C H A P T E R 2
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THE ARMY AIR ARM BETWEEN
TWO WARS, 1919-39
OR THE Air Service the Armistice brought surcease from battle
but not from strife. From 1919to 1939 the history of the Army
F air arm was dominated by a struggle for recognition whichleft a deep imprint upon the air organization and its personnel. Indeed,
the character of the AAF on the eve of World W a r I1 and its self-
conceived mission can be appreciated only in light of a conflict which
had begun during the earlier war and was intensified after the return
of the Air Service, AEF. In its second war the air arm occupied an
anomalous position: it was a part of the Army, as its official title pro-
claimed, yet there was a degree of separatism in thought and in action
not to be found among the other arms and services under War Depart-
ment control. This was tacitly accepted in the command structure
which emerged early in the war; it was sensed, too, by the average
civilian, who with fine disregard for the formal chain of command
might ask, “Are you in the Army or the Air Corps?” but never, “Are
you in the Army or the Corps of Engineers?”
T o understand this special character of the air force, it is not
necessary to recall the myriad routine incidents which constitute so
large a part of the life of a military establishment in time of peace. It
should be sufficient here to describe the three paramount trends of
the period: the effort to establish an independent air force; the develop-
ment of a doctrine of strategic bombardment; and the search for a
heavy bomber by which that doctrine could be applied. An approach
so circumscribed as this will inevitably omit much that is important
and interesting; worse still, it might foster the erroneous idea that from
an early date all activities of the air arm were directed consciously
toward those three goals. Yet so important were those trends in the
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