “high” altitudes of twelve thousand feet, rather than at the twenty-thousand-foot level they would frequently use for com­bat.39 Gunners arrived without having fired at tow targets. Pilots arrived with no experience in formation flying, essential not only for mutual protection, but also to assure concentrated bombing patterns. Not until LeMay appeared with his 305th Bomb Group in November 1942 did Eighth Air Force truly begin to solve the problems of formation flying. After several days of directing train­ing missions from the top turret of his в-17, he devised the “com­bat box” formation that massed three squadrons of six aircraft each to form a combat group of eighteen aircraft.40 Two or more combat groups formed a combat wing.

LeMay further took his best pilots, navigators, and bombar­diers, and made them “lead” crews who dictated by radio when the entire group formation dropped its bombs. Most B-17S had their bombsights removed and replaced by a machine gun in the aircraft’s Plexiglas nose. The resulting “pattern bombing” tech­nique ultimately became standard operating procedure for Eighth Air Force. “At one stroke you raised the accuracy of the whole Group from the common denominator to the level of your best man, and navigation improved accordingly,” he later remarked.41 LeMay also mandated that his crews fly “straight and level” two minutes prior to target to allow the gyro in the Norden bomb – sight to stabilize while the lead bombardier fed in ground speed and cross-wind information. Though initially apprehensive about the inability to take evasive action on the bomb run, crews found that their loss rate to German flak actually declined with a steady approach to target. LeMay had already reached that conclusion by using the artillery manual from his Ohio State rotc course to calculate that each piece of German antiaircraft artillery would have to fire 273 rounds to score one hit on а в-17.42

Yet LeMay’s innovations could not instantly—or entirely— erase the difficulties of bombing factories or rail yards from four miles up while under fire, and after five months of attacking targets in occupied Europe, Eighth Air Force’s loss rate inched upward, with little to show for the effort other than increasing claims of German fighters shot down.43 British concerns for merchant ship­ping losses mandated that many missions went against German submarine pens in French ports, but the sub pens were relatively small structures with thick concrete ceilings that were difficult to hit and more difficult to damage.44 In December, Spaatz left Eng­land to take command of Twelfth Air Force in North Africa, and Eaker took charge of the Eighth, with Brigadier General New­ton Longfellow taking Eaker’s former job as Commander of VIII Bomber Command. Eaker soon found himself on the defensive from the British, led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who contended that the Americans should abandon daylight bombing and join the rap’s night campaign against German cities.

On the evening of 13 January 1943—while hosting his first dinner guests after becoming Eighth Air Force Commander— Eaker received a telephone call from General Eisenhower, order­ing him to report at once to Casablanca, where Churchill would meet Roosevelt in top-level strategy discussions. Arnold and the rest of the Combined Chiefs of Staff would attend as well, and Arnold wanted Eaker to dissuade the prime minister from recom­mending American night bombing to Roosevelt. Eaker needed lit­tle persuasion. Three months earlier, after comparing British and American bombing methods, he had written Spaatz: “I believe it is clearly demonstrated that the efficiency of day bombardment over night bombardment is in the order of ten to one.”45 Churchill had spoken favorably of Eaker in the past, and Arnold believed that he had the best chance to change Churchill’s mind. Eaker would return to the notion of efficiency to do so, but his version of efficient was one that maximized the experience of each force. When the prime minister appeared before the Eighth Air Force Commander in the uniform of an raf air commodore, Eaker was ready with a one-page memo stressing the persistent nature of a “round-the-clock” offensive that would give the Germans no re­spite from air attack. Churchill found the notion appealing and relented, though his change of mind also came at a price—Eaker promised the prime minister that the Eighth Air Force would be­gin bombing Germany before the end of the month.46

Yet at Casablanca it was a statement made by Roosevelt, not Churchill, that had the greatest impact on future American bomb­ing. The president and the prime minister had both determined well before the conference that they would pursue a policy of com­plete surrender for the Axis powers; Roosevelt believed that the failure to crush the German regime in World War I had spawned the stab-in-the-back theory that facilitated Hitler’s rise, and af­ter Pearl Harbor he contended that total victory was necessary to erase the threat of future militarism from Germany, Italy, and Ja­pan.47 At Casablanca, following the November 1942 North Afri­can landings, Roosevelt and Churchill aimed to assure their do­mestic publics—and their Soviet ally—that the Anglo-American forces would not make deals with German collaborators, nor would they make a separate peace with the Germans.48 As a re­sult, on 24 January 1943, the president announced to a group of reporters that the war aim sought by the Allied powers was the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis nations, which called for “the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and subjugation of other people.”44 He repeat­edly emphasized that objective for the war’s duration.’0

The ramifications of Roosevelt’s declaration were profound for

a bomber force that had yet to bomb the homeland of its stron­gest foe. On one hand, if American political and military leaders adhered to the guidelines of awpd-i and AWPD-42, and those es­timates proved correct, then the American air offensive against Germany should result in an efficient air campaign that eviscer­ated the Third Reich six months after intensive bombing began. On the other hand, if political and military leaders deviated from those guidelines—and Eaker’s promise to Churchill and the high demand for bombers in North Africa and elsewhere guaranteed that the Eighth Air Force would begin its portion of the “Com­bined Bomber Offensive” (сво) with less than the desired num­ber of aircraft—then the time required would take far more than half a year. Moreover, the six-month estimate assumed (1) a high degree of bombing accuracy on a consistent basis, (2) the bomb­ing force would prevail against German defenses in a reasonable amount of time, and (3) the Germans would yield as a result of destruction rendered. Those premises were thin reeds at best, and “unconditional surrender” made the final notion especially prob­lematic. Roosevelt’s declaration now defined German defeat not only as military loss, but also as the eradication of the Nazi re­gime. Using bombs to sever the delicate strands of Germany’s in­dustrial web might not suffice to cause the Germans to throw in the towel.51