The difficulty with air war theory was its inapplicability to America’s specific strategic situation—unless one planned to bomb Ottawa and Mexico City. The immediate fate of the Air Corps rested with the coastal defense mission. Tacitly sharing the aerial responsibility of coastal defense, the Army and Navy had difficulty defining just how they would divide all the possible coastal defense functions. Under presidential pressure, General MacArthur and Admiral William V. Pratt (the chief of naval operations) agreed in 1931 that the Air Corps bore the principal responsibility for conducting land-based attacks upon an enemy invasion fleet. Two years later MacArthur directed the Air Corps to create long-range patrol and bombing squadrons to be stationed in the Philippines, Hawaii, and the Canal Zone. Like other phases of military planning, the Air Corps mission found rationalization in the worst-case possibility of a war against Great Britain and Japan. The new emphasis on coastal defense emerged in the Army’s planned structure of the Air Corps, which gave increased emphasis to the bombardment mission. In 1926 the War Department wanted an air component of twelve bombardment squadrons, twenty-one pursuit squadrons, four attack squadrons, and twenty-three observation squadrons. In 1934 this force structure changed to twenty-seven bombardment squadrons, seventeen pursuit squadrons, eleven attack squadrons, and twenty observation squadrons. The coastal defense mission also stimulated the Air Corps to search for long-range navigational equipment and a precision bombsight, the latter developed by the Sperry Corporation and adopted by the Air Corps as the Norden bombsight in 1933.
The Air Corps took the coastal defense mission seriously and conducted many bombing exercises that influenced its tactical doctrine. One of its principal conclusions was that bomber formations could fly farther, higher, and faster than the pursuit aircraft sent to shoot them down. Flying in formations that provided mutual protection, armed and armored bombers would penetrate enemy defenses with acceptable losses and reach their targets. The Air Corps thought it could hit stationary targets and moving ships with decent accuracy with high-altitude, level-approach bombing attacks.
The coastal defense mission gave the Air Corps a reason to stress the creation of large, long-range aircraft. As early as 1927 Major General James Fechet, an aviation pioneer and Patrick’s successor as chief of the Air Corps, ordered that bomber development receive the highest priority in research and development. This decision grew in part from the Douglas, Martin, and Boeing corporations’ interest in building long-range aircraft for commercial purposes. Aeronautical engineers tackled the critical problem with enthusiasm: To increase the power of aircraft engines while proportionately reducing aircraft weight. Attacking the payload, lift-to-weight problem, the engineers produced spectacular successes. Shifting to all-metal monoplanes utilizing lightweight composition metals like aluminum, the engineers predicted in 1936 that they could build a bomber that could fly 8,000 miles at 230 miles an hour. They demonstrated the art of the possible for the Air Corps by producing two airplanes that gladdened the hearts of bombing enthusiasts: The twin-engined Boeing B-9 and Martin B-10. The engineering successes in the bomber program so encouraged the Air Corps that in 1934 it offered contracts for the development of a bomber with a 2,000-mile range. From the prototypes, the Air Corps selected the four-engined Boeing XB-17 in 1935 for further development and eventual procurement. By 1937 the Air Corps had wedded its future to the XB-17, despite some early testing frustrations and the lack of funds for a full bomber force.
Bomber development fueled the Air Corps’ campaign for additional autonomy from the ground forces and the General Staff. In turn, the General Staff worried about the cost of aviation and the future of air support for the field armies. Banking on congressional and public support, a series of Air Corps chiefs argued for the creation of an “air force” as distinct from an “air corps.” The former would conduct offensive operations against a wide range of targets; the latter would support ground units with observation aircraft. Between 1933 and 1935 a series of General Staff, War Department, presidential, and congressional reviews of the Army’s aviation policies gave air officers the opportunity to argue forcefully for additional freedom. A series of crashes, some related to the emergency use of the Air Corps to carry the air mail in 1934, galvanized public interest and dramatized the shortcomings of the five-year expansion program authorized in 1926. More important, the General Staff recognized that the Air Corps had a persuasive political case for more independence and feared that Congress would give it the status of a separate service, which would further erode the aviators’ commitment to missions related to ground campaigns.
As a compromise the War Department approved in 1934 the creation of a peacetime command labeled General Headquarters (GHQ) Air Force, which would control all bombing, pursuit, and attack squadrons based in the United States. Commanded by an Air Corps general, this force would train in peacetime and fight in war directly under the operational control of the Army chief of staff or an expeditionary force commander, but not field army commanders. Ably commanded by Brigadier General Frank M. Andrews, GHQ Air Force continued to experiment with bombing missions and to influence aviation research and development. The General Staff curbed bomber development by deemphasizing the coastal defense mission (with Navy approval) and stressing ground attack missions. Nevertheless, the Air Corps had by 1938 reached a position to make strategic bombardment an important part of American military doctrine.
Rearmament for Hemispheric Defense
After more than a decade of limiting its armed forces through international agreement and unilateral fiscal action, the United States in 1933 began to rearm. The course change was slight and the increase in speed modest, for the nation still regarded the fleet as the first line of defense and viewed its maritime security system as a bulwark against foreign troubles, not a tool for interventionism. The strategic focus of rearmament remained a minimal effort to deter Japanese adventurism in Asia and the western Pacific and the defense of the Western Hemisphere against foreign military incursions. As always, nonstrategic factors influenced military policy. Coping ineffectively with the Great Depression, the federal government wanted to reduce spending. Yet it also had an inclination to assist some embattled businesses with government orders. One of these industries was shipbuilding, another was aircraft production. Another influence was that the coalition of disarmament advocates and noninterventionists continued to argue that international agreements and congressional action could keep the United States out of another war. Until 1936 the nation participated in international conferences on arms limitation, and between 1935 and 1939 Congress passed five different neutrality acts inhibiting official and unofficial participation in “foreign wars.” Only toward the end of the decade did military policy bear any direct relationship to the threat of war.
Naval rearmament required a change of attitude in Congress and a new face in the White House. Unlike Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt did not boast that he had never approved a new vessel and had purposely kept the Navy well below treaty strength. Like his cousin Theodore, FDR had grown up close to the sea, ships, and Navy social circles, and he had few illusions about the force of good intentions in world affairs. Roosevelt, however, promised in his first two presidential campaigns that he would cut government spending, including the military budget. The initiative for naval rearmament rested in Congress, especially Carl Vinson’s House Naval Affairs Committee. But at least congressional navalists could depend upon a more sympathetic president. The first test came with the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, a modest attempt to stimulate economic recovery by giving businesses increased freedom for self-regulation. A provision of the act allowed the president to use public works funds to build naval vessels, and Roosevelt soon issued an executive order that allocated $238 million for warships. The thirty-two-ship, three-year program provided for two carriers, four cruisers, and twenty destroyers as well as smaller vessels. Congress, however, changed its mind about military public works when the Army and Navy requested
more “welfare” spending and forbade similar presidential initiatives.
Undeterred by the protests of critics that the United States had started another naval arms race, Vinson, a legislator of consummate skill, designed another shipbuilding program in 1934. Although it did not meet specific Navy recommendations, the Vinson-Trammell Act authorized the Navy to build up to treaty strength by 1942. Under the act the Navy could build 102 warships, which brought the new authorizations up to 134 vessels. Yet Congress did not rush to modernize the fleet. In 1937, a year after Japan renounced its adherence to all treaty limitations, the Navy had three carriers, ten cruisers, forty-one destroyers, and fifteen submarines under construction. Given the long lead times for warship construction, most of the new ships would not join the fleet until the end of the decade.
After the clear demise of naval arms limitation and the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Congress reconsidered the fleet’s projected strength and returned to a “Navy second to none” policy. The Naval Act of 1938, again piloted through the legislative process by Vinson, expanded the fleet past treaty limits for the first time. The ten-year $1.1 billion program represented a tonnage increase of 20 percent over treaty limits and authorized construction across every category of warship: Three battleships, two carriers, nine cruisers, twenty-three destroyers, and nine submarines. In addition, Congress approved a naval aviation force of 3,000 aircraft, almost doubling authorized airplane strength. The ambitious legislation, however, did not give the Navy any real superiority over Japan, which had also embarked upon a fleet expansion program.
Comparative Fleet Strengths 1939
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UNITED STATES
JAPAN
Battleships
15
10
Carriers
5
6
Cruisers
36
37
Destroyers
104
122
Submarines
56
62
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As the Navy Department consistently reminded Roosevelt and Congress, the shipbuilding programs did not exhaust the Navy’s pressing needs. A 1938 study of the Navy’s base system produced predictable results: The Navy could not operate at any distance from its continental bases, which were themselves inadequate to support the growing fleet. It recommended a $238 million program to expand or build twenty-six bases and assigned “immediate strategic importance” to nine bases, six of which were in the Pacific. Roosevelt and Congress did not respond to the plea for overseas bases. Critical to the execution of War Plan ORANGE, the naval station on Guam, for example, received only sufficient funds to develop its seaplane facilities. In 1939 the Navy reported that the base system could not support fleet operations beyond the hemisphere.
The Navy and Marine Corps also lacked adequate manpower. Although both naval services received increased funding for personnel after 1933, their 1939 numbers were still 20 percent short of estimated peacetime needs. The Navy had 125,202 officers and men, the Marine Corps 19,432. When the Navy’s General Board prepared a special report, “Are We Ready Now,” in the summer of 1939, the answer was a resounding “No.” Manpower shortages inhibited war readiness as much as warship and base shortcomings.
Naval rearmament did not end the Roosevelt administration’s interest in military preparedness, for the president recognized that Hitler’s Germany posed an additional threat to American security, if only because the Third Reich would limit Britain’s and France’s ability to deter Japan. Shortly after the Munich crisis in the autumn of 1938, FDR called a special conference of his military advisers to consider aviation policy. Like many of his fellow Americans, FDR tended to think that naval and air forces represented the ultimate answer to the nation’s military problems. He also had become expert in political symbolism and believed that words were as useful as weapons in demonstrating international resolve. Much to the consternation of his military advisers, the president ended the aviation conference with the announcement that the United States would expand its military force by 10,000 aircraft at a cost of $500 million. This program would create an aviation industry capable of producing 24,000 aircraft a year sometime in the indefinite future. The difficulty was that FDR did not indicate that he would also call for the money necessary to train pilots, build bases, and procure the equipment and supplies for this force. Skeptics recalled Woodrow Wilson’s romantic notion in 1917 about darkening the skies with American planes. Even the numbers had an uncomfortable similarity.
The War Department General Staff and the planners of the Army Air Corps took the president’s vague guidance and produced a “balanced” program in time for FDR’s annual message to Congress in January 1939. The president, however, would not approve the plans, especially the suggestion that he also support ground force modernization. Three months later Congress passed FDR’s reduced request for $300 million and authorized the Air Corps to create a total force of 5,500 aircraft, of which 3,251 would be new planes. It also approved an increase of the Air Corps’ pilot strength by 3,000 men. This emergency air-defense expansion act was justified in strategic terms by the fear that the Germans might create air bases in South America. It was also supposed to complement FDR’s 1938 decision to create a permanent Atlantic Squadron, dramatizing American concern in the Caribbean.
As the omens of global war mounted, the United States held to its traditional interest in unilateralism, neutrality, and hemispheric security. Even the modest rearmament of the 1930s did not reflect any serious consideration of a two-front war—except among the Army’s and Navy’s contingency planners. In the words of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Fleet, the United States remained “a sleeping giant” whose massive military potential still required mobilization. Its active forces had marginal influence upon the designs of German and Japanese expansionists and the weak resolve of the British and French governments to meet the aggressors on the battlefield. Yet the interwar period had been especially rich in ideas within the armed forces—ideas about the use of naval aviation, amphibious forces, mechanized ground armies, and strategic air power. United States military policy now faced its greatest challenge.
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THIRTEEN
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The United States and World War II: From the Edge of Defeat to the Edge of Victory, 1939–1943
On the evening of November 28, 1943, the leaders of the Allied war effort—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, and Premier Josef Stalin—discussed the world’s most destructive modern war. Dining at the Soviet embassy in Tehran, Iran, the “Big Three” moved quickly from a review of their current military operations to an animated exchange of views on the political organization of the postwar world. The choice of subject spoke volumes, for Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin assumed that they—and not the Germans and Japanese—would dominate the peace. At different times and in different ways the Allied anti-Axis coalition had moved by the end of 1943 from the edge of defeat to the edge of victory.
Four years earlier the visions of victory came from meetings in Berlin and Tokyo. The momentum for changing the world’s map rested with Nazi Germany, the Japanese Empire, and fascist Italy. Pursuing their visions of a new world order, the Axis states had tested the resolve of the Western democracies and the Soviet Union and found that resolve wanting. Between 1936 and 1939 Adolf Hitler, disregarding the cautious advice of his senior military officers, defied the Allies by remilitarizing the Rhineland (1936), annexing Austria (1938), and occupying Czechoslovakia (1938–1939). The Italians under Benito Mussolini had extended their African empire into Ethiopia without Western resistance, and the Germans and Italians had supported the victorious fascists in a civil war in Spain (1936–1939). In the Far East the Japanese government, dominated by the military, had used its armed forces to create a puppet state in Manchuria (1931) and had then opened a war of conquest against the Chinese Nationalist government (1937) in the
name of civilizing China, ending European imperialism in Asia, and forming an Asian economic sphere that would feed and supply Japan.
Much to the glee of the Axis leaders, the aggression of the 1930s threw the potential anti-Axis coalition into disarray. The simultaneous pressure in both Europe and Asia seemed to present insoluble political and military problems for Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. After disappointing talks with the Western Allies, the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler in August 1939. The Tri-Partite Pact (1940) between Germany, Italy, and Japan pledged mutual assistance if an uncommitted nation (i.e., the United States) entered a war with any of the signatories, and in 1941 Japan and the Soviet Union signed a neutrality agreement. For the Axis powers the great imponderable in their strategic calculations was the United States, whose manpower and industrial resources for war they recognized. They assumed, however, that the United States could not muster the national will to fight a global, two-front war. The dinner conversation in Tehran would prove how wrong these calculations were, but in 1939 Hitler and his Japanese allies had every reason to doubt that the United States would disrupt their plans for a Thousand Year Reich and a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Despite tentative efforts by President Roosevelt to alert the American public to the danger of Axis aggression, Congress best represented public opinion when it passed a series of neutrality acts after 1935, acts designed to limit public and private financial and economic assistance to any belligerent. The acts assumed that the United States could follow isolationist policies that would prevent its entry into “foreign wars” and still protect its national interests and physical security. Reexamining their war plans in 1938, Army and Navy planners saw no political support for any strategy but the defense of the Western Hemisphere. In practical terms this area was the hemisphere north of the equator, the Pacific Ocean west to the International Date Line, the Atlantic Ocean east to Greenland, and the approaches to the Caribbean basin. In a new set of war plans, labeled RAINBOW, the planners examined a wide range of contingencies. Although the planners considered the possibility of having allies, they focused on the problem of hemispheric defense without allies against attacks by both the Japanese and Germans. It was an unhappy exercise. The Philippines and Guam could not be defended, and the planners concluded that the United States—even if it mobilized immediately—could defend its hemispheric security zone by itself only with great difficulty.
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