Cataclysm: General Hap Arnold and the Defeat of Japan

Introduction

3 Introduction There have been books on the B-29 and works on Gen. Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, but not an analytical work that binds these two together and gets into the mind of Hap Arnold. This is what this book is all about. In the massive literature on the end of World War II in the Pacific, much attention has been given to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fact, however, is that prior to August 1945 Japan had been defeated militarily, but was politically unwilling to surrender. A significant share of the credit for the hopeless situation of the Empire of Japan in the summer of 1945 must go to General Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces (AAF) and Commander of the Twentieth Air Force, the global B-29 force in the Pacific. Arnold was an American original. Impetuous, never adverse to risk taking, he set goals that associates thought outlandish. Impatient, he drove himself, without regard to his health, plunging ahead like the proverbial bull in the china shop. Although he would certainly plead guilty to not being especially articulate , he frequently outwitted his adversaries on the strategic level and was a master at playing his cards close to his vest. Arnold was not a master 4 Cataclysm strategist; in the application of bombardment, he believed in getting out large numbers of sorties with heavier bombloads. He was however, a master builder who knew how to work with aircraft manufacturers and how to organize and control air forces. Thus, he became a builder and promoter of air power. Arnold was a survivor of the interwar years; there was no inevitability about his succeeding to the AAF top command. Little known today, as early as the 1920s he was almost canned by Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick, head of the Air Service, over a messy contretemps that shed a bad light on Patrick. And prior to the U.S. entry into World War II, Arnold was close to being fired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the issue of the distribution of bomber production. Not only did Arnold persevere and survive in the interwar period, and in the air power buildup, 1938— 1941, but it was his drive and determination that brought the B-29 into production and subsequently led to the strategic bombing campaign against Japan. Criticized as parochial, a self-promoter, and a man of light intellect, he was, in fact, the indispensable leader who built the Army Air Forces and made possible the B-29 campaign that played a decisive role in ending the war in the Pacific. This book traces Arnold’s thought from the prewar buildup through the war—culminating in the summer of 1945— and into his important postwar opinions wherein he takes a critical look at the wartime experience and offers his vision of the future of air power. Previous works have failed to clearly trace Arnold’s thought on prewar doctrine; his specific part in bitter interservice debates; his relationships with President Roosevelt and Gen. Douglas MacArthur; the development of joint and combined operations; and Arnold’s role in the abortive requirement for unified command in the Pacific. Also insufficiently illuminated is his constant hectoring of operational commanders in the field. Nor have the reasons for Arnold’s determination to command the global Twentieth Air Force been clearly analyzed. For example, not traced previously, this question involved complex and sensitive theater issues between the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the British Chiefs of Staff, and Lord Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia. And contrary Introduction 5 to the opinions of some historians, strategic bombing commanders in thePacificreceivedplentyofdirectionfromWashington.Theywereunder enormous pressure. Unlike most books on the Pacific war, this work uses interrogations, not only of officials and the military, but of the Taro Keda, the so-called average citizens, to bring out that the B-29 attacks on Japanese cities were the primary factor stoking defeatism and plunging morale, resulting in enormous numbers of evacuees. Most works on prewar air doctrine stress the high-altitude precision bombing doctrine. In this regard, one of the major themes of this work is that attack on the enemy’s morale—the civilian and workforce population—can also be traced back to the evolution of doctrine at the Air Corps Tactical School. It was always present in prewar and wartime air plans along with the doctrine of striking the enemy’s industrial fabric. World War II was not fought by...