Document created: 13 January 04
Air University Review,
March-April 1972
In the world now shaping itself around us, the Air Force officer is destined to play an increasingly important role. This is true whether that world is heading for peace or war. Even if the peace we now enjoy should endure for a period beyond all dependable prediction, it must continue for years as a strange and restless peace such as this nation has never experienced.
In the past our nation has made severe and almost impossible demands upon its military men of all ranks who have remained in uniform beyond the end of hostilities. It is commonplace in every nation to observe that the soldier is a hero in war and forgotten in peace; but our own nation, during its recurrent dreams of perpetual peace, has always more than forgotten its professional soldiers.
Middle-aged Air Force officers can well remember when their appearance in large numbers was sufficient to cause alarm as well as annoyance everywhere but in the “army town”—San Antonio, and perhaps San Francisco when the fleet was not in. The flight of more than three or four military pilots to one city on the same day was considered a reckless invitation to public comment. The only exceptions were the duly authorized and duly infrequent maneuvers, which provided sufficient unfavorable comment in themselves. As for Washington, the source of all military authority, Army pilots were requested when flying there to carry civilian clothes for street wear, lest representatives of the people be reminded of their existence.
It is not surprising that military airmen not timid by nature had a strong tendency toward over-expressing themselves once they were “safely” in the air, and too often flew with a deliberate daring and bravado which was the direct antithesis of, and compensation for, their conduct on the ground. Some can recall the extreme cases, the quiet men who expressed themselves seldom and inadequately in words, but frequently took to the air with a strange light in their eyes and a passion for disturbing not only people but even cattle and sometimes such things as sailboats, with the utmost technical skill. The decline of anonymous exhibitionism in recent years is not due to more stringent regulations, since the law of gravity was always the severest of all, but to the increasing dignity of the airman as a member of modern society.
Those men who achieved a certain dignity and too often a defiant death in attempts to demonstrate human mastery of the mysteries of flight were greater in number than those who dared to challenge the attitude toward flying, and particularly military flying, of men on the ground. The exhilarating struggle with the forces of nature, dangerous as it was, gave a man a kind of release from the pettiness of jealousy and fear. But for a man to identify himself on the ground as a military airman, and openly to proclaim his aspirations and convictions in words as well as in action, was to invite the bitterest personal attacks upon himself; attacks which too often provoked bitterness in return.
The most disturbing feature of these attacks was the fact that they came from the conservative and tradition-loving civilians, otherwise his most tolerant friends, and from his brothers-in-arms. If the airman wrote or spoke about the things he knew, such as the development of his new profession and the application of its principles, he was branded by one faction as threatening to scrap the country’s dependable defenses and by the other as threatening to destroy all other nations. In their haste to discredit him, the same individuals often tried to combine these contradictory arguments by describing him as a harmless crank and, in the same breath, as a ruthless destroyer. Shunned by progressives and damned by conservatives, the handful of military airmen who founded our present Air Forces were encouraged mostly by each other.
The constraint of expression by Air Corps officers was not merely social and theoretical. It was a matter of military discipline. The arguments advanced by General Mitchell were not exclusively his own, nor did he differ significantly from other leading military airmen except in his argumentative manner and uncompromising attitude. He was by no means the only officer effectively silenced by the outcome of his case. Other air officers who wanted to remain in the service and hoped someday to be able to influence its policies became almost secretive concerning their ideas on new methods of warfare. Some demonstrated an interest in more traditional matters and even managed to develop an affection for horses, a characteristic which was considered in old Army circles as the one indispensable attribute of a truly military man. Prior to the late 1930’s, only the boldest and most tactless Air Corps officers allowed themselves to be heard beyond the next room when discussing anything of importance to the nation. There was a period when it seemed that even the Air Corps chiefs were self-effacing to a degree detrimental to the men they represented.
Small wonder that the Air Forces of today have few senior officers skilled in the use of words. Captain H. H. Arnold, one of the most irrepressible of the pioneers, managed to keep in practice by writing air stories for his children and, later, books of a more or less inspirational nature for boys and young men who absorbed his enthusiasm and overlooked the careful vagueness of his statements. Behind the scenes, he and others fought many battles that made for progress. Such small-scale projects as the pioneer flight of a few bombers to Alaska in 1934 were carried out despite relentless opposition and criticism which immediately branded the achievement as a “stunt” intended to mislead the public concerning the feasibility of long-range military aviation.
But it was only beneath the surface that progress was achieved. Air Corps officers, greatly outranked and outnumbered, were unable to gain recognition for their warnings and proposals at top-level, and progress at that level was much slower than was demanded by awakening public opinion. As the divergence between advancing public opinion and slow official progress widened, Air Corps officers were in an increasingly delicate position. Opposition to their efforts became more desperate. The Baker Board report of the late 1930’s was really more reactionary for its time than the Morrow Board of the early 1920’s had been.
The recommendation of the Baker Board, which tried to limit aviation to three-hundred-miles range, seems comic today, but it was far from comic to the military airmen who had to go on trying to build Air Power despite the throttling effect of such a policy. The achievements of a quiet but determined little group of Air Corps officers, in the face of unrelenting official opposition and disapproval, still seem miraculous even to those who watched them work. They had little support except a vaguely sympathetic public that had no idea who they were or how to help them. Yet when necessity arrived ahead of all prediction, they suddenly built the world’s greatest long-range striking force.
The repression of all so-called “radica1” expression among military men seems strangely illogical in a time like the present, when the Army Ordnance Association Journal will print and defend an article urging early preparation for an invasion of Mars in order to use it as a base for a “surprise” invasion of another country. But it must be remembered that the twenty years of peace, expected to last forever, dictated a policy of deliberate and enforced obscurity for all military men. Mere survival was an accomplishment in 1932, when the nominating convention of a major political party boasted of having reduced the nation’s armed forces to the status of a domestic police force. There was nothing to do but take cover. It is not surprising that top Army officers, straining to keep their own heads down out of sight, became somewhat nervous when any officer, even a restless Air Corps officer, raised his head over the horizon or his voice above a whisper. The only way to survive was to impersonate a domestic policeman patrolling his own side of the ocean. Air Corps officers had to keep in line like the rest.
Ground and air officers alike stubbornly carried out their duties among a people hoping and trying to believe that all officers were as useless as their saber chains. It was a weird, almost furtive existence, like that of firemen trying to guard a wooden city whose occupants pretended it was fireproof. In such an atmosphere of unreality, officers sometimes felt a little ghostly and bewildered, and turned to the affectation of imported uniforms and mannerisms, the imitation of the well-to-do, and horse culture. These psychic manifestations of a sense of social uselessness appeared in a surprisingly small number of officers. Most plodded grimly along, stubbornly reminding themselves and each other that they were real, after all, and that the things they were doing were necessary. They continued to believe the maneuvers they repeatedly planned were important and worth carrying out. The steadiest leaders steered a sane middle course. Colonel George C. Marshall painted his own house, planted his garden, and tried to improve the welfare of his few men and their families on Sullivan’s Island just as conscientiously as he now tries to establish world peace.
The sudden emergence from complete obscurity of such accomplished world leaders as Marshall, Eisenhower, Arnold, and Bradley was certainly one of the greatest and most fortunate near-miracles of the recent war. Perhaps no war in history, certainly no war in American history, has produced an equal number who could rise so suddenly to such heights of responsibility. The proved capacity of the great leaders of this war to continue their leadership into the period of peace is equally remarkable, and almost unique in American history.
It is now obvious, therefore, that the handicaps of extremely limited activity, indifference, and neglect did not prevent the United States Army from producing top leaders of unquestioned ability almost on demand. Undoubtedly, good fortune played a great part in this, but the fact remains that the nation received a tremendous amount of quality from a pitifully small quantity of officer personnel. It is true that the situation in the junior grades was less favorable. Obviously, where the amount of responsibility to be distributed was so limited, no great number of officers could actually learn to share it. But we can say that somehow, despite the fact that for twenty years the nation seemed not to care very much about its Army or the men in it, many of those men managed to live for a long while in shadow and at the same time learn how to step, without stumbling, into the spotlight’s glare.
All precedent indicates that the time has now come for military men to recede into the shadows again. All past examples teach them to avoid unnecessary contacts, keep quiet, and practically go into hiding. Once or twice a year they might, according to precedent, venture away from post headquarters to make some statement or take some action effective beyond the local luncheon club, but any public influence would necessarily be either apologetic or defiant, since it would be something about which nobody wanted to think. Our military men who served during the 1920’s and 1930’s are old hands at this. Most of them, no matter how painful the adjustment, know how to go on performing duty in a nation apparently becoming ashamed of the existence of men in uniform. They could soon teach even the younger officers to conform in the same manner and, for the sake of the whole group, to give the appearance of dozing in dreamless and planless hibernation.
But this will not happen. For the first time in American history peace is not being taken for granted. There are many reasons why this is true. Principally, there are the technological advances in transportation, communication, and weapons that make the old dream of isolation completely ridiculous. There is the emergence of ideological as well as national conflict. These and other reasons need not be discussed here. The most startling development, from the standpoint of the Army officer as a man, is the fact that he is suddenly required as an organizer, supervisor and advisor in many fields of activity, some of them far-removed from all that was once considered the limited province of the military.
It is suddenly taken for granted that education, public health, industry, research, trade, transportation, and other major functions in America must be consciously geared to the requirements of national defense. While the theoretical relationship of Army officers to both governmental and private agencies which were formerly exclusively civilian is not yet clear, the working relationship has already begun. Of course, civilian specialties and skills have been absorbed by the Army at an equally astounding rate. The net result is a kind of marriage between military and civil pursuits which, for better or worse, cannot be dissolved.
World War II was far from total, even in Germany, despite the free use of the word. But it provided just a taste of what total war might be like. Since we are convinced we can avoid total war and defeat only through national strength, it follows that this strength must be achieved through a kind of total mobilization for peace. This involves all elements of our national life and it certainly includes the military. Since the military element of our national strength is now recognized as the shield behind which all others must develop, it is inescapable that we Americans are now, for the first time, a military people.
This is an amazing thing to most Americans. Some will refuse to accept it, but most simply will not comprehend it for some time to come. It is contrary to tradition and incompatible with custom, but it is fact. And no one can be more amazed by the necessarily militant character of our present American civilization than the United States Army officer, since no one was more conscious of its idyllically peaceful character in the past.
This new participation of the military in all important aspects of our national life is desirable because it is necessary, and it will result in a much higher level of military preparedness than could be achieved otherwise. But it will make entirely new demands upon the character and ability of the permanent officer. In the past, after putting out the fire like a good fireman, he has always gone quietly back to the fire-house and resumed his drill, observed principally by relatives, small children, and visiting dignitaries. But this fire, although diminished at present, is obviously not out, and the officer is now called upon to help fireproof the building. It is a good assignment, but it is not an easy one.
The old system is inefficient, frustrating, and wasteful of ability. It was not pleasant to be banished from the minds, if not the hearts, of one’s fellow countrymen; to work with no tools; to plan with no cooperation. It required patience, devotion, self-encouragement and, for a few unfailing leaders, long-range vision and an undismayed consecration to the cause of the national welfare. But for the great majority of peacetime officers, it did not require the rapid increase in knowledge, versatility, and breadth of understanding demanded by the new role of full-time consulting architect for a whole nation’s future.
The new demands made upon officers of the Air Force will perhaps require the greatest change in manner of performance. Just six years after pre-war policies which deliberately placed the Air Forces in a position subservient to the Infantry in Army organization and function, we find that only complete autonomy for the Air Force can guarantee against an almost equal degree of subservience on the part of the Infantry. Officers of the old Air Corps had to fight against traditionalism every time they tried to make a forward move. Officers of the new Air Force find themselves the heirs of a new tradition which takes progress for granted. The old timers (of ten years ago) could always be depended upon to do more than expected. Their accomplishments have gained them such recognition that they and the younger men now following them are expected to do almost anything.
Rightly or wrongly, the American public now looks to the Air Force and the scientists to protect the nation from sudden destruction. It is the greatest military responsibility in world history. Never before have the people of this nation feared sudden destruction, or invasion, or even another war. Now there is apprehension concerning both the immediate and distant future. No longer protected by broad oceans, no longer defended by strong allies, our people feel exposed for the first time, and alone for the first time. They will lean heavily upon their longest and swiftest striking arm, and they will depend to a great degree upon the officers of that arm to provide them with the sense of security necessary for the prevention of panic and despair.
Rome did not depend upon the broadswords of its legionaries, nor Britain upon the guns of its fleet, more completely than America and certain other nations now depend upon the bombs of America’s airmen. The situation is an appalling one, and the responsibility is overwhelming. To provide a sense of security sufficient to allay exaggerated fears without jeopardizing the flow of funds necessary to make that security real is a task which now appears impossible.
Officers of the Air Force are no longer shielded by their pre-war lack of prominence. They can no longer depend upon being regarded as reserved, obscure, professional men doing a strictly professional job far removed from public prying and relatively immune to personal criticism. Their official lives are no longer their own. Their supposed weaknesses as well as their proved strength may be aired in the press. Their failures will not pass unnoticed. Writers of columns will mention many of them frequently, both to damn and to praise. An uneasy nation cannot be expected to take it for granted they are doing the job well at all times, and the expenditure of large percentages of the national income may often become a political issue. Differences of opinion between officers, differences of method, even differences of personality, may be of some interest to the general public at times. The sensitive soul, the retiring personality, and the exclusive spirit will be increasingly difficult to maintain in the Air Force. Its officers, as they succeed to positions of greater influence and broader contacts, will necessarily become accustomed to the give-and-take which is traditional in American public life, but has never before been encountered in peacetime American military service.
The present is a period of recuperation from past efforts and bewilderment in the face of new problems, but the enormity of those new problems is in itself a disturbing guarantee that they will produce severe differences of opinion among our people. What military means and measures will most effectively render the nation safe from the constant threat as well as the constant danger of attack? Our foreign policies are now taking shape and the mystery of these maneuvers absorbs the national interest. Once the commitments of policy are established, the focus of attention will shift to the principal means by which we hope to back up those policies or to prevent disaster if their peaceful purpose should fail. These are of course military means.
Such military means must produce, both in this nation and abroad, the conviction that they are effective, or we shall have no peace. The making and implementation of military plans which are both effective and impressive is a job for military men. This peace, to paraphrase von Clausewitz, is really a continuation of war by other means. The best we can hope for is that the present stalemate between the hope of peace and the fear of war will last long enough for some circumstance or method to develop which will produce a stable world situation. To Clemenceau’s meritorious statement that war is too serious a business to be entrusted to generals, the American public is already discovering a grim rejoinder: This peace is too important and uncertain to be entrusted entirely to civilians. Military considerations will have a dominant influence not only upon our international policies in the field of politics, but also in the fields of finance and trade. We may expect that the bitter controversy already surrounding our State Department will begin to appear around our military planners and advisers in the near future.
Scientists have suddenly become an indispensable military requirement, a fact which is just as confusing to the scientists as to many military men. The habitual boldness of Air Force thinking and the completely experimental nature of the Air Force’s past activities have resulted in some very satisfactory partnerships, but peacetime circumstances will make these working relationships somewhat more difficult. Competent research men are often apprehensive of efforts to guide their thoughts or restrict their actions, to a degree which is difficult even for an autonomy-loving Air Force officer to understand. A very high percentage of scientific research and development potential of this nation is being diverted to meet military requirements, and there are not enough scientists to go around. Business men and industrialists are already disturbed, and not without reason.
The military will not dominate the scientific field by edict or even by law. But the huge funds which must be appropriated for scientific work on new weapons and military devices, small as these funds seem in the light of needs, will necessarily upset what might be called our scientific economy. This research must somehow be directed without being hampered, coordinated without being limited, and supervised without the appearance of meddling. Many Air Force officers will be involved in the achievement of these delicate and difficult aims, from the top research staff sections down to squadron engineering officers who will be testing and adapting increasingly more new equipment.
A new kind of tact will also be necessary in the relationship between the Air Force and other elements of national defense. So far, efforts to appropriate various Air Forces for short-range operations and purposes have been defeated. And the airman still may have a battle on his hands to prove that the air age is not a mere flash in the blue, already burned out, with rockets filling the skies and all of us digging in again.
Scientifically, however, those who do not appreciate the true value of Air Power see it primarily as ground-to-ground transportation, as a means of getting a little closer to the enemy. In their conception, the Air Force would perform a function not unlike that of the Parisian taxicabs at the first battle of the Marne.
Some Air Force officers in the top brackets, let it be said to their undying credit, have already worked toward the development of pilotless aircraft, and have predicted the day when guided and target-seeking missiles may replace the pilot’s present domination of the skies. Their bold predictions, however, did not envisage missiles restricted to the concept of short-range artillery and old-fashioned wars of position. Missiles which are no more than large-caliber artillery will certainly not replace aircraft of longer range and greater accuracy, particularly if these same aircraft will be required to bring the missiles within reach of one another. Such planning, which leaps forward in order to look backward again, would limit Air Power, not by the old method of tying it down to a supporting role, but as with Mark Twain’s celebrated jumping frog, shortening its jumping range by feeding it buckshot in the form of missiles to be landed for re-launching rather than dropped for destruction.
The invasion-from-Mars-by-rocket plan is a better one for the purpose of confusing the issue, because it is most likely to maneuver a thoughtless Air Force officer into the position of a reactionary. Let no one say that such an invasion is impossible or even improbable, even though we have yet to fire a rocket more than two hundred miles or develop a satisfactory guided missile. Air Force officers, following the example of leaders who have already embraced science and technology as an ally rather than as a threat, need have no fear of progress in any field provided they keep pace. Certainly, despite the love most flying officers feel for beautiful and efficient machinery, none of them have yet shown evidence of an emotional fixation upon airplanes similar to the peculiar passion for four-legged animals which once afflicted large and influential portions of the American Army to such an extent that flying officers were actually required, as recently as the 1930’s, to go about wearing horse-boots and riding breeches.
Americans will expect a continuation of bold and realistic thinking and planning on the part of our Air Force officers despite all vested interests, including their own. Officers of the Air Force who are familiar with its history are forewarned by experience against the type of so-called military thinking which is nothing more than rationalizing to justify preoccupation with the previous.
The unfortunate fact is that we have not yet really advanced very far into the air age. Not even the Air Force is yet airborne, nor is it likely to be for a long time to come. Only a tiny percentage of our commerce, even of our urgent commerce, is yet carried by air. Mails are still delivered mostly by the iron horse, and sent to foreign shores by boat. We are still largely governed and controlled by a generation which regards the airplane as a surprising and miraculous invention. Technology has shown us the possibilities, but most of them are yet to be realized. Actually, the air age is little farther advanced than was the automobile era when the airplane was invented in the early years of this century. Officers of the Air Force will be in position to advance this age more rapidly, for the benefit of national strength and welfare. Often they will work and plan through it into the future, and even participate in the awesome beginnings of the atomic age, but they can hardly delude themselves that the world or the nation, or even its military strength, is yet airborne to any great degree.
The achievement of such a goal has become a problem of education more than anything else and it will require a knowledge of the newest and most effective educational methods. All citizens, including some in the Army and Navy, must be educated to understand that the nation has the resources for a vast expansion of its world-wide aviation potential. World economic and political conditions demand such expansion. Its achievement can be brought about only by the influence of those enthusiastic about air possibilities. Such possibilities require scholarly presentation.
The Air Force has never boasted a high percentage of scholars. Ground Force and Naval officers, on a percentage basis, have excelled in this respect. There are, of course, reasons. If the cockpit of a World War I airplane had provided General Mitchell all the facilities for lengthy writing that Admiral Mahan found on his commodious battleships, perhaps the General could have marshaled an equally imposing attack of rhetoric and of historical example to weight his arguments; and they might have been equally successful to the benefit of the nation.
Air activities have most often attracted men of active rather than literary leanings, and the more methodical minds have been needed for technological application. But with the coming maturity of Air Power, the need for scholarship in interpreting it is imperative.
Wider reading and broader humanitarian contacts for Air Force officers, leading to a better understanding of politics as the science of government rather than a dreaded interference, are highly necessary. Similarly, a more complete understanding of labor and its aspirations is a prerequisite for effective industrial planning and coordination on the part of men who habitually think only in terms of management and control. A diminution of petty racial and sectional prejudices and superstitions is likewise necessary in order to avoid the blundering creation of unnecessary antagonisms in national as well as international dealings. Dogmatism and limited understanding cannot help to unite the nation in the coming years of crisis. Air Force leaders will necessarily become concerned with the breadth as well as the vigor of their opinions. If the younger men can retain the vitality and determination of the Air Corps pioneers and at the same time develop the urbanity and erudition necessary for the more varied demands now made upon them, their achievements will be equally impressive.
A nation no longer dominant in available resources, hopelessly outnumbered in manpower, and lacking a strong ally in a world disturbed and shaken, has only one recourse. That recourse is the maintenance of its world leadership in material achievement and the spirit of freedom. The development of its most envied accomplishment and the most distinctive symbol of its might and aspirations, its military and commercial Air Power, can be the most convincing demonstration of influential strength and the most effective means of tying together a disintegrating world. This development must demonstrate excellence of equipment, efficiency of organization and function, and the irrepressible spirit that has characterized our air adventure since it began. Air Force officers and their almost indistinguishable allies in other positions of military and civilian leadership will necessarily become effective agents in the promotion of this most hopeful program for the security of the nation and the peace of the world.
Brigadier General Noel F. Parrish, USAF (Ret), (Ph.D., Rice University), is assistant professor of history at Trinity University, San Antonio. Commissioned from flight training in 1932, he served as flying instructor and supervisor and as Commander, Tuskegee Army Flying School. Other assignments were as Special Assistant to the Vice Chief of Staff, Hq USAF; Air Deputy, NATO Defense College, and Deputy Director, Military Assistance Division, Europe; Assistant for Coordination, DCS/Plans and Programs; and Director, Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University, 1961-64, when he retired.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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