The Allied Strategic Plan

In both the RAF and the United States Army Air Forces there were some who believed that air power could deliver the knockout blow against Germany, and force capitulation. This view, however, was not controlling in the overall Allied strategic plan. The dominant element in that plan was invasion of the Continent to occur in the spring of 1944. Plans called for establishing air superiority prior to the date of the invasion and the exploitation of such superiority in weakening the enemy's will and capacity to resist.

The deployment of the air forces opposing Germany was heavily influenced by the fact that victory was planned to come through invasion and land occupation. In the early years of the war, to be sure, the RAF had the independent mission of striking at German industrial centers in an effort to weaken the German economy and the morale of the German people. However, the weight of the RAF effort, compared with tonnages later employed, was very small --16,000 tons in 1940 and 46.000 tons in 1941 compared with 676,000 tons in 1944. Soon after the United States entered the air war in 1942, replacements for the new (and still small) Eighth Air Force were diverted to support the North African invasion. During 1943, target selection for the Eighth Air Force and the Fifteenth Air Force (based on the Mediterranean) reckoned always with the fact that maximum contribution must be made to the invasion in the coming year. And the Ninth Air Force in Western Europe and the Twelfth Air Force in the Mediterranean were developed with the primary mission of securing the sky in the theatre of combat and clearing the way for ground operations. In the spring and early summer of 1944, all air forces based on England were used to prepare the way for the invasion. It was not intended that the air attacks against Germany proper and the German economy would be a subordinate operation, but rather a part of a larger strategic plan -- one that contemplated that the decision would come through the advance of ground armies rather than through air power alone.