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

T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
power, but, shorn of details, the proposals for reorganization followed
one of four patterns. Most radical was the independent air force,
usually drawing heavily upon the RAF and its Air Ministry for prece-
dent. This scheme called for a new cabinet agency on a par with the
War and Navy departments. Since in most plans of this type the De-
partment of Aeronautics was to control all government aviation-cur-
rently divided between the Army, the Navy, and civilian agencies-
the terms “independent,” “separate,” and “united air force” were used
interchangeably. Various expedients were suggested to govern the
employment of aircraft by this department in operations over land
and sea, but none offered an acceptable solution to the problem of
unity of command. An alternative plan, which seemed compatible with
current ideas of command and potentially more economical, gained
popularity after 1923. This entailed creation of a single Department
of National Defense with co-ordinate subdepartments for Army,
Navy, and Air. When this plan was rejected, some Air Service officers,
cautious by nature or discouraged by constant rebuffs, were willing
to settle for a degree of autonomy within the War Department
equivalent to that enjoyed by the Marine Corps in the Navy. And,
when that was not forthcoming, as a last resort they accepted as a
poor compromise such tactical control as might be achieved by
assigning the bulk of offensive air units to General Headquarters.
The War Department resisted in turn every proposal to eliminate
or diminish its control over military aviation. The Secretary of War
was supported in this resistance, overtly or tacitly, by each Chief
Executive during the period under consideration, by the powerful
military and naval affairs committees in Congress, and by most general
officers. Similarly, the Navy Department, its General Board, and most
admirals objected strenuously to any organizational change which
would establish a different control for overwater aircraft or which
threatened to disturb the dominant role of the battleship. Service
academies and colleges followed service lines. In 1925 Secretary of the
Navy Curtis D. Wilbur could say: “I think there is not a man in either
service, outside of those connected with the aircraft-I do not know of
any in the service, with one or two exceptions in the Army possibly-
who would regard the Air Service as a principal service.”
Certainly that unanimity existed within the Army’s General Staff,
and it was in this agency that proponents of air reorganization found
their most potent antagonists. As late as 1926 an official poll taken for
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