The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

T H E A R M Y A I R A R M B E T W E E N T W O W A R S
exert a tighter control on the purse strings. N o t unnaturally the Air
Service wanted a separate budget.
This was not the only source of friction. Personal ambitions and
rivalries, the tendency toward “empire-building,” and service loyalties
and jealousies were frequently in evidence. Fundarnental consider-
ations were occasionally obscured by specific problems which were
important enough to service morale but were symptomatic rather than
causal in nature. As a new arm, the Air Service had few general offi-
cers. In the lower grades, where promotion was controlled inexorably
by seniority, Air Service pilots found themselves many files behind
ground officers who had entered the service at the same time but whose
commissions bore an earlier date because of the longer training
required of the aviator. T h e proportion of nonflying Air Service
officers in the lower grades, flight pay, and insurance were perennial
causes of complaint. So too was the matter of uniforms: much feeling
was engendered in arguments for and against the stiff collar as a
necessary adjunct of the military aviator. Comparatively few pilots
were graduates of West Point, and, in general, they felt discriminated
against for that reason. One flying officer testified, on the basis of a
study of returning veterans of World W a r I: “There was great dis-
satisfaction among the Air Service personnel with the treatment they
had received particularly by Army Officers, and I am a graduate of
West Point and I found that graduates of West Point were anything
but popular among the personnel which came in from civilian life.”
Beneath these problems, serious or trivial as they now appear, the
underlying issue was clear enough: it hinged on an attitude toward
the airplane and air power. T o some the airplane was simply another
weapon, effective enough but comparable in species to the tank or the
submarine; like those weapons, the plane could best be employed by
the Army and Navy in fulfilling their traditional missions, and its
development could best be intrusted to agencies comparable to the
Tank Corps or the Bureau of Construction and Repairs. But to most
airmen the plane was genus, not species-a new and unique instrument
of destruction of such revolutionary potentialities as to demand a
sweeping reorganization of the national defense structure. Only by
securing a considerable measure of autonomy could the Air Service
formulate its own combat doctrines, develop equipment appropriate
thereto, and direct its forces in battle.
Literally dozens of plans were suggested for the control of air
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