Allied Air Power Doctrine Documents

At the heart of warfare lies doctrine. It represents the central beliefs for waging war in order to achieve victory. Doctrine is of the mind, a network of faith and knowledge reinforced by experience which lays the pattern for the utilization of men, equipment, and tactics. It is the building material for strategy. It is fundamental to sound judgment.

--General Curtis Emerson LeMay, 1968

This part of the Air Fronts web site has no intention to give an in depth analysis on the development and implementation of Air Power Doctrine - or rather doctrines - before, during and after the war. These topics have been covered by a number of publications in great depth. Air Fronts presents the documents as is, in the way the contemporaries got access to them, as a part of their training. Apart from actual air war planning documents, the meaning of these doctrinal documents are very helpful for understanding the actual history of aerial warfare at the time.

By definition, military doctrine is a level of military planning between national strategy and unit-level tactics, techniques, and procedures. It provides a shared way of thinking about military problems, but does not direct how military problems will be solved. It does not provide specific steps to solve a problem, nor does it direct a commander to take any action. Commanders are always expected to exercise their own judgment in carrying out their missions.

Doctrine may be shared among the armed services of a nation as well as be specific to a branch. In addition, doctrine may be shared between several nations.

In general, doctrinal documents state:

A nation's national military objectives

The general mission of the armed service or branch ("who we are")

General concepts of how this service or branch shall perform its mission ("what we do")

Concerns and cautions in carrying out this mission ("how we should do it")

Historical examples ("how we did it in the past")

Military doctrine changes, or should change, as the nature of warfare and the specific threat to a nation changes.

The relationship between military doctrine and a national security strategy is highly complex. In principle, a military doctrine exists to support the national security strategy. In practice, implementing and changing a military doctrine is a highly complex and time consuming activity that can take years or decades, and hence the same military doctrine is often used to attempt to support radicially different security strategies.

In addition, the question of what a nation should do is often influenced by what it can do, so in this sense military doctrine often influence security strategy.

The "Doctrine" heading is as close to the heart and soul of this web-site as is the "Theaters" part. It is hoped to show the "closed looped" relationionship in allied thinking and practice of air power between "masterminding", training, aircraft design, tactical and strategical implementation - including lessons learned  resulting in changes of doctrine, and the many "technicallities" presented on this web site. These three components - plus a cunning enemy - formed the experience of the air-crews, supposed to put the whole concept into a successful opreration.