Incremental Interwar Developments

The failure of the American public to respond directly to Mitch­ell’s outcry did not mean that the issue of air autonomy disap­peared, but it did mean that the steps taken during the interwar years would be incremental. National boards and committees con­tinued to study the issue of how best to organize Army aviation. The Air Corps Act of July 1926 changed the Air Service’s name to the Air Corps and provided an Assistant Secretary of War for Air and special representation on the War Department’s General Staff. It also authorized an Air Corps of twenty thousand men and r,8oo aircraft, but Congress failed to fund the expansion.

The Great Depression further slowed the Air Corps’ growth. From Г927 to Г931 annual budgets ranged from $25-30 million; in Г934 appropriations fell to $r2 million; in Г938, $3.5 million.44 Manpower, which averaged 1,500 officers and r 5,000 enlisted men during the first three Depression years, stood at only 1,700 officers and t7,ooo enlisted men as late as Г939.45 Aircraft totaled r,6r9 in Г933, of which 442 were obsolete or nonstandard.46 Still, the recommendation of the 1934 aviation board chaired by former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker led to the creation of a Gen­eral Headquarters (ghq) Air Force, containing all Air Corps com­bat units, in the spring of Г93 5. Although the air power compris­ing the ghq Air Force was never significant—in 1939 it owned just Г4 four-engine в-17 bombers—it nevertheless was one step closer toward Mitchell’s progressive vision of an autonomous air force capable of achieving an independent victory.

Establishment of the ghq Air Force did not indicate that either the nation or the Army accepted Mitchell’s air power ideology. The Baker Board’s final report cautioned: “The ideas that avia­tion, acting alone, can control the sea lanes, or defend the coast, or produce decisive results in any other general mission contem­plated under our policy are all visionary, as is the idea that a very large and independent air force is necessary to defend our coun­try against air attack.”47 The primary bomber assigned to the ghq Air Force’s three air wings at the end of the decade was the Doug­las B-18 “Bolo,” a dual-engine aircraft designed for short-range interdiction or battlefield support. The War Department ordered 217 B-i8s in 1935 over the objections of the Air Corps, which had endorsed the в-17.

To most General Staff officers, “air power” meant preventing enemy aircraft from attacking friendly troops, or using friendly aircraft to attack enemy troops and supplies near the battlefield. It did not mean achieving an independent victory from the sky— a proposition that many Army leaders viewed with thinly veiled scorn. Mitchell’s public outcries led many Army officers to reject future proposals for air force autonomy out of hand. Arnold re­marked that “they seemed to set their mouths tighter, draw more into their shell, and, if anything, take even a narrower point of view of aviation as an offensive power in warfare.”48 Army Brig­adier General Charles E. Kilbourne, chief of the General Staff’s War Plans Division, critiqued Mitchell’s impact on Army lead­ership in harsher terms. In 1934, Kilbourne remarked that “for many years the General Staff of the Army has suffered a feeling of disgust amounting at times to nausea over statements publicly made by General William Mitchell and those who followed his lead.”44

While Mitchell may have repelled many Army officers, most airmen gravitated to his message if not his methodology.50 The coterie of “believers” who surrounded him during his tenure as Assistant Chief of the Air Service—Hap Arnold, Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, William Sherman, Herbert Dargue, Robert Olds, Ken­neth Walker, Harold Lee George, and Ira C. Eaker—were not only many of the Air Corps’ future leaders, but also many of its future theorists. Together, they refined Mitchell’s notions and con­veyed them throughout the close-knit community of the airmen, and they found their audience receptive. Strong ties bonded the small number of aviators—the dangers of flying, even in peace­time, made the Air Service responsible for almost 50 percent of the Army’s active duty deaths between 1921 and 1924.51 Airmen realized as well that advancing in rank was tenuous as long as the Army controlled promotion lists, given that most Army leaders viewed the air weapon as an auxiliary feature of a ground force. After Arnold and Dargue received reprimands in 1926 for send­ing Congressmen pro-autonomy literature, most airmen adopted a stoic posture that reflected Mitchell’s ideas, but they hesitated to speak those thoughts too loudly outside their clan.

Air chiefs also absorbed Mitchell’s notions. Mason Patrick, who initially shunned Mitchell’s ideas on Air Service autonomy and regarded him as “a spoiled brat,”52 submitted a study to the War Department in December 1924 advocating “a united air force” that placed “all of the component air units, and possibly all aero­nautical development under one responsible and directing head.” As for its wartime usage, Patrick asserted that “we should gather our air forces together under one air commander and strike at the strategic points of our enemy—cripple him even before our ground forces come into contact.”53 Patrick’s successors as Chief of the Air Corps—James E. Fechet, Benjamin Foulois, Oscar Westover, and Hap Arnold—were equally committed to Mitchell’s goal of an independent air force and shared his faith that air power could single-handedly win wars (although Foulois disliked Mitchell per­sonally). Brigadier (later Major) General Frank Andrews, who commanded the ghq Air Force from 193 5-39, was an air power disciple who relentlessly spouted Mitchellese to both the War De­partment and the public, and like Mitchell was banished to Fort Sam Houston. Aside from Andrews and the outspoken Foulois, however, air leaders restrained their advocacy. Most worked to improve relations with the War Department while securing high visibility peacetime missions that stressed air power’s ability to defend the nation.54 Although Mitchell the prophet remained up­permost in their minds, so too did Mitchell the martyr.