Cast A Giant Shadow

 

 

Washington, D.C. was a long way from Denver, Colorado, especially so during the tense early months of World War II.  Bob Pearson made the trip only because business called him to the Capitol.  It was May 1942 and Bob had brought along his son, recently graduated from high school.  As something of a celebration before departing for home, the Pearsons scheduled lunch at the Willard Hotel with Army Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth N. Walker.

Bob and Ken Walker went back to their early school days in Denver, followed by a life-long friendship.  When time, maturity, and occupational demands separated the two they maintained contact through a mutual interest in aviation.  Young Lieutenant Walker had flown into Denver over the Labor Day Weekend in 1919 to take his friend on sight-seeing tour over the mountains of Estes Park in his Army DH-4 airplane.  Fifteen years later when Bob was living in Quincy, Illinois, Ken Walker had diverted from a cross-country flight to make an unauthorized visit to his friend.

The mood at the lunch table on this day early during the spring of 1941 was somewhat resigned; it was not the normal banter about kids and family.  Lieutenant Colonel Walker's two sons were living on the West Coast with their mother after the first of two failed relationships--and divorces, in the past ten years. The only upbeat topic was Walker's military career, which seemed to be at its zenith.  He had missed the First World War but was now being assigned to combat duty in the South Pacific.  He would not miss the Second World War.

When lunch was finished the two old friends shook hands and wished each other well.  Before Bob Pearson turned to leave Ken Walker looked him in the eyes and stated flatly: "I've made a terrible mess of things here.  I doubt if I'll be back."

They were the last words Bob Pearson would ever hear from the scrappy kid he'd known since the two attended Denver's Maria Mitchell and Columbian Schools. 

 

Kenneth Newton Walker

Ken Walker was born in Cerrillos, New Mexico, in 1898, but moved with his mother to Denver in his early childhood.  His father Wallace was an orphan who had been raised by a foster family with the surname Walker.  Apparently as a result of his own difficult childhood, Wallace Walker never learned to adapt to marriage and family.  Early in Ken's life he deserted his young family, leaving Kenneth embittered against his father for the rest of his life.  It may indeed have been the lack of a solid father figure in his own childhood that contributed to many of Kenneth Walker's own problems in relating to family when he later had one of his own.

In 1912 Kenneth and his mother moved to Kansas City where the young man attended and graduated from high school.  In 1917 at age nineteen he returned alone to Denver to attend the YMCA Night School, and then to pursue studies in business administration at La Salle University.  Ten days before Christmas Kenneth Walker joined the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps Enlisted Reserve.  The following June, while American aviators were tasting their first aerial combat in France,  Kenneth Walker was becoming a pilot at the Air Service Flying School at Mather Field in California.  World War I ended on November 11, 1918, the same month Walker was discharged from the Reserves and commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Service.

The new and fledgling post-war Army Air Service was not the best place to be for a young officer looking to build a military career in the 1920s.  It did provide those who chose the air over the ground an exciting, different kind of military lifestyle, coupled with some incredible challenges.  Lieutenant Kenneth Walker adapted well to military life, always impeccably uniformed, orderly in the performance of his duties, and dedicated to the future of aviation.  In September 1922 while stationed at Post Field in Oklahoma, he married Marguerite Potter, a beautiful, well-educated "Sooner Queen".  Three months later the young couple were sailing across the Pacific for a two year tour of duty in the Philippine Islands.

The small group of pilots stationed at Camp Nichols in the Philippines, thousands of miles from home, were a social group.  Marguerite quickly learned the custom, protocol, and nuances of hosting that are important to the future of any young military officer. The Walker's were a wonderful couple to all outward appearances, admired and envied by others, and well respected by all who knew them.  

On the job, Lieutenant Walker was a hard, efficient worker--if anything a work-a-holic decades before the malady was given a name.  Air Corps duty itself, half-a-world away from the mainland, was generally uncomplicated and occasionally interesting.  Only hints of the personal problems that would later become too difficult to overcome were evident in those early years.

Walker served as commanding officer of the Air Intelligence Section at Camp Nichols, as well as in other roles. In December 1923 he was one of six pilots that flew an extended reconnaissance trip into Zamboanga.  Before returning home early in 1925 the Walkers also enjoyed a brief vacation in China.

Back in the United States Lieutenant Walker was assigned to Langley Field, Virginia, in the summer of 1925.  He returned from his peaceful foreign service to find the Army Air Service engaged in a war at home...virtually a struggle for survival.  Three years earlier General William Billy Mitchell had revolutionized aerial warfare by demonstrating that bombers could sink battleships.  That revelation had not been a welcomed one; it was spurned by politicians and the traditional leadership of both the Army and the Navy. Mitchell had further ostracized himself from the military establishment by repeatedly calling for reorganization of the U.S. Military to include America's airmen as a separate branch of service.  Ultimately the powerful men in the War Department attempted to end his crusade by reverting him to his permanent rank as a colonel and banishing him to Fort Hood, Texas--far from Washington, D.C.

Two months after the Walkers moved into their new home at Langley Field this political war at home reached critical mass.  Two Naval air disasters in August prompted Colonel Mitchell to issue a prepared statement from Fort Hood charging, "These accidents are the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the Navy and War Departments."  Mitchell's proffered gauntlet could not be ignored.  In October a seven week trial began in Washington, D.C., that resulted in the court-martial of Billy Mitchell and his suspension from rank, command, and duty for five years.  This sanction prompted the World War I hero and aviation pioneer to resign.

There can be no doubt that Colonel Mitchell issued his statement fully aware that it would result in his court-martial.  Some people argued that he was an egotist seeking headlines; others that he saw himself as some sort of sacrificial lamb doing what he felt needed to be done to bring the plight of the American Air Service before the public.  Whatever the motivation and reasoning, the court-martial of Billy Mitchell had a strong and sweeping impact on the men of the Air Service, as well as on the future of aviation:

• Billy Mitchell's unprecedented insubordination established a new pattern for aggressive advocacy, but
  

• Mitchell's subsequent conviction, as well as the (at least perceived) banishment of some of his strongest defenders and defense witnesses including Major Henry Hap Arnold, warned against going too far in aggressive advocacy.
  

• The evident truth of the sad state of American aviation, as testified to by Mitchell and others, prompted a certain level of internal damage control.  Even before the trial began President Coolidge seated a distinguished panel under Dwight Morrow to review and suggest as to the feasibility of a separate air force.  Though the Morrow Board rejected that concept, their hearings played a large role in the subsequent Air Corps Act of 1926.  That sweeping legislation changed the name of the Army's air arm from "Air Service" (denoting a role of support to ground forces) to "Air Corps," indicating a more combat oriented designation.  It further led to increased funding for a 5-year buildup of the Army Air Corps.
  

• An ancillary effect of the Mitchell Trial may also have been the effect it had on one of the trial judges, General Douglas MacArthur.  MacArthur was a boyhood friend of Billy Mitchell, the Mitchell and MacArthur families of Milwaukee enjoying a long and legendary friendship.  When called to sit on the trail MacArthur described it as "One of the most distasteful orders I ever received."  Colonel Mitchell was convicted by a secret vote of the eight judges and there were rumors (enhanced by statements made by MacArthur himself,) that Mitchell's boyhood friend had cast a dissenting vote in his conviction.  But the true nature of that vote was never known, and many men of the U.S. Army Air Corps, most of whom idolized Billy Mitchell, never forgave Douglas MacArthur for "betraying his boyhood friend."  Any study of World War II quickly shows suspicion of and distrust towards MacArthur from many Air Force pilots.   Conversely, MacArthur didn't seemed to fully understand or appreciate his airmen, or for that matter, to trust them.

 

A.C.T.S. 

If the traditionalists of the Navy and War Departments were at a loss as to how to effectively administer their new air arms, it is not without reason.  In 1926 heavier-than-air flight was only 23 years old and, as a U.S. military element, had seen only nine months of combat experience and testing.  Even the young pilots who flew the airplanes and protested for an independent air force could not define their own role in warfare and the military establishment.  

The internal search for identity began to take shape in earnest following the Air Corps Act of 1926.  Despite the punishment administered to Colonel Mitchell, in the immediate aftermath of the trial the new Army Air Corps found itself with not only increased funding, but some new levels of autonomy.  The Air Service Field Officer's School at Langley Field had been an important part of any budding Air Service officer's resume since 1921.  Following the Air Corps Act of 1926 the school was renamed the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS).  The school's mission changed from its original task of "preparing senior officers for higher Air Service command duty" to one of defining the role of the Air Corps, i.e. "Tactical Theory".

It was a timely and badly needed change, for the budding Air Corps did not yet fully understand its own role in warfare.  Air theorists were divided into two camps: pursuit and bombers.

Though bombing raids were conducted throughout World War I and became increasingly frequent and important in the latter months before the Armistice, it was the PURSUIT (fighter) pilots who emerged from The Great War as the Air Service heroes.  The role of the fighter pilot, alone in the air and going man-to-man against enemy pilots, was far more glamorous than that of the bomber pilot droning over endless miles to drop his explosives and hopefully turn to fly back home.  

Furthermore, it was the pursuit pilots who had given the Allies air superiority at St. Mihiel, the September 1918 offensive that first demonstrated the value of the airplane in coordination with ground operations.   The Knights of the Air had overwhelmed the air forces of the enemy, keeping their observation balloons and airplanes out of the skies so that the infantry could advance undetected and unmolested.

Ironically, the argument espoused by the Pursuit advocates at ACTS tended to substantiate the claims of the Army and Navy that aviation was an auxiliary to the ground forces, and therefore should not be separated from them.  The pursuit airplane was another weapon in the arsenal of the ground commander, like a tank or artillery piece, to be deployed best as a defensive weapon.

Billy Mitchell had argued for a separate air force because he saw aviation NOT as a defensive weapon, auxiliary to the ground or naval forces, but as an offensive weapon.  He demonstrated that airborne bombers could sink battleships.  He argued that the best way to win the next war would be through using such bombers as offensive weapons, to strike at enemy industrial and economic targets.  Those who adopted similar ideas for aerial warfare separated into the Bomber Camp, leading to several years of internal debate at ACTS.  It was the kind of debate the Air Corps needed, for out of it came a new sense of identity.  When Lieutenant Walker entered ACTS as a student in 1928 he quickly ascribed to the Bomber Camp, becoming one of its most vocal advocates.

From 1929 to 1934 Lieutenant Walker remained at ACTS as a bombardment instructor.   While the Air Corps searched for its own identity, Lieutenant Walker had finally found his.  Perhaps more than any man in history, Kenneth Walker defined the meaning of the term Strategic Bombardment for future wars.  Though he would not live to see it, the air strategies debated and refined at ACTS during those five years ultimately lead to the defeat of Adolph Hitler in World War II.  

"Victory smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur."  Giulio Douhet Strategic Bombardment General Billy Mitchell was not the only forward thinking airmen of the early days of military aviation, nor the only one to have trouble convincing his country of the full potential of the airplane as a military weapon.  In Italy, Guilio Douhet fought the same battle with similar results.  Mitchell detractors, in fact, were prone to excuse the American visionary as one who had simply learned, then adopted, the ideas and strategies of Douhet.  It was no secret that Mitchell admired Douhet and, though he never referred to him in his own writings, he spoke of his ideas in many conversations. In 1912 Douhet was appointed to lead Italy's first aviation battalion and went on to serve...and observe...the warfare of World War I.  Though most often thought of in terms of aviation, his observations were wide-ranging and varied.  His hypothesis was basically that technological advances (not only the the airplane but also machine guns and poison gas,) made ground warfare obsolete, and gave the advantage to a defending army instead of the offensive force.  He reasoned, for instance, that if one soldier in a trench had a gun that could fire one round per minute and it took an attacker one minute to cross the terrain that separated him from that position, two attackers working in tandem would over-run the position.  Similarly, if the defender had a machine gun that could fire 100 rounds per minute, the enemy would have to send 101 attackers to seize the position held by a single man.  If the position were protected with barbed wire it would increase the attackers' time to five minutes, and would require 501 men to assault and overcome a lone defender.  If the logic sounded strange, it was nevertheless, well-founded. Douhet's primary interest, however, was in the airplane.  He was unimpressed with the effect of Pursuit Warfare, except to fly protection for bombers.  He wrote: "They (fighter planes) would be completely wasted in engagements with other fighters because only a few enemy planes are destroyed, no land is captured, and the enemy's will is unaffected.  All glory--no results." The operative words for Douhet were "The Enemy's Will", and from that he developed his warfare doctrine of strategic bombing.  In more modern vernacular, he believed that the best defense was a strong (aerial) offense: Bomb and destroy the enemy's air force on the ground before they can marshal them against your own forces, and  Bomb and destroy your enemy's capability to make war (factories, industrial plants, economic centers). Douhet's vision, though flawed in many ways, was decades ahead of his time.  When Douhet wrote Il domino dell'aria in 1921, no nation on earth had long-range bombers capable of the kind of warfare Douhet prophesied.  The fact that technology had not caught up to theory did not stop him from continuing to write, or from urging his nation to develop a separate Air Force with air officers capable of directing such warfare when that technology finally caught up. Douhet's outlandish (at that time) ideas also did not prevent the cadre at ACTs from adding a 5-page extract from his book to their files in 1921, or from using a 100-page translation for instruction the following year.

 

"The well-organized, well-planned, and well-flown air force (bombing) attack will constitute an offensive that cannot be stopped."

 

Giulio Douhet would have loved those words, might have used the quote himself if had had thought of it.  That single sentence summarized nicely the strategic theory espoused in the hundreds of pages he had written since the end of World War I.  That sentence however, is most often attributed to United States Army Corps Lieutenant Kenneth N. Walker.  It did summarize Walker's own thinking.  (The first utterance of that now-famous litany may have actually been made by ACTS' assistant commandant, Major Walter H. Frank, who served as umpire for aerial maneuvers held in Ohio in 1929.)

When Ken Walker graduated from ACTS in 1929 the prevailing doctrine at the school belonged to the Bomber Group, though there remained a fair contingent of pursuit advocates.  One of Walker's ACTS instructors was Robert Olds, an air officer who had served as an aide to Billy Mitchell.  Olds evangelistically shared Mitchell's concepts of strategic bombardment in the classroom, and Kenneth Walker became his star pupil.  By the time Walker graduated in 1929 he was convinced that the bomber would soon replace pursuit aircraft as the predominant Air Corps weapon.  When he returned the following year as an ACTS instructor himself, the combination of Olds and Walker was hard to argue against.  During that first year at ACTS Walker also rewrote the bombardment text for the Air Corps, which was reprinted with only minor updates and corrections in 1931.

Like Douhet before him, Walker's written ideas were not predicated upon current available technology.  Looking to the future, Walker believed that American ingenuity and industrial power would create not only long range bombers capable of carrying tons of bombs, but the means to accurately deliver those bombs from a high altitude beyond the range of anti-aircraft fire.  Furthermore, his concepts were deviously simple in many regards.  Strategic targets were not only factories that created weapons of warfare, but factories that created smaller items necessary for the tools of war.  One might bomb a factory that turned out tanks and destroy a few vehicles under construction.  On the other hand, a well-aimed bombing attack on a ball-bearing factory that created the small items necessary to make a tank operate, might well halt the entire production of enemy tanks (as well as other machinery that required ball-bearings) for a considerable period of time.

When classes began in 1930 Lieutenant Kenneth Walker was comfortable in the niche he had worked so hard all his life to find.  He was sometimes even referred to as the "high priest" of strategic bombing.  Few dared argue "pursuit vs. bombing" with Kenneth Walker, and proponents of the latter strategy might well have steamrolled through the ongoing controversy in the years that followed but for a new student who arrived with the 1930 class at ACTS.

 

Claire L. Chennault arrived with a reputation as a top pursuit pilot with all the positives and negatives that are traditionally inherent in a good fighter pilot.  No man alive could have swayed Kenneth Walker's belief that  bombers would replace fighter planes.  Conversely, even the irascible Kenneth Walker could not convince Chennault that bombers were second to pursuit in the winning of wars.  The stage was set for a classic clash of ideas which, despite its intensity, was ultimately good for ACTS and the future of aviation.

Despite their differences, the two men had much in common.  Each was single-minded and obsessed with his personal theory for the future of combat aviation.  Either man could become quite animated and emotional in the debates that followed.  Chennault was a heavy smoker; Kenneth Walker smoked more.   Students from the period did tend to give the edge to Walker, who generally was more vehement in his expressions than the blatantly blunt but soft-toned, southern-drawled Chennault.  All knew that there could be no winner when the two men engaged in the "bomber vs. pursuit" debates, but the diatribe was at the very least, most entertaining.  As the school year wore on it was not unusual during moments of relative boredom, for others to maneuver the two opponents into a verbal battle.  Observers later described the two men as "rabid".

Lieutenant Walker did hold two advantages over Chennault.  One was the overwhelming support of a majority of the cadre at ACTS for his position on bombardment.  The other was the fact that Kenneth Walker was a popular instructor and well-liked by almost everyone who ever met him.  Chennault had a rough exterior and an abrasive personality, personality traits some would say are two commodities that make up a good fighter pilot.  All that aside, Chennault was not well-accepted or liked by many of the students, and he was hard pressed for allies even among those who agreed with his position on pursuit vs. bombardment.

When Lieutenant Walker left ACTS in 1933, the five years of study and debate at  Langley Field had crystallized into a well-defined doctrine of deployment and tactics for America's air assets.  It was based around high-altitude, daylight precision bombing attacks, neither of which the Air Corps had the technology to accomplish in 1933.  Like Douhet, Kenneth Walker anticipated that the necessary heavy bombers and aerial targeting technology would develop in the future, and continued to be the leader in defining this role.  He is often accredited with creation of the term "bombardier", which was sprinkled liberally through his writings as a synonym for the traditional term "bomber".  

Walker's 1931 and subsequent writings spelled out what became generally accepted Air Corps theory for aerial warfare:

• "Whenever we speak in terms of 'air force' we are thinking of bombardment aviation."

• "Bombardment aviation, properly employed, can shatter a nation's will to resist; it can destroy the economical and industrial structures which made possible the very existence of modern civilization."

As to the subject of a separate (from the Army and Navy) American Air Force, Walker believed as Billy Mitchell had proclaimed throughout the previous decade, that an adequate American Air Force would be our nation's best, first line of defense against aggression:

• "No enemy would consider launching an invasion (against the United States) if he were convinced that we were in possession of a bombardment force capable of destroying (vital enemy establishments)."

• "The importance of an air force to our national security (should be appreciated) not in terms, for example, of a mere adjunct to our ground forces, such as cavalry or field artillery and designed only to further the infantry mission--but as a force with a distinct mission, of importance co-equal to that of the Army and the Navy."

For Claire Chennault, the turning tide of Air Corps doctrine was a difficult defeat.  In 1937 he resigned from the Air Corps citing health problems; he had been ill through much of his career.  Many of his own theories of pursuit combat and his emphasis upon early warning systems were validated five years later when he commanded the famous Flying Tigers of the American Volunteer Group in the China-Burma theater.  Time and World War II would further validate many of the concepts of both Walker and Chennault, and illustrate the associated weaknesses in their individual myopic views of air doctrine.  Ultimately, their debates were critical to the growth and definition of the Air Corps that both men loved.

 

Problems at Home

When Lieutenant Walker departed ACTS in 1933 he had given the Army nearly fifteen years of his life and was still a first lieutenant.  He had earned his silver bar upon being commissioned in the Regular Army in 1920, reverted back to second lieutenant in 1922, and then reclaimed first lieutenant in 1924.  There were jokes that he was the most senior first lieutenant in the Air Corps.

From 1933 to 1935 Lieutenant Walker was assigned to the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  The focus at CGSS was on training and preparing officers for higher command with ground forces, hardly the kind of curricula an air enthusiast like Walker wanted or felt he needed.  Throughout his career Walker had always been immaculate, impeccable in uniform and protocol, and well-organized in the performance of duty--perhaps even to a fault.  But CGSS was important to the resume of an ambitious officer and Walker dutifully completed the course.  He was promoted to captain shortly after graduating in 1935.

The Walker family at Fort Leavenworth in the fall of 1933 with two small boys, Kenneth N. Walker, Jr., who was now six years old, and an infant son named Douglas.  Upon their arrival the elder Walker took his oldest son for his first airplane ride, flying in a two-seater to point out the family's new home below.  It was a rare personal moment in the life of a man obsessed with his work; it was one of the few good memories of his father that Ken, Jr., was left.  In the following year things only became worse.

Those who knew Ken Walker during his life were invariably attracted to him; he was an easily likable man.  Still, those who knew him described him as obsessed with his work, unable to relax, and highly driven.  These were the character traits that enabled him to define an air force, draft the plan to win World War II, and become an Air Force legend.  They were also the flaws that led to two divorces and his subsequent comment in May 1942 that, "I've made a terrible mess of things here."

In 1934 Marguerite and the two Walker boys moved to Roanoke, Virginia, (and later to California).  Kenneth Walker remarried soon thereafter, fathering a son named John.  Ken Walker maintained contact with his two older sons, but quickly lost all contact with the infant when the second marriage ended shortly after John's birth.

Perhaps the most notable event of the period during which Walker was serving in Kansas came late in 1934, when he was invited to testify before the Howell Commission of the newly formed Federal Aviation Commission.  The hearings were part of an ongoing series of investigations by numerous boards and commissions into the "air forces" issue, prompted in large part by numerous fatal accidents following the ill-conceived policy of using Air Corps planes and pilots to fly the mail.  Walker was joined by Robert Olds, Donald Wilson, and ACTS friend and bombardment advocate Harold George.  

Though nearly a decade had passed since the court martial of Billy Mitchell, the response to his aggressive advocacy of a separate air force still weighed heavily on the minds of all airmen and tempered their remarks.  War Department policy endorsed the opinion of the 1925 Morrow Board and subsequent 1934 Baker Board that the Air Corps should remain under the War Department and U.S. Army control.  Walker and his fellow witnesses were cautioned by the general staff to insure that their testimony adhered to this official policy.

Despite "official policy" and "the ghost of the court martial of Billy Mitchell," Lieutenant Walker and his fellow aviators mustered the courage to testify their convictions.  George advised the board that the airplane was a METHOD of waging war, not just a weapon like a rifle.  Olds advocated investing in building a strong air force, reminding the commission that "what we maintain during peace is what we have to fight with when war begins."

Wilson addressed the air force as the primary tool for national defense, noting that the climate in Europe was already pointing towards potential for future conflict.  Walker was succinct in his daring testimony.  "National Defense is not the responsibility alone, of an Army, a Navy, or yet of an Air Force.  It is the mission of the combined forces, in which each must play its part," he advised.  "Unless we create an adequate and separate Air Force, this next war will begin in the air and end in the mud--in the mud and debris of the demolished industries that have brought us to our knees."

After hearing 191 witnesses the commission was quick to note the lack of any unanimity among those who testified, and would not recommend a separate air force.  "There is ample reason," the Commission did report, "to believe that aircraft have now passed far beyond their former position as useful auxiliaries, and must in the future be considered and utilized as an important means of exerting directly the will of the Commander in Chief."

The untainted testimony of Walker, Olds, George and Wilson was a courageous action that might well have ended their careers.  Ultimately General C. E. Kilbourne, Assistant Chief of Staff, War Plans Division, concluded that the four men who voiced their convictions despite official policy gave a "constructive presentation."  Their actions appear to have had no negative influence on their careers; they also failed to obtain the independent air force they believed was necessary for the next war.

In 1935 as Captain Kenneth Walker settled into his new assignment with the 11th Bombardment Squadron, 7th Bomb Group at Hamilton Field, California, two events occurred that set the stage for the ultimate test of his theories of aerial bombardment.  

One of the leaders in aircraft design in the early 1930s was Clairmont Egtvedt, a forward thinking engineer who went on to become chairman of Boeing.  While delivering an early fighter to the Navy he was struck by a Naval officer's observance that, despite all the progress in the field of aviation, there was still no counterpart to the battleship in the aerial arsenal.  When the Army issued a challenge to aircraft manufacturers in 1934 to develop a multi-engine bomber capable of speeds above 200 miles and hour and with a service ceiling of 20,000 - 25,000 feet, the race was on to build the first battleship counterpart.

On July 28, 1935, Egtvedt unveiled his new 4-engine, all metal Boeing Test Bomber Model 229, forerunner of the B-17.  In test flights the giant battleship of the air averaged 252 miles per hour, setting a non-stop speed record from Seattle to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio.  Technology was finally catching up to theory, and the Air Corps at last had a bomber capable of operating from its home base to transport tons of bombs and deliver them on an enemy target hundreds of miles away.   Five .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns spread throughout the bomber's 70-foot length, providing it with a veritable wall of protection against enemy fighters.  Though technical details remained shrouded in secrecy, the large Boeing bomber captured the attention of all who saw her and the press reports referred to it as a Flying Fortress.  The moniker would stick for generations.

That same year inventor Carl Norden introduced a new bomb sight.  It was a complicated device into which a bombardier dialed such variables as air speed, drift, and altitude while scanning the countryside below through an optical lens.  Once set, the gyroscopes could control the airplane and drop its bombs on a target miles below.  The new invention was so accurate that bombardiers often exclaimed they could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet.  When asked once if that assessment was true, Norden reportedly responded, "Which pickle would you like to hit."

Coupled with the Flying Fortress, the Norden Bomb Sight at last made possible the kind of high-altitude, daylight bombing of distant enemies that Douhet had envisioned and that men like Kenneth Walker had believed would some day be possible. Even more than the B-17, the bomb sight was shrouded in utmost secrecy.  During World War II more than 45,000 bombardiers were trained in its use.  Each swore an oath to carefully guard the secrets of the Norden Bomb Sight.  In the field a similar oath to protect the sight from falling into enemy hands was repeated by bombardiers  before their missions. During the war the sight was normally installed before each mission, then removed upon completion and carefully guarded.  When Colonel Jimmy Doolittle conducted his famous Tokyo bombing raid in April 1942, one of the first concerns was for protecting the secret of the Norden Bomb Sight.  All of Doolittle's bombers were stripped of the Norden Sight, and replaced with a more rudimentary aiming device.

The Bombardier's Oath Mindful of the secret trust about to be placed in me by my Commander in Chief, the President of the United States, by whose direction I have been chosen for bombardier training... And mindful of the fact that I am to become guardian of one of my country's most priceless military assets, the American bombsight... I do here, in the presence of Almighty God, swear by the Bombardier's Code of Honor to keep inviolate the secrecy of any and all confidential information revealed to me, and further to uphold the honor and integrity of the Army Air Forces, if need be, with my life itself.

 

The B-17 prototype (Model 299) was destroyed in a crash on October 30, 1935, only three months after it was unveiled in Seattle.  But the merits of the new Flying Fortress were obvious and the Air Corps ordered more. The first of fourteen bombers in the initial service-test order were delivered in 1937.  On December 23, 1937, Denver, Colorado, newspaper headlines reported: "FLYING FORTRESS CRACKS UP IN DENVER BUT CREW OF NINE ESCAPES INJURY."  The bomber that failed in its attempt to lift off from Denver Municipal Airport, that then jumped a six foot embankment and slid half-a-mile to come to rest in the middle of a highway, was piloted by a hometown boy--Kenneth Walker.  His "presence of mind" and "expert maneuvering" were credited with preventing loss of life or more extensive damage.  

Two months after the Denver crash Kenneth Walker was assigned to a 3-year tour of duty in Hawaii, first as operations officer for the 5th Bomb Group and then ironically enough, as commander of the 18th Pursuit Group based out of Wheeler Field.  Even among the Pursuit pilots, bombardment's "high priest" was a well-liked officer.  Kenneth Walker was the kind of commander who always looked out for the men who served under him, and such an attitude was greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately Ken Walker the father, never learned to relate so well to his own family.  During the summer of 1940 Ken Walker, Jr., came to visit his father in Hawaii for a month.  It was their first time together since the divorce.  The two enjoyed a few sight-seeing trips but the elder Walker seemed unable to find his niche as a father, or to find the ways to express his love.  Marguerite later recalled, "He was a good father....but his career came first."

 

AWPD-1
The Plan to Defeat Hitler

The year 1941 was a good year for the Army Air Corps.  On July 20 the organization was expanded and renamed the "U. S. Army Air Force".  Air Corps Chief Henry Hap Arnold got a new title...Chief of the Army Air Force...and a few months later he got a third star making him a lieutenant general.  General Arnold's role placed him in a position to report directly to the Army's Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall.  The Army Air Force, while not yet independent of or co-equal with the Army, had at last taken a major step towards both high level recognition and new levels of autonomy.

General Arnold's Assistant Chief, Plans, was Brigadier General Carl A. "Tooey" Spaatz, an old friend of Ken Walker from his days at ACTS.  In January 1941 Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Walker returned from Hawaii for a position in General Spaatz's office, which also employed old friend Robert Olds.  Since both Arnold and Spaatz leaned more towards an air force built around bombardment over pursuit, the climate was ripe for Walker's doctrines to flourish. 

A major project of the Plans Division that year was the reorganization of the Air Corps to provide some degree of independence in operation.  General Arnold was granted an air staff comparable to the Army's General Staff and some of the first problems to be addressed were related to that reorganization.  Another of Ken Walker's jobs, ironically enough, was to provide guidance and assistance to retired Captain Richard Alworth of the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO).  This was a project initially rejected by General Arnold, who had been in turn over-ruled by the President himself.

Though war was raging in Europe the United States was still at peace and operating under an outward policy of neutrality.  Inside the highest levels of government however, there was increasing concern over Nazi aggression in Europe and Japanese expansion and aggression in Asia and the Pacific.  CAMCO was a highly secret organization with a quasi-official sanction to send American pilots and equipment to China to fight in her defense as part of the AVG, the American Volunteer Group.  The man who organized and led that defense, the man whom Kenneth Walker indirectly worked for in the spring of 1941, was Claire Chennault.

In July President Roosevelt requested a plan from both the War Department and the Department of the Navy to examine and estimate the production requirements necessary to defeat potential enemies should the United States be forced to choose sides in the ongoing war.  For three weeks the Army's War Plans Division (WPD) met to speculate and draft their report.  The most elusive information needed for that report dealt with air assets.  It was elusive because there was no precedent upon which to base an estimate.  

Among the WPD staff was Lieutenant Colonel Clayton Bissell, a World War I ace.  Bissell suggested that the WPD obtain assistance from General Arnold's new (under the reorganization of 1941) Air War Plans Division (AWPD) which was headed up by Lieutenant Colonel Harold George.  When the WPD agreed to call for advice, George provided a counter-offer:  the AWPD would actually WRITE the air annex for the report.

It was a monumental task with an impossible deadline.  The new AWPD consisted primarily of three planning officers: George, Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Walker, and Major Haywood Hansell.  These were being called upon to accomplish a job that should have been prepared by scores of officers over a period of months.  Their deadline for completion was fewer than two weeks away.  Even so, it was the opportunity for which airmen had pleaded for decades.  Major Hansell summed up the three men's motivation when he said, "We realized instinctively that a major milestone had been reached.  Suddenly, without anywhere near the opposition we expected, we found ourselves able to plan our own future."  

For nine days the three men developed and wrote a plan for organizing, equipping, deploying, and employing the Army Air Force to defeat Germany and/or Japan should the United States be dragged into the war.  Not only was the future of the Air Force at stake in their efforts, perhaps the fate of the entire country.  The men walked a fine line, balancing what they believed would be necessary to win that war, against a historical reluctance to properly finance and support air power.   

The three men also had to revisit the argument of bombers vs. pursuit, and recommend the quantity of air assets accordingly.  As could be expected, bombardment won out, but pursuit was not ignored.  At midnight on August 11 the finished plan, subsequently labeled AWPD-1, was turned over to the War Department.  The three men had not only measured, predicted, and advised as to the air assets the looming war might require, but they developed a tactical air plan for defeating the enemy.  The foundation of that victory, they postulated, would be built upon massive, daylight bombing missions to cripple the enemy's ability to sustain the war and pave the way for a land invasion.  Though the plan saw some revisions in the years that followed, it is not over-simplistic to note that it was this very plan indeed, that ultimately led to the defeat of the Third Reich.  (Ironically, the tactics put forth in AWPD-1 are strikingly similarly to the U.S. Air Force bombing campaign that brought Baghdad and Sadam Hussein to their knees more than half-a-century later.)

In retrospect, historians today are amazed that three men could so thoroughly have defined that war plan in just nine days.  The fact is, AWPD-1 was formulated by hundreds of airmen.  A balanced and strategically sound war plan annex was delivered to the President in September 1941 because of the five years of debate that had caused occasional concern at ACTS a decade earlier.  The three men of AWPD had simply recalled all they had heard, and then committed those lessons to paper.

Ken Jr. and Douglas (Walker) met their father at the airport in Los Angeles.  There had been a similar meeting when he came through Los Angeles en route from Hawaii to Washington.  On that earlier occasion, the first time Douglas remembered his father at all, he wore a business suit and took his sons shopping and then to lunch.  This time, he wore his uniform--first khakis, then the three went to his hotel where he changed into full dress.  He bought a bouquet of flowers for Marguerite, then he and the boys boarded a trolley to her home in Glendale. "You can imagine the immense pride I experienced," Douglas later wrote, "as the passengers on the crowded trolley began to realize there was a general officer standing among them."   Only nine years old, Douglas also felt "an odd sensation of verification.  Here I was, like everyone I knew, with a father."  He remembered little more about the visit, except that his father kissed his mother politely on the cheek, then stood in the kitchen door and talked to her as she finished preparing their meal. Kenneth Walker had done all he could do in the States. The next day, he boarded a plane and turned his face toward the Southwest Pacific. Martha Byrd Kenneth Walker, Airpower's Untempered Crusader

On March 25, 1943, 16-year-old Kenneth Walker, Jr., was invited to the White House to receive his father's Medal of Honor from President Roosevelt.  Though General Walker had been missing for nearly three months he was still listed as Missing In Action, thus the Medal was not presented posthumously.

Douglas MacArthur had kept his word.  The airplane sighted in the search for Walker had proven to be the second B-17 that went down on the January 5 mission to Rabaul.  On the day following the raid her crew, minus two men who were killed in the crash, were rescued by a Catalina flying boat.

While the search continued for Kenneth Walker, his 10-year-old son Douglas subsequently accepted the Legion of Merit awarded his father for his important work on AWPD-1, the aerial warfare plan that ultimately bombed Hitler into defeat.

Post-war efforts at the recovery of American remains and accounting for those missing in action failed to turn up anything conclusive.  There were some indications that Walker and the crew of the San Antonio Rose might have been captured.  There are other reasons to believe that even the Japanese knew nothing of his fate.  Indeed, B-17 #41-24453 may had been swallowed up the the dense jungle of the South Pacific, or found its final resting place at the floor of the ocean.

The only certain information that remains of General Walker's fate is that he died an American hero.  He was a man of flawed character in many ways--for he was indeed human as are all of our REAL heroes.  Perhaps it might even be said that those same character flaws that prompted him to say in the spring of 1942,  "I've made a terrible mess of things", were in fact the same QUALITIES and STRENGTHS that motivated him to do what was necessary to become an Air Force legend during some of our nation's darkest and most critical months of World War II.

Demas Craw &  Pierpont Hamilton The Banker and the Soldier

Special Acknowledgement:  The author would like to express his sincere appreciation to Douglas Walker, General Kenneth Walker's son.  Shortly after establishing HomeOfHeroes.com I was privileged to engage in numerous contacts with Douglas Walker, who provided much of the information and photographs that were necessary to properly share this story of his father.

A special Video Tape of the the Dec 7, 2001 memorial service to General Walker (including interviews with his sons Kenneth and Douglas and rare footage of his last air mission), can be ordered on line from:  http://www.pacificghosts.com/video/walker/

Sources:
Byrd, Martha, Kenneth N. Walker: Airpower's Untempered Crusader, AU Press, Maxwell AFB, AL, 1997
Dunn, Peter, Australia At War Website
Frisbee, John L., "Rabaul on a Wing and a Prayer", Air Force Valor, Vol. 73, No. 7, July 1990
Manchester, William, American Ceasar: Douglas MacArthur, Dell, 1983
Manning, Robert, Above and Beyond, Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1985
Meilinger, Col. Phillip S., Airmen and Air Theory, AU Press, Maxwell AFB, AL, 2001
Murphy, Edward F., Heroes of World War II, Pesidio, 1990

 

Part II - World War 2 Wings of Valor Home Page Introduction Day of Infamy When America needed Heroes Pay Back The Tokyo Raid Harl Pease Too Young to Fly MacArthur Kenneth Walker  Reprimand or Medal Hamilton and Craw The Banker & The Soldier Airmen on the Ground  Jack Mathis Bombardier Brothers Snuffy Smith You don't have to be a saint To Become a hero. Sarnoski & Zeamer 1 Plane - 9 Heroes TWO Medals of Honor John C. Red  Morgan Medically Unqualified Morally Determined  The Ploesti Raid  When Heroes Filled the Sky  Ralph Cheli  Leadership by Example Sacrifice by Design Neel Ernest Kearby The First Top Gun Raymond Wilkins The Last Survivor Forrest Vosler  Blind Determination  James H. Howard  "I seen my duty and I done it!"  Lawley, Truemper,  & Mathies  Coming Home the Hard Way Ed Michael Until the Last Man Comes Home Leon Vance Burden of Command David Kingsley  The Ultimate Sacrifice Donald Pucket  Darrell Lindsey  Richard Bong  Horace Carswell  Robert Femoyer  Gott & Metzger  Frederick Castle  Thomas McGuire  William Shomo  Henry Red Erwin The Courage to LIVE Raymond Knight

A Very Special Thanks to Author/Historian Barrett Tillman for his special assistance and creative support in the development of this series. Part I World War One Coming in November 2006 Part III US Air Force