Haywood S. Hansell - AWPD-1

AWPD-1

See also: United States Army Air Forces: Strategic planning in World War II

"It is far beyond my ability to adequately describe the frustrations, disappointments, fragile hopes, determination, and soaring zeal that were mixed in the cauldron to make AWPD-1 and the plans modifying it. The frantic efforts to meet deadlines, the disagreements, the uphill fight against entrenched and hostile opinion, the dedicated crusade for the new role of air power, the slumbering dread that we might be wrong--that we might persuade our leaders to take a path that would lead to disaster--put a heavy burden on all of us."

Haywood S. Hansell - The Strategic Air War Against Germany and Japan: A Memoir

On 12 July 1941, Hansell, just returned from London, was recruited by Harold George to join the Air War Plans Division of the newly-created AAF Air Staff in Washington, D.C., as its Chief of European Branch. There a strategic planning team of former "bomber mafia" members (himself, George, Kuter, and War Plans Group chief Lt. Col. Kenneth N. Walker), put together an estimate for President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the numbers of aircraft and personnel needed to win a war against the Axis Powers, well beyond the scope requested of it by the War Plans Division of the General Staff.

Hansell’s responsibility in the plan, designated AWPD–1, was information on German targets. Arnold had given George nine days to write the plan, which would be "Annex 2, Air Requirements" to "The Victory Program," a plan of strategic estimates involving the entire U.S. military.

Beginning on 4 August 1941, they drew up the plan in accordance with strategic policies promulgated earlier that year, outlined in the ABC-1 agreement with the British Commonwealth, and Rainbow 5, the U.S. war plan. The group completed AWPD-1 in the allotted nine days and carefully rehearsed a presentation to the Army General Staff. Its forecast figures, despite planning errors from lack of accurate information about weather and the German economic commitment to the war, were within 2 percent of the units and 5.5 percent of the personnel ultimately mobilized, and it accurately predicted the time frame when the invasion of Europe by the Allies would take place.

Hansell’s contribution to the plan was based on a serious flaw, however. As had most observers, Hansell assumed that the Nazi economy was working at maximum capacity, when in fact it was still at 1938 levels of production, an error that led to an underestimation of the numbers of sorties, bomb tonnage, and time required for bombing to have a decisive effect. However, a more significant error in planning, the omission of long-range fighter escorts for the bombers, seriously impacted the strategic bombing campaign that later took place. Hansell deeply regretted the omission but noted that it reflected the best available information at the time on fighter aircraft capabilities, which was that any means then available to extend range would also seriously degrade a fighter's air combat performance. Hansell wrote, "Failure to see this issue through proved one of the Air Corps Tactical School's major shortcomings."

A lack of knowledge about the capability of radar to create an effective centralized early warning system also contributed to the over-reliance on the self-defense capabilities of bombers. However Hansell also argued that ignorance of radar was fortuitous in the long run. He surmised that had radar been a factor in making doctrine, many theorists would have reasoned that massed defenses would make all strategic air attacks too costly, inhibiting if not entirely suppressing the concepts that proved decisive in World War II and essential to the creation of the United States Air Force.