Still, Brodie figured that unavoidably, in a future hypothetical war fought directly against the Soviet Union, “strategic bombing would be our chief offensive weapon.” And the atomic bomb would certainly deal a mightier blow to any particular target than ordinary high-explosive bombs had delivered in the last war. One thing that struck Brodie dramatically was that until quite late in WW II, the U.S. Army Air Forces “had given very little systematic thought to the problem of target selection.” Whatever equipment an air force might have, it “can be no more effective than the logic that governs its choice of targets.”
The most wasteful aspect of the strategic bombing, and to Brodie “the biggest single factor in delaying useful results,” was the effort devoted to the area bombing of cities—a waste of bombs and lives that had no payoff militarily. But even in the precision bombing of particular targets, the Air Force frequently chose illogical points at which to aim. For example, in striking rail transportation, the bombs were usually aimed at the center of freight-car marshaling yards. However, that usually left “stump yards” near the yard’s entrance, which the Germans could use for high-priority traffic. Perhaps better targets would have been the entrances rather than the centers. Similar statements could be made about the bombing of most sectors of the German economy. Possibly, Brodie thought, only a moderate improvement in planning, testing and flexibility of doctrine might have led to a decisive effect much sooner.
That point was debatable, but the significant implications of the argument lay in planning for the next war. The Soviet economy seemed far less resilient than Germany’s. If atomic bombs were so scarce, their targets must be chosen much more carefully and systematically if the United States were not to squander its superiority. Above all, the bombing of cities for its own sake—the most ineffective element of bombing in World War II—should not dominate the strategic bombing of World War III.
Brodie wrote up these preliminary thoughts in the August 15, 1950, issue of The Reporter, under the title “Strategic Bombing: What It Can Do.” Brodie’s main point was that “we cannot accept the conclusion that because atomic bombs are a convenient way of destroying cities, it is a sound strategy to use them for that purpose. Even narrow military considerations might dictate other targets, and strategy cannot be guided exclusively by narrow military considerations.” He recognized that an atomic-bombing campaign might “quickly degenerate into pure terroristic destruction.” But if this possibility slackened incentives “to choose targets shrewdly and carefully… such an event would argue a military failure as well as a moral one….”
None of this explicitly contradicted the fundamental points that Brodie had made nearly five years earlier in The Absolute Weapon, but it certainly did mark a departure into a new dimension. Brodie was beginning to think in operational terms, was beginning to think through the problems of the bomb not just in peace but also in war, not just how to live with the bomb but how to use it.
Possibly the most avid reader of Bernard Brodie’s piece in the August 15 Reporter was General Lauris Norstad, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, who in turn showed a copy to his boss, Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg. During the war, Vandenberg had commanded the Ninth Air Force, the largest assemblage of aircraft ever deployed in military history. His primary mission was not strategic bombing, but providing close air support for General Omar Bradley’s ground troops as they plowed across the plains of Europe. An officer’s attitude about war often grows out of his wartime experiences, and so Vandenberg had no sentimental attachment to the grand dogmas surrounding the massive bombing of cities.
Norstad was a brilliant staff planner who worked on targeting during the war, became the first Air Staffs deputy chief of staff for operations shortly afterward and was now serving as Vandenberg’s chief intellectual. Like Vandenberg, he had no firm attachments to any one school of thought about how to use air power.
These were nerve-racking times in the Air Force. One year earlier, at the end of August 1949, the Russians had set off their first atomic explosion. Six months later, the Joint Intelligence Committee, an interservice office that reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had predicted that the Soviets would build up an atomic arsenal large enough to attack the United States and that they “may attack… at the earliest possible moment… at any time they assessed that it was to their advantage” to do so.
In June 1950, the Korean War broke out. The Joint Chiefs firmly believed that North Korea’s invasion of the south was merely a Soviet ploy, a trick to force the United States to divert its limited military resources to some remote and relatively unimportant peninsula in the Pacific, while in the meantime the Red Army prepared to invade Western Europe, and perhaps the Middle East too. That would mean general war, and atomic bombs would inevitably be used, almost certainly at the very start of the war. The approved JCS war plan stated that a “strategic air offensive with atomic and conventional bombs will be initiated at the earliest possible date subsequent to the outbreak of hostilities.” The Joint Chiefs thought that atomic war with the Soviets was not merely possible but almost certain.
Meanwhile, the Chiefs were not in terribly good shape to deal with such an event. In December 1949 they had approved an emergency war plan called “Offtackle,” and they had attached to it an appendix listing the specific types of targets inside the Soviet Union that the bombers of the U.S. Strategic Air Command should attack. However, the JCS had not yet approved the appendix. There were still major arguments, mostly between Air Force planners and SAC operators, over which targets were feasible and appropriate to strike. Some officers and special ad-hoc panels questioned whether an atomic air attack would really bring the Soviet war machine to a grinding halt before it had already accomplished its war aims. Two things were certain: first, the United States had slightly fewer than 300 atom bombs; second, the Air Force office of plans and operations had calculated, in April 1950, that if war came before the year was out, the U.S. Air Force “could complete only the atomic phase” of Off tackle. That “atomic phase,” therefore, had better work. The targeting plan had to be re-examined and made as effective and efficient as possible. Outside advice and criticism were needed—and fast, before the war began.
It was this strange convergence—the Air Force Chief of Staffs lack of enthusiasm for city bombing, the outbreak of the Korean War with general atomic war undoubtedly on the horizon, and the appearance of Bernard Brodie’s article in The Reporter magazine—that prompted General Vandenberg, at General Norstad’s urging, to ask Brodie to come serve as a consultant in the Air Staff, to examine and comment on the target list of the war plan.
Brodie was flabbergasted, but embraced the opportunity. He was tiring of Yale and tiring of political science. His colleagues at the Institute of International Studies were still interested in the ramifications of the atom bomb, but Brodie was heading into questions of military strategy, which did not interest them or many others in his profession very much at all. Moreover, he was beginning to feel a great need for access to classified information. Essential issues of strategy were very much bound up with such matters as the size of the atomic stockpile, the strengths and vulnerabilities of the Soviet Union and the U.S. targeting plans—none of which could be known with any confidence if he stayed on the outside.