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Tomorrow's Air Force
Tracing the Past, Shaping the Future
By Jeffrey J. Smith Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2014 Jeffrey J. Smith
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-01092-6
CHAPTER 1
THE BIRTH OF MILITARY AIRPOWER
With the advent of airpower into military operations in the early twentieth century, a new era of war-fighting strategy slowly emerged. The traditional operations by Army and Navy forces that enjoyed centuries of tradition, lessons learned, and accepted strategies would be confronted and challenged by airpower's primary new characteristic – control of the sky. Although lighter-than-air systems had been used for many years to rise above the battle space in an attempt to spot and track enemy movement, balloon aircraft were unable to provide the maneuverability and attack opportunity the new emerging aircraft enjoyed. Operations ranging from traditional spotting of enemy positions and movement and signaling ground forces to delivering time-sensitive communications to rear or forward leadership and eventually providing an air-to-ground attack option all characterize early airpower operations. These capabilities altered how wars were planned and forced military strategists to consider the extent to which traditional military operations might change. From its earliest inception in military operations, airpower advocates and the leaders responsible for its application struggled with a continual and common challenge – how best to organize this new weapon of war.
The advent of airpower in U.S. military operations begins in 1907. Encouraged by the technological breakthroughs of the Wright brothers, early U.S. Army personnel believed that the new airpower capability could be used to the Army's advantage. However, from 1907 through the end of World War II, airpower pioneers, driven by their belief in the efficacy of airpower, were confronted by both encouragement and conflict. Throughout this early period, heated debate regarding the appropriate role, leadership, resources, and buildup of airpower prevailed, in the environment of a single underlying challenge – airpower's organizational structure. However, in September of 1947 a major organizational development instituted and established the new United States Air Force as a separate and independent arm of the U.S. military. The objective of Period One analysis is to examine and trace the events that affected airpower's organizational construct in an attempt to better understand the major organizational change that occurred in 1947.
BIRTH OF MILITARY AIR POWER: 1907–1911
Following the advent of heavier-than-air powered winged flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, it did not take long before the airplane was considered for military application. Army officers involved in the Army's Signal Corps immediately began developing plans for how the new technology might be ushered into Army service. Following several demonstration flights and considerable convincing by emerging airpower advocates, the Army developed the first organizational element for fixed-wing flight operations. On August 1, 1907, the newly formed Aeronautical Division was given responsibility for "all matters pertaining to military ballooning, air machines, and all kindred subjects." Thus, the beginning of a formally recognized and organized military aviation arm was born into the U.S. Army.
As would be expected within the Army, the new technology of airpower was seen from a ground-centric and ground support perspective. Furthermore, aviation in general was clearly subservient to the greater and more demanding concerns of ground combat. Because traditional Army culture was characterized by the perspective and belief that territorial offensive operations, direct engagement of enemy ground forces, and strategic ground maneuvers were all primary and central in war, the initial influence for how airpower would be used and organized in support of this perspective dominated earlier Army aviation. Drawing personnel solely from the existing ranks of the Army, the new Aeronautical Division was developed and perceived by Army leadership as just another tool for supporting its ground operations missions.
The first official Army pilot, Lt Thomas E. Selfridge, learned to fly through the instruction of Orville Wright but unfortunately died in an aircraft accident on September 17, 1908. Despite the death of Selfridge, the Army pressed ahead with the procurement of aircraft and increased the size and responsibility of its Aeronautical Division. In August of 1909 the Army accepted delivery of its first two aircraft into military service.
Although airpower continued to inspire and draw new pioneers and interest to the military aviation field, the first ten years were "plagued by miserly funding, an indifferent Army, contentious manufacturers, and no serious threat to national security to spur development." In 1911, the inadequacy of funds allotted to Army aviation within the Aeronautical Division made organization and development nearly unsustainable. Although James Mann, a congressman from Illinois, requested approval in the Army appropriations bill for $250,000 for aviation funding, Congress instead cut the proposed amount in half – "an indication of both the lowly status of military aviation and the weakness of the aviation lobby." However, despite these challenges in the early years, airpower continued to advance in terms of technology and of personnel intrigued by and fixated on what possibilities aircraft might offer future warfare.
INITIAL ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGE: 1911–1915
The initial few years following the emergence of airpower into military operations are important to analyze, for it is in those years that the first sign of an internal airpower perspective begins to develop. The term "airmen" is used to identify those within the Army air service who fly or support flying operations. This new unique title reflects the development of an in-group, with certain actions, perspectives, and beliefs beginning to separate certain individuals from others who do not share the same allegiances or responsibilities. Furthermore, within the years 1911–1915, airpower attracted various Army leaders who crossed over to become airmen; these leaders began to formalize both the training and the maintenance of airpower operations.
One of the earliest "new-generation" officers, who entered into flying operations as a young aviator, was 2Lt Henry "Hap" Arnold. After learning to fly at the Wright brothers' factory, Arnold was sent to College Park, the new advanced Army flying school that offered pilots the operational training required for incorporating airpower into Army operations. After advancing to instructor pilot, Arnold began to organize and formalize operations at College Park in order to account for the shortfalls he perceived in training:
By the fall of 1912, the Signal Corps began to send pilot trainees to factory schools to qualify for the basic license and then to College Park for the additional instruction needed to meet War Department standards. Besides introducing the pilot to the techniques of flight, the factory schools afforded better instruction in the maintenance and repair of engines and airframes than was available at College Park. As pilot instruction became systematized, so too did maintenance procedures. In 1911, while training at Dayton, Arnold prepared the first set of detailed instructions on how to care for the airplane. In addition, while training at the Wright factory, he and Milling photographed all the components of the Wright airplane, labeling each one to simplify the instruction of mechanics and the stocking and orders of the parts.
These steps began the process of formally organizing and preparing airpower operations as a unique and specified arm of the U.S. Army.
However, as group psychology suggests, as individuals became part of the new group of airmen, the group began to take on its own identity and began perceiving out-group decisions with respect to how those decisions affected their own in-group desires. Hurley offers that "the airmen stationed at College Park believed that the airplane could do more than serve as a vehicle for aerial reconnaissance." This is an early sign that the airmen were not only forming their own school, operational perspectives, and military tactics, but that they were also developing their own beliefs and identities – identities that differed from the Army's status quo.
Despite the development of a new airmen class that perceived and envisioned a greater role for airpower, the Army retained all control over procurement, fiscal expenditures, and technology. In this way, conflict began to enter into the organizational process whenever there was disagreement between what the traditional Army wanted and did, and what the new group of airmen wanted. When Riley Scott, a former Army officer, offered the Army his new invention, which he called the Bomb-Sight, that could drop an eighteen-pound bomb "accurately from an altitude of 400 feet," the Army chose not to buy the new technology. Scott then improved the Bomb-Sight and sold it to the French. Furthermore, when a new machine gun that could be adapted to an airplane was offered for procurement to the Army, "the Army Ordnance Department decided against large-scale procurement because it already had a standard machine gun." The dynamic between the emerging new group of airmen and the traditional Army culture that focused on ground operations set the stage for increasing conflict between those with the authority to purchase (Army leaders) and those with the desire to develop the aviation arm (new airmen).
As suggested by organizational change models, internal culture is often developed through perceptions, artifacts, and shared beliefs that over time become norms. One of the earliest shared perspectives among all airmen during this time period was the simple fact that flying airplanes was dangerous. The death toll on new pilots was high in the early years, and recognition of this fact was understood at the highest Army levels.
The hazards and uncertainties of aviation made it imperative that the Army compensate for the risks taken by airmen, and to encourage more volunteers Congress considered giving fliers extra pay and accelerated promotion. Although the Army had routinely granted extra pay for overseas service or as a result of temporary promotion for special assignments, flight pay did not become a reality until 1913. That same year Congress tied promotion to proficiency in the air by authorizing qualified aviators to advance to the next higher grade. Flight pay, along with various forms of temporary promotion, would remain a source of controversy until well after World War II.
These organizational directives, although warranted, further reified the separation of airmen from the traditional Army population. As the in-group of airmen became more divergent (responsibilities, promotion system, pay), they further developed their own culture, identified themselves as part of a larger movement, and began developing strongly held values and beliefs. These attributes of an emerging culture are predicted by organizational modeling and reinforce the possibility that organizational change will follow. It is important here to understand that the emerging culture within the airmen's group was slowly departing from the traditional Army culture that characterized the previous years. The conflict that arose from this demarcation between old and new cultures was not contained or realized solely within the Army; the U.S. Congress also had its airpower voices.
One of the earliest critiques levied by airmen was what they perceived to be a "lack of clearly defined status and function for aviation within the service." Several airmen began voicing the need for air operations to be organized separately from the traditional Signal Corps in order to establish and develop their unique military contribution. Inspired by airpower and the call for greater autonomy, Representative Hay offered a bill in Congress calling for aviation to be removed from the Signal Corps and given its own branch within the Army. Although Congress failed to pass the bill into law, the exposure aviation received, the debate among congressmen, and the lines drawn within the Army leadership regarding their different perspectives, all forced airpower organizational considerations into the public arena; the debate regarding the organizational elements of airpower was now a current and open reality.
Internally within the Army, a continued discourse took place as to who should lead this new military arm. According to airpower scholars, "many pilots in military aeronautics were growing impatient with the nonpilots commanding them." The struggle concerned having Army officers leading air operations, many of whom were not even pilots, making training, manning, and procurement decisions without the flying experience needed to appropriately command such responsibilities. Members of the emerging airpower culture believed that airpower leadership should comprise qualified and experienced pilots in order to understand the greater needs of aviation operations, and those leaders who were not pilots were seen as outsiders. Any dynamic involving an internal struggle over leadership is not conducive to good order and discipline within military ranks. Non-flyers began to see flyers as mavericks, spending their days playing with their flying machines, while flyers, on the other hand, began to see non-flyers (especially those in senior leadership positions) as myopic detractors – keeping airpower from realizing its full potential. However, without an external event capable of testing airpower's emerging claim to being more than a mere signaling platform, airmen were left to struggle against a traditional Army system that showed little in the way of promoting airpower.
Within these years of emerging and developing airpower operations, a clear division erupted between the new airmen and the traditional Army. Fortunately, there were important senior ranking officers who saw the importance of aviation to future Army battles. Gen Pershing, for one, is reported to have said that "an army without aviation would be defeated by an army that possessed it." Various members of Congress also saw the potential of aviation in war and continued to offer bills that would advance its development. Although much of this congressional support was also tied to defense contracts from which their individual states might benefit, the resulting debate for advancing airpower was ensured a place well outside of internal Army boundaries alone. However, by the end of 1915, "the nation that invented the airplane had adapted it to military uses but had allowed it to remain an appendix to the Army."
The day has passed when armies on the ground or navies on the sea can be the arbiter of a nation's destiny in war. The main power of defense and the power of initiative against an enemy has passed to the air.
WILLIAM "BILLY" MITCHELL, NOVEMBER 1918
CHAPTER 2
WORLD WAR I AND THE INTERWAR YEARS
The two timeframes presented in the foregoing historical overview both share a missing ingredient in terms of forces that drive institutional change: they lack any significant external event. Although the time frame from 1911 to 1915 did show some change from limited external events, the first major external event for airpower in this period is World War I. As this chapter will show, the cultural and leadership changes emerging from the newly formed airpower group within the Army would now be confronted by the measurable and empirical realities of war.
Although the Army failed to procure technology that would have enabled aircraft to drop bombs more accurately, airmen continued to argue for airpower operations to expand beyond just reconnaissance. During the years from 1915 to 1917, a number of advances and experiments took place that showed airpower's ability to strafe troops (attack enemy ground troops from the air) and drop bombs. However, airpower supporters continued to call for more autonomous authority, greater flexibility to use airpower in new ways, and expanded operations outside of traditional ground strategies. One of the more enlightened debates emerging among airpower supporters was the idea that aircraft could over-fly enemy positions and bomb industry and war-making factories. Rather than being directly and continuously tied to a ground assault, airmen began to see the potential of airpower to target important enemy positions that the traditional Army would not normally be capable of targeting. Unfortunately, the airpower supporters "had trouble making converts among officers never exposed to [such] enthusiasm." Furthermore, "the high command of the U.S. Army continued to believe that aviation should gain control of the air over the battlefield and assist the ground forces...." Unfortunately, the dominant Army perspective still maintained and guaranteed that pilots and airpower would be subservient to ground operations. In fact, on reconnaissance sorties where the pilot was accompanied by another "observer" officer, the observer held the position of supervisor for the mission and the pilot was seen as the observer's "aerial chauffeur."
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Excerpted from Tomorrow's Air Force by Jeffrey J. Smith. Copyright © 2014 Jeffrey J. Smith. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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