Cataclysm: General Hap Arnold and the Defeat of Japan

1. Roosevelt and Arnold

15 1 Roosevelt and Arnold The roots of the strategic bombing offensive of the Twentieth Air Force against Japan can be traced to the prewar doctrinal struggles at the Air Corps Tactical School and debate within the War Department itself. Despite the twists and turns in the evolution of doctrine, a clear strain can be illuminated between prewar evolution and wartime development and prosecution. Arnold did not attend the Tactical School, but in the 1930s the struggle by the school’s faculty to define air doctrine held great import for the air forces that Arnold would lead in World War II. Instructors at the ACTS—including Muir Fairchild, a future Air Force vice chief of staff— evolved the precision bombing doctrine, aimed to destroy the enemy’s war-making industrial base. What has been overlooked however, and will be pointed out in this chapter, is the emphasis the Tactical School also placed on morale or population bombing. It was the targeting of civilians and the workforce in 1945 by the Twentieth Air Force that played a major role in forcing the Japanese surrender. Thus, there is a clear connection between the prewar evolution of doctrine and the morale attacks by 16 Cataclysm the B-29 campaign, culminating in the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Viewed doctrinally, the atomic bombings were not an over-turning of the precision bombing doctrine, but rather the reflection of a constant thread in the development of air doctrine going back to the Tactical School. The B-29 force in the Pacific at the start—under Hansell—inherited the precision doctrine that was subsequently overturned by LeMay’s population bombing, under pressure from Arnold and his staff in Washington. Doctrinehowever,didnotevolveinisolation,butwasintegraltobuilding an air force. Here President Roosevelt and General Arnold needed to find an accommodation over how and in what numbers to conduct an air power buildup. Although anxious to gear up and produce big numbers of aircraft, especially bombers, the president had a major interest in distribution of production aircraft. He determined that the British required a high priority in the fight against Nazi Germany while Arnold made the case for structuring an American air force. No delivery weapon has generated more awe and terror than the strategic bombing plane. Yet, in the history of warfare the strategic bomber has enjoyed a relatively short period of dominance. Employed by Germany in World War I, it is most commonly associated with the American and British bombing offensives of World War II. However, tracking down the history of the strategic bombardment idea and the evolution of doctrine are difficult and chancy tasks at best. “Strategic” refers to long-range air attacks conducted independently of ground and naval forces, i.e., against industry, sources of the enemy’s military power, and against his population. By “tactical” is meant strikes against ground or naval forces and their supporting elements. Absolute precision recreating the doctrinal tensions of the times almost always proves to be problematical at best. Strategical concepts evolve from the circumstances of a period and are usually developed independently, if not simultaneously, by theorists and military officers. During World War I, on November 28, 1917, Lt. Col. Edgar S. Gorrell, chief of the Strategical Aviation Branch of the Air Service in France, described the first American plan for a strategic bombing campaign, a RooseveltandArnold 17 recommendation to bomb the German industrial centers of Dusseldorf, Cologne,Mannheim,andtheSaarValley.“Theobjectofstrategicalbombing ,” he observed, “is to drop aerial bombs upon the commercial centers and lines of communication in such quantities as will wreck the points aimed at and cut off the necessary supplies without which the armies in the field cannot exist.”1 Significantly, during World War I, Lt. Gen. Jan C. Smuts recommended to the British War Cabinet formation of what subsequently became the Royal Air Force and he also proved visionary about air operations by observing that “there is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war use. And the day may not be far off when aerial operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial and populous areas on a vast scale may become the principal operations of war, to which the older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate.”2 After World War I, the development of air doctrine proceeded in concert with advancing aircraft technology and the breakdown of diplomacy in Europe. Significantly also, the American public’s opposition to bombing became more...