History of Air Warfare – From Kitty Hawk to Hiroshima

The first airplane flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903 was only 11 years before the 1914 outbreak of World War I in which air power was first used, only 36 years before World War II broke out in Europe in which air power played a vital role, and 38 years before World War II was extended to the Pacific where air power, in the form of B-29s, played the decisive role in achieving the capitulation of the Japanese on August 15, 1945 without an invasion of their homeland.

Airplanes were used extensively in World War I for observation, aerial dogfights, and some strafing and bombing. But air power had no significant impact on the outcome of that war. However, the innovative technological developments in airplane design, armaments, ordnance, and aerial tactics during that war were harbingers of what was to develop in the use of air power in World War II.

THE ARMY AIR CORPS WAS ESTABLISHED AS A FULL-FLEDGED BRANCH OF THE ARMY IN 1926

In 1907 an Aeronautical Division of the Army Signal Corps was established. In 1914 it was upgraded to an Aeronautical Section of the Signal Corps and this remained the Army’s designation of its air arm through World War I and until 1926, when the Army Air Corps was established as a full-fledged branch of the Army. That designation remained until 1941 when the Army was divided into three major units: Army Air Forces, Army Ground Forces, and Army Service Forces.

Between the world wars there were steady aeronautical technological developments. Further, there were many studies, doctrines, strategies, and tactics advanced for the use of air power in the event of another major war.

GOAL OF AIR WARFARE IS TO DAMAGE THE WILL AND WAR-MAKING CAPACITY OF THE ENEMY NATION

The rationale and goal of the doctrine developed for strategic air warfare is to so damage the will and war-making capacity of an enemy nation— by destroying or seriously disrupting, in its heartland, its factories and their work forces, and the sources and means of transportation of industrial materials—that the enemy would either surrender or be so weakened that their nation could be readily overrun and occupied by ground forces.

In the 1930s, after Adolph Hitler came to power in Nazi Germany, he put Germany on a huge program of rearmament, including rapidly building a strong modern air force. Also in the 30s, Japan was in the grip of militarists who started and pursued a war to conquer Manchuria and China, which included a large buildup of their Army and Navy air arms.

Meanwhile, in our country, the mood was strongly isolationist, in the illusionary idea that the problems of the rest of the world were not ours and we could be safe behind our “ocean moats,” regardless of conflicts abroad. So, our armed forces were small and generally equipped with obsolete weapons, including, with few exceptions, vintage airplanes. On September 1, 1939, when Hitler attacked Poland and brought on World War II in Europe, the whole U.S. Army was only about 200,000 strong and the Army Air Corps consisted of some 26,000 officers, cadets, and enlisted men, of whom about 2000 were pilots, with about 800 aircraft, all of which were obsolescent, except 23 B-17s. At that time, there were 500,000 in the German Air Force of which 50,000 were air crews, and they were equipped with 4100 first-line aircraft!

Despite the small size of our Army Air Corps in the 1930s, the strategic planners and aeronautical engineers developed doctrine for daylight precision strategic bombardment at long ranges, primarily at high altitude. Following on these studies, the Air Corps’ planners worked with the aircraft companies to exploit aeronautical design and materials developments and to contract for three principal strategic bombers: the Boeing B-17 in the mid-1930s, the Consolidated B-24 in the later 1930s, and the Boeing B-29 in 1940, the first test flight of which was in September 1942. The goal of the strategic bomber program was to develop the longest-range, highest-performance aircraft possible, to defend our territory against any surface attack and to carry the war to the enemy in Europe or Asia from bases that might be far from their homeland, including from bases in the U. S. In the cases of the B-17 and B-24, the development of these new aircraft took many years, from the concept, through numerous design changes, wind-tunnel tests of a model, setting up a production line, and then much flight testing and modification after production was under way. In the case of the B-29, under the pressure of our entry into the war, this process was accelerated to the maximum and the normal span of time cut in half.

In 1939 and 1940 the world, including the American people, were profoundly shocked by the spectacular successes of Hitler’s army and air force in overrunning Poland in September 1939, Denmark and Norway in April 1940, and Holland and Belgium in May followed by the fall of France in June. Thereafter the remnants of the British army, which had been fighting alongside the French, barely escaped capture thanks to an heroic effort by a makeshift flotilla of diverse boats making possible the evacuation from Dunkirk across the English Channel, while being vitally protected in the air by British Royal Air Force fighters keeping the German Air Force from disrupting that crucial rescue.

In the next four months, June to October 1940, Hitler’s plan to invade and conquer Britain was barely foiled, partly by faulty German air strategy but mostly by the skillful and dedicated pilots of the RAF Fighter Command preventing the German Air Force from gaining control of the air over Britain, which was essential to the planned invasion. Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid proper tribute to those gallant airmen when he said: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

These events in Europe in 1940 stirred up enough concern in this country over the gross inadequacies of our armed forces—in view of an increasingly hostile geopolitical environment beyond both of our “ocean moats”—to support a relatively modest rearmament program. For the Army Air Corps this program included a buildup to a strength of 220,000 with 4000 aircraft by April 1942.

In 1941 this program was significantly increased after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in the summer, the Japanese signed an alliance with Germany and Italy and expanded their war in China, made a deal with the government of occupied France to take over bases in Indochina, and became more antagonistic toward our country. The new program included a further buildup by July 1942 of the (newly designated) Army Air Forces to a strength of 400,000 with 7500 combat aircraft.

Shortly after December 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on us, the goal for the Army Air Forces was escalated to a greatly expanded force of about 2.2 million men and over 63,000 airplanes—which goal was achieved in 1945—a hundredfold expansion from 1939 levels!

GERMANY COULD HAVE BEEN DECISIVELY CRIPPLED BY STRATEGIC BOMBARDMENT AND WOULD HAVE SURRENDERED WITHOUT AN INVASION

In Europe, during 1942, 1943, and 1944, strategic air warfare—carried out by the British using their bombers, and by our forces using B-17s and B-24s—played a crucial role in the victory, but was not the decisive factor as envisioned by the strategic air warfare enthusiasts. Some of these enthusiasts believed that the Mediterranean campaign, undertaken in November 1942 and carried on through 1943 and 1944—entailing a major diversion of B-17s and B-24s from the strategic campaign against Germany—seriously limited that strategic campaign. These enthusiasts believed that, otherwise, Germany could have been decisively crippled by strategic bombardment and would have surrendered without an invasion—or at least with a far less costly invasion and land battle than that which had to be waged from the D-day invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944 to the German surrender on May 8th, 1945. So, the strategic air warfare enthusiasts counted on the B-29s in their strategic air campaign against Japan to prove their theories which, as it turned out, they did.

THE B-29 WAS THE ONLY BOMBER WHICH HAD THE CAPABILITY TO ATTACK JAPAN EFFECTIVELY

In the Pacific-Asia theater the B-29 was the only bomber which had the capability to attack Japan effectively. B-17s and B-24s were not only widely used with great effect in Europe and North Africa, but also in the southwest Pacific throughout the war. Yet these aircraft did not have the range to reach Japan from any base feasible to be seized from the Japanese in 1944. And our Navy carrier planes did not have the capability to effectively conduct strategic air warfare.

The range of the B-29 enabled it to marginally reach Western Japan from bases in China, and the whole of Japan from the Marianas Islands 1500 miles south of Tokyo. The Joint Chiefs of Staff decided in 1943 that main bases would be built in India with the approval and support of the British government which then controlled India, with advance staging bases in China, built by the Chinese, to be operational in early 1944. Further, they decided that Marine and Army forces, supported by Navy carrier forces, would seize the Marianas Islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian from the Japanese in the summer of 1944, and that Navy construction battalions, the Seabees, and Army Engineers would construct five large airfields for the B-29s, two each on Guam and Tinian, and one on Saipan. Further, the island of Iwo Jima, half way between the Marianas and Japan would be seized in February 1945, and Okinawa, southwest of the main islands of Japan, in March 1945.

IN 1944 THE 20TH AIR FORCE WAS THE TOP OF THE COMMAND STRUCTURE FOR ALL B-29 UNITS. ITS HEADQUARTERS WAS IN THE PENTAGON

In 1944 the 20th Air Force was set up as the top of the command structure for all B-29 units. Its headquarters was in the Pentagon in Washington. General H.H. Arnold, Commander of the Army Air Forces, was designated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the 20th’s commander. No units were to be placed under the command of the two theater commanders in the Pacific area: Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur, nor the East Asian area commander General Stilwell, all of whom wanted control of the B-29s. But, in an emergency, those commanders could appeal to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for diversion of the B-29s for help for their forces.

Under the 20th Air Force there were originally two bomber commands, the XX in India and China with but one wing, the 58th, and the XXI in the Marianas which started with one wing, in November 1944, and expanded rapidly to these five wings, in order of their deployment: the 73^rd on Isley Field, Saipan, November-December 1944; the 313th on North Field, Tinian in January-February 1945; the 314th on North Field, Guam, February-March 1945; the 58th, redeployed from India-China in April-May to West Field, Tinian; and the 315th on West Field, Guam in May-June, 1945. (The XX Bomber Command Headquarters was inactivated when the 58th Wing moved to Tinian.)

Each wing had 4 bombardment groups of 3 squadrons except the 313th Wing which had five groups [6^th, 9^th, 504^th, 505^th, 509^th], including the 509th which joined the wing in June. In addition, there were support units of many kinds: engineering, communications, photo, medical, etc.

The Tables of Organization and Equipment were designed for 30 B-29s per group with corresponding air and ground crews. But the groups were soon overloaded by 50% to 45 or more airplanes without a fully corresponding increase in air and ground crews and support personnel. Only dedicated long hours of work, high morale, increasingly fine supply of spare parts and munitions, along with nearly ideal weather conditions on Tinian, enabled us effectively to maintain and operate all the aircraft assigned. This challenge for top performance was magnificently met by all the men in the group.

The first B-29 units, those of the 58th Wing’s four groups, were formed in 1943 and trained at airfields in Kansas. When their training—handicapped with great shortages of equipment, serious aircraft engine problems, and persistent time pressure—was barely completed in early 1944, they were deployed to their main bases in India and forward bases in China.

The second wing, the 73rd, trained in Kansas, following the departure of the 58th Wing and about 2 months before we, who were in the 313th Wing, started our training in Nebraska. While the 73rd and we were in training, Marine and Army forces, backed by the Navy, invaded and took the Marianas Islands from the Japanese occupiers. Then the Seabees and Army Engineers began speedily building airfields and other facilities. The two follow-on wings, the 314th and 315th, trained on Kansas and Nebraska airfields, respectively.

President Franklin Roosevelt was a strong believer in the use of air power. He pressed for the development of the B-29s on a top priority basis and insisted that they be deployed to India and China in the spring of 1944. His insistence was based primarily on geopolitical factors, including bolstering the morale of the Chinese government which was being sorely pressed by the expanding Japanese campaign of conquest in that country. Further, this deployment was a means of usefully employing the B-29s until the bases in the Marianas were ready.

The B-29 pioneers in the 58th Wing were plagued with handicaps and difficulties. The air base facilities available to them were limited. They had many supply shortages. They had to ferry all of their fuel and munitions 1200 miles over “the hump,” the high Himalayan mountains between India and China. They continued to have serious problems with the B-29 engines overheating and failing. And, at first, they were short on training.

Although from the advance bases in China the 58th Wing’s B-29s could barely reach western Japan, from those bases and the ones in India they could reach many Japanese targets in Manchuria, Formosa (Taiwan), and in occupied areas of China, Indochina, and Malaysia, in particular, Singapore. In raids on Singapore, the B-29s sank the only floating capital-ship dry dock outside Japan, and destroyed the largest land-based dry dock as well. From China they bombed the steel mill at Mukden, Manchuria, and supported McArthur’s Philippine invasion in late 1944 by destroying a major Japanese air depot on Formosa, severely limiting the number of Japanese aircraft that could reach the Philippines. Further, they destroyed the Japanese small arms ordnance depot at Rangoon, Burma, which helped eliminate the effectiveness of the Japanese army in that country.

So, the 58th Wing, despite the handicaps and difficulties, carried out a number of useful missions. Further, their experiences contributed to the needed on-going modifications of the B-29 airframe, engines, equipment, and operational tactics. Still, considering the effort and resources involved, the results were limited and often disappointing. Some critics began claiming that the B-29 couldn’t perform the strategic bombing mission for which it was designed.

RESULTS OF THE EARLY MONTHS OF OPERATIONS FROM THE MARIANAS WERE DISAPPOINTING

Even the results of the early months of operations from the Marianas, November 1944 to March 1945, were disappointing. The Soviets refused to pass to our meteorologists reports of the weather over Siberia, which reports would have been of great help in improving forecasting of the follow-on weather over Japan. Hence, our forecasters had only weather reconnaissance planes’ reports of current weather on which to guess what the weather would be during our missions 24 or so hours later. Further, we ran into unexpected high-altitude winter winds over Japan (the first discovery of the jet stream). So, our high-altitude operations were more often than not handicapped with layers of clouds and/or high winds that prevented accurate, visual bombing. Therefore, the results were disappointing and worrisome.

MAJOR GENERAL CURTIS E. LEMAY ADDED A MARKEDLY EFFECTIVE TACTIC OF NIGHT LOW-LEVEL INCENDIARY RAIDS

In March 1945, the whole picture began speedily changing for the better. Major General Curtis E. LeMay, the XXI Bomber Command commander, added a markedly effective additional tactic of night low-level incendiary raids; and he also significantly lowered the altitude of daylight missions to avoid the jet stream and the higher layers of obscuring clouds. Further, the nagging bugs in the aircraft engines had by then been worked out. Also, the capture of the island of Iwo Jima with its emergency airfield greatly helped our operations. And the on-going buildup of the force to over 1000 B-29s steadily increased the command’s clout. All of these developments added up to achieving what General Spaatz in August called “the best organized and most technologically and tactically proficient military organization that the world has seen to date.”

In July 1945, two months after the surrender of Germany, the strategic air forces in the Pacific were reorganized.

Until then the B-29 command in the Marianas, as earlier mentioned, had been the XXI Bomber Command under Major General LeMay, with the headquarters on Guam and the five wings based on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.

20TH AIR FORCE HEADQUARTERS WAS RELOCATED FROM THE PENTAGON IN WASHINGTON TO GUAM

On July 15, 1945, the 20th Air Force Headquarters was relocated from the Pentagon in Washington to Guam and replaced the XXI Bomber Command. Lt. General Nathan Twining, who had been the commander of the 15th Air Force in Italy, arrived to be the commander of the 20th. Concurrently, the Headquarters of the 8th Air Force, which had been the strategic air force operating out of Britain against Nazi Germany, was reconstituted on Okinawa with Lt. General Jimmy Doolittle as the commander and the B-29 units being trained for the 8th Air Force were starting to be deployed there. Over the two air forces was set up the Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF) also on Guam with General Carl Spaatz, who had been the overall commander of U.S. strategic air forces in Europe, as the commander. Major General LeMay became General Spaatz’ chief of staff. (In 1947 when the separate U.S. Air Force was split off from the Army, General Spaatz became the first Chief of Staff. General Twining and General LeMay were later Chiefs of Staff, too.)

REORGANIZATION WAS DONE IN PREPARATION FOR THE LAND INVASIONS OF JAPAN

This reorganization was all being done in preparation for the enhanced bombing operations planned to be conducted before and during the land invasions of Japan scheduled for November 1945 on southern Kyushu and for March 1946 on Honshu, southwest of Tokyo. (A million U.S. Army ground forces and many Air Force groups in Europe were under orders to redeploy to Okinawa and the Philippines for these invasions to supplement the U.S. forces already there.)

By November there would have been few, if any, really strategic bombing targets left. Bombing intensity had already reached a monthly level of 42,700 tons in July. The planning figure was to achieve a monthly tonnage of 115,000, as the frequency of missions of the 20th Air Force continued to increase and the 8th Air Force on Okinawa achieved full strength. The B-29s would likely have been used mainly in close pattern bombing in interdiction support of the ground forces, which would have been devastating for the Japanese forces.

THE FIGHTING BY OUR NAVY, MARINES, ARMY GROUND FORCES, OTHER ARMY AIR FORCE UNITS, AND OUR ALLIES WAS ESSENTIAL TO THE VICTORY, BUT NOT TO JAPAN’S SURRENDER

Our country responded magnificently to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against us. With all-out mobilization of our strengths in nearly every field of endeavor, with great sacrifice, and with the heroic efforts of our allies, we won a vital and decisive victory over both of our enemies. (Yet our involvement and, in fact, the war itself, might well have been avoided if we and our allies had been both militarily and politically strong enough in the 1930s.) In the Pacific, the fighting over nearly four years by our Navy, Marines, Army Ground Forces, other Army Air Force units, and our allies was essential to the victory, but not to Japan’s surrender without its homeland being invaded. The enormous destruction of the B-29’s strategic bombing campaign on Japan’s industrial and urban areas, plus the highly successful strangulation aerial mining campaign—planned by the Navy and carried out by the 313th Wing which isolated Japan from overseas resources—combined to drastically reduce the Japanese’ war production capacity, their ability to get essential food and raw materials from overseas, and their civilian morale. Left, though, were still over 2,500,000 Japanese under arms in their homeland along with 9,000 kamikaze aircraft, organized to meet the invasions with a last-ditch “die for the Emperor” massacre.

THE STRATEGIC AIR CAMPAIGN, CARRIED OUT BY THE B-29 20TH AIR FORCE, WAS CRUCIAL IN ACHIEVING VICTORY IN 1945

Our whole national effort, including all the skill and heroism of all the armed forces were necessary for our ultimate victory, but the strategic air campaign, carried out by the B-29 20th Air Force, was crucial in achieving victory in 1945— as is attested to in the following quoted analyses of the campaign and the role of the atomic bombs.

“WE HAVE USED [THE ATOMIC BOMB] TO SHORTEN THE AGONY OF WAR, TO SAVE THE LIVES OF THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF YOUNG AMERICANS”

On August 9th President Truman told the American people, and also the Japanese government:

The second atom bomb was dropped that day and Japan surrendered 6 days later.

The atom bombs and President Truman’s warning provided the crucial psychological shock and impetus which enabled the Emperor to surrender on August 15th, rather than months later, without being overthrown by the fanatics in the Army.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson wrote about the use of the atomic bomb:

“BECAUSE THE BOMB WAS INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE, IT WAS POSSIBLE FOR THE EMPEROR, WITHOUT TOO MUCH LOSS OF FACE, TO GIVE UP”

General Arnold wrote the following assessment:

40 PERCENT OF THE BUILT-UP AREA OF THE 66 CITIES ATTACKED WAS DESTROYED. AIR SUPREMACY AND ITS LATER EXPLOITATION OVER JAPAN PROPER WAS THE MAJOR FACTOR WHICH DETERMINED THE TIMING OF JAPAN’S SURRENDER AND OBVIATED ANY NEED FOR INVASION

In 1946 the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey completed its investigation and analysis of the strategic air campaigns against both Germany and Japan and published reports on its findings, of which the following excerpts are particularly pertinent to this introduction:

(Of course, this final speculative opinion of the members of the Survey was based upon research and analysis made after the war. They were drawing on information on morale and attitudes of the Japanese people and their leaders which, obviously, was not known and available to President Truman and Secretary of War Stimson in making the decision to use the atomic bombs.)

In any event, at Pearl Harbor the Japanese “sowed the wind” and from the B-29s they “reaped the whirlwind.”

Bio: Iowa native Henry C. Huglin (1915-2005) graduated from West Point in 1938. He received his pilot’s wings at Kelly Field, TX in 1939 where he became an advanced flight instructor then Commanding Officer within the Air Training Command of the Air Corps. In 1944 he served as Deputy Group Commander of the 9th Bomb Group in McCook NE, deploying in Feb. 1945 to Tinian Island, Marianas with the 20th AF conducting the strategic B-29 air campaign against Japan. Then a lieutenant colonel, Huglin became Group Commander of the 9th in March 1945. Following WWII, Huglin served as Chief of the Operations Branch in the U.S. Strategic Air Force Headquarters on Guam, the Far East Air Forces in the Philippines, Chief of Staff of the 308th Bomb Wing in Korea and Commanding Officer of Nagoya AB, Japan. In 1948, Colonel Huglin served as Deputy Secretary in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force under W. Stuart Symington at the Pentagon then in 1950 as the NATO Project Officer. Between 1953-1959 he held various staff positions at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). He graduated from the National War College in 1957 and was promoted to Brigadier General in 1959. In 1963, General Huglin served as assistant Chief of Staff, North American Air Defense Command, Colorado Springs, CO before retiring in 1964.