Kenneth Walker - World War II - Air War Plans Division

Air War Plans Division

Walker returned to the United States in January 1941 and joined the Air War Plans Division in the Office of the Chief of the United States Army Air Corps in Washington, D.C., as an assistant chief of staff. Brigadier General Carl Andrew Spaatz was head of the division. Lieutenant Colonels Olds and Muir S. Fairchild, old colleagues of Walker's from the Air Corps Tactical School, were two of Spaatz' assistants. Walker was promoted to temporary lieutenant colonel on 15 July 1941. In the June 1941 reorganization of the Air Corps, Spaatz became chief of staff to the Commanding General, United States Army Air Forces, Major General Henry H. Arnold, who appointed Colonel Harold L. George, a former student of Walker at the Air Corps Tactical School from 1931 to 1932, to replace Spaatz as head of the Air War Plans Division. Walker joined George's planning team, along with Majors Haywood S. Hansell and Laurence S. Kuter. All were former instructors at the Air Corps Tactical School and members of the "Bomber Mafia".

The Air War Plans Division was tasked with developing a production requirements plan for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who wanted it by 10 September 1941. In just nine days in August 1941, George, Olds, Fairchild, Walker, Kuter and Hansell drafted the AWPD-1 plan for a war against Germany. Reflecting their belief in bombardment as the principal form of aviation, the plan was based upon the number of bombers that they estimated would be required to knock out Germany's key industries – electric power, transportation and petroleum. In order to neutralize anticipated opposition from the German Air Force, they planned for bombing aircraft factories and the sources of the light metals needed for aircraft production. These targets were collated along with the estimated tonnage of bombs required to destroy them.

The plan called for a bomber force of 98 medium, heavy and very heavy bomber groups, totaling 6,834 aircraft. Sixteen fighter groups would defend the bombers' bases. Should this bomber force prove insufficient to defeat Germany without a major land offensive, provision was made for a tactical air force of 13 light bomber groups, two photo reconnaissance groups, five fighter groups, 108 observation squadrons and 19 transport groups. In retrospect, this part of the plan represented a considerable underestimate. The plan required 2,164,916 personnel, including 103,482 pilots. At the moment though, the United States had, as General Arnold put it, "plans but not planes". Due to poor security, verbatim extracts of AWPD-1 were published in the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers on 4 December.

The war in Europe had cast grave doubt on the Air Corps' doctrine that fighters could not shoot down bombers and the bomber will always get through. In the Battle of Britain the British Royal Air Force had demonstrated that it could shoot down bombers, while its own bomber force had suffered such heavy losses over Germany that it had abandoned daylight bombing in favor of night raids. Nonetheless, the planners held firm in their belief that, since American bombers were better armed and armored than their British or German counterparts, the bombers would get through, even in daylight, and that enemy fighter strength could be destroyed on the ground by bombing airbases and factories. "Each of us," Kuter wrote years later, "scoffed at the idea that fighters would be needed to protect bombers, to enable bombers to reach their objective. In preparing AWPD-l, we stayed in that rut." Walker was promoted to colonel on 1 February 1942.

In April 1942 Walker joined the Operations Division (OPD) of the War Department General Staff as executive officer of Brigadier General St. Clair Streett's Theater Group. He co-authored a memorandum with Brigadier General Dwight Eisenhower in which they advanced the position that the determinations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "must be taken as authoritative unless and until modified by the same or higher authority." After his death, Walker was awarded the Legion of Merit in recognition of his contributions as a staff officer at OPD.