A Concise History of the US Air Force - Air Force Historical Studies ...

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Air
Corps had 26,000 officers and airmen and a heavy bomber force of only
23 B-17s. Chief of Air Corps Arnold had used President Roosevelt’s sup-
port and British and French orders for 10,OOO additional aircraft to launch
a huge expansion of the aviation industry. With the fall of France in June
1940, Roosevelt ordered an Air Corps of 50,000 aircraft and 54 combat
groups. Congress appropriated $2 billion, eventually, to insure funding
for both strategic and tactical air forces. In March 1941 the Air Corps
expanded to 84 groups. These actions and events presaged what would
become the largest air force in the world equipped with the most modem
aircraft available. By December 1941, however, the Army’s air force still
had only 3,304 combat aircraft, but World War I1 mainstays such as P-51
Mustang and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters and the B-29 Superfortress
bomber still were not operational. All would become part of the U.S.
Army Air Forces (USAAF) led by Major General Hap Arnold, estab-
lished under Army Regulation 95-5 on June 20, 1941, with the Air Corps
and the Air Force Combat Command (formerly the GHQAF) as subordi-
nate arms. Less than a year later, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall
made the USAAF coequal to the Ground Forces and Services of Supply.
In August 1941, at the behest of the War Department, USAAF
Chief Arnold directed four former faculty members of the Air Corps
Tactical School to devise an air plan against America’s potential adver-
saries. Lieutenant Colonels Kenneth Walker and Harold George and
Majors Haywood Hansel1 and Laurence Kuter of the newly-formed Air
War Plans Division (AWPD) identified in their plan 154 “chokepoint”
targets in the German industrial fabric, the destruction of which, they
held, would render Germany “incapable of continuing to fight a war.” A
lack of intelligence prevented the design of a similar plan against Japan.
The four planners calculated that the desired air campaign would require
98 bomber groups-a force of over 6,800 aircraft. From their recommen-
dation General Arnold determined the number of supporting units, air-
craft, pilots, mechanics, and all other skills and equipment the USAAF
would need to fight what became World War 11. The 239 groups estimat-
ed came close to the 243 combat groups representing 80,OOO aircraft and
2.4 million personnel that actually formed the USAAF in 1944 at its
wartime peak. The planners had also assumed that they would not have to
initiate their air plan, known as AWPD/l, with a complete 98-group force
until April 1944. However, they were not allowed the luxury of time.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor four months after the air plan’s
submission to the War Department, an ill-equipped USAAF found itself
thrust into the greatest war in human history.
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