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This is Volume One of The Army Air Forces in World War II, titled Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate. The University of Chicago Press first published it in 1948, and the Office of Air Force History reprinted it in 1983. The front matter explains how the AAF historical program was set up during the war. The index covers Pacific, Atlantic and European operations, and nothing in the text concerns unidentified aerial phenomena.
“King”32 pages
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 of personal ambition, but the most enduring factor in their long cam- paign was the conviction that air power was being stultified by a command structure lacking in understanding of the new weapon. As one pilot put it when questioned by the Morrow Board on his attitude toward his own rate of promotion, “They can call me Mr. George, aviation pilot, for the rest of my life as far as that is concerned, just so long as I might feel deep down in my heart that aviation is being given a proper part in the system of national defense.” 6 3 A brief analysis of Air Corps doctrines as they developed in the period before 1939, and of Air Corps efforts to develop suitable equipment, should go far to explain the persistence of the struggle for independence. The Development of Air Doctrines In April 1938 an Air Corps major attending the Army War College prepared a paper entitled “Employment of Army Air Forces.” 6 4 The study was an academic exercise done, as a civilian university would have phrased it, “in partial fulfilment of the requirements” of his course. The substance of his findings was probably familiar to most serious students of national defense policies, but his paper did present in brief form some striking anomalies. His analysis of the doctrines of air power currently promulgated by the several responsible agencies indicated a disturbing lack of uniformity. The Command and General Staff School, the Army War College, and the Joint Board acknowl- edged the importance of aviation but held that its principal function was the immediate support of the ground forces and Navy in further- awe of their respective missions. The Air Corps Tactical School claimed for air power a more decisive role, primarily consisting of long-range bombardment operations as an independent means of furthering the “Army Strategic Plan” or the “national objective.” War Department directives seemed to “straddle” on this important issue, though inclining rather toward the former point of view. Thus those officers who were being prepared for the highest command or staff positions were subjected to conflicting opinions rather than to a consistent indoctrination. Had the major’s paper been even more academic, it might have gone on to show that this conflict in attitudes had appeared in an incipient form during World War I and had been sharpened by the organiza- tional disputes of the postwar years, Indeed, it is impossible wholly to divorce the problems of employment of air forces and control of 3 3
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