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

AWPD/I had called for a strategic bombing campaign against the
sources of Germany’s power as the most efficient and effective means of
achieving victory. With the United States on the defensive in the Pacific
and Allied units bogged down in North Africa, the Eighth Air Force in
England joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the largest strategic bomb-
ing campaign ever attempted. Progress was slow through 1943. Airfields
had to be built, crews trained, aircraft modified. Circumstances diverted
Eighth Air Force units to pressing needs elsewhere in the world. The first
official bombing mission did not come until August 17, 1942, when
twelve B-17s of the 97th Bomb Group, accompanied by Eighth Air Force
commander Ira Eaker, attacked a marshalling yard in France. The Eighth
Air Force, along with the RAF and the Italy-based Fifteenth Air Force
(beginning in late 1943), would be the only Allied forces attacking targets
inside Germany’s borders until late 1944.
Missions through the summer of 1943 were trial and error, as the
Eighth Air Force slowly pushed deeper into German-occupied territory.
Prewar doctrine dictated that unescorted self-defending bombers could
fight their way through air defenses to destroy targets in an enemy’s
heartland. Attacking in small numbers (AWPD/l had called for a force of
6,834 bombers), the US AAF was severely tested by poor weather, bomb-
ing inaccuracy, diversions of bombers to North Africa and against sub-
marine pens, and stiff enemy defenses as it attempted to get at Germany’s
industrial web.
While the Eighth Air Force labored to overcome these chal-
lenges, the Air Staff, the AWPD, and the Committee of Operations
Analysts worked to identify for destruction chokepoints in the German
war economy. Although RAF Bomber Command’s Arthur Harris wanted
the USAAF to join him in a night campaign of area bombing to destroy
Germany’s cities, the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the Casablanca Con-
ference gave its support for daylight precision strategic bombing.
AWPD/I had identified 154 targets. A new plan, AWPDf42 found 177. In
late April 1943 at the Trident Conference, the Combined Chiefs approved
a list of 76 targets as Eighth Air Force objectives. The Eighth Air Force,
with the RAF, was to win air superiority, an “intermediate objective sec-
ond to none in priority,” and weaken Germany enough to allow an inva-
sion. Its undertaking was to be known as Operation POINTBLANK, the
Combined Bomber Offensive.
The pace of operations intensified for the 17 groups General
Eaker had available in July 1943. Brigadier General Laurence Kuter and
Colonel Curtis LeMay worked out combat formations at the wing and
group levels to maximize the number of defensive machine guns to be
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