page_title: Air War Plans Division
section_title: AWPD-1
hierarchical_section_title: Air War Plans Division / AWPD-1
caption_attribution_description: English: Brigadier General Kenneth N. Walker, commanding general V Bomber Command in the Southwest Pacific.
context_page_description: The Air War Plans Division was an American military organization established to make long-term plans for war. Headed by Harold L. George, the unit was tasked in July 1941 to provide President Franklin D. Roosevelt with "overall production requirements required to defeat our potential enemies." The plans that were made at the AWPD eventually proved significant in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
  The AWPD went beyond offering basic production requirements and provided instead of a comprehensive air plan which was designed to defeat the Axis powers. The plan, AWPD-1, was completed in nine days. The plan emphasized using heavy bombers to carry out precision bombing attacks as the primary method of defeating Germany and her allies. A year later, after the United States became directly involved in World War II, AWPD delivered a second plan—AWPD-42—which slightly changed the earlier plan to incorporate lessons learned from eight months of the war. Neither AWPD-1 nor AWPD-42 were approved as combat battle plans or war operations; they were simply accepted as guidelines for the production of materiel and the creation of necessary air squadrons.
context_section_description: In early 1941, American, Canadian and British war planners convened in Washington D.C. for a series of secret planning sessions called American–British Conference, or ABC-1, to determine a course of action should the United States become a belligerent in the war. An overarching strategy of Europe first was agreed to, where American energies would primarily be directed against Germany, Italy and their European conquests, during which a secondary defensive posture was to be held against Japan. Royal Air Force Air Vice-Marshal John Slessor and other airmen present at the conference agreed on the general concept of using strategic bombing by both British and American air units based in the United Kingdom to reduce Axis military power in Europe. Incorporating this work in April 1941, the joint U.S. Army-Navy Board developed Rainbow 5, the final version of general military guidelines the U.S. would follow in case of war.
  At the beginning of August 1941, the AWPD consisted of only four officers: Harold L. George, Orvil Anderson, Kenneth Walker (each one a lieutenant colonel), and Major Haywood S. Hansell. To help answer the urgent need for planning, George could have sent a couple of his air officers to WPD to assist them, following the standard Army policy since air warfare first arose in World War I. An air plan would have been made emphasizing tactical air coordination with ground forces, one which targeted Axis military formations and supplies in preparation and support of an invasion. George wished to implement the strategic bombing theories that had been debated and refined at the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) during the preceding decade, but was faced with the sure knowledge that the Army and the War Department would not accept a strategy that assumed air attack would prevail alone. Instead, George intended to implement a middle path which began with strategic air attack but contained allowances for the eventual support of a ground invasion. In requesting autonomy to make his own plans, George gained approval from General Arnold and from General Leonard T. Gerow, head of the overworked WPD, who approved as long as AWPD held to the guidelines of ABC-1 and Rainbow 5.
  George sought out men he knew were bombing advocates. He obtained temporary help from five more air officers: Lieutenant Colonels Max F. Schneider and Arthur W. Vanaman, and Majors Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Laurence S. Kuter, and Samuel E. Anderson. All but Samuel E. Anderson had passed through ACTS where precision bombing theories were ascendant. Orvil Anderson was assigned to continue with ongoing projects while the rest of the men concentrated on the new request. On 4 August 1941, the augmented AWPD set to work.
  George, Walker, Kuter, and Hansell provided the key concepts for the AWPD task force. George's vision was that the plan should not be a simple list of quantities of men and materiel—it should be a clear expression of the strategic direction required to win the war by use of air power. The main feature of the plan was the proposal to use massive fleets of heavy bombers to attack economic targets, the choke points of Axis industry. Hansell, fresh from a fact-finding mission to England in which he was briefed on British appreciations of German industrial and military targets, immediately became immersed in the job of target selection.
  Munitions Requirements of the Army Air Forces to Defeat Our Potential Enemies, or AWPD-1, standing for "Air War Plans Division, plan number one", was the first concrete result of AWPD; delivered on 12 August after nine days of preparation. The plan used industrial web theory to describe how air power could be used to attack vulnerable nodes in Germany's economy, including electrical power systems, transportation networks, and oil and petroleum resources. The civil population of Berlin could be targeted as a final step to achieving enemy capitulation, but such an attack was optional: "No special bombardment unit [would be] set up for this purpose."
  The plan also described, in less detail, how to use air power to draw a defens
caption: Kenneth Walker
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