Air University Review, September-October 1986

The Legacy of
Halfway Unification

Warren A. Trest

Anyone who is familiar with U.S. Air Force history knows that roles and missions duplication has become as much a part of our military heritage as the wars we have fought. A primary reason for this has been our inability to overcome the biases blocking true unification of the armed forces. Merely scratching the surface of the nation's air power for the past forty years will show that the Air Force has just as much to be concerned about in settling the who, what, when, and wherefores of unity today as when it became an equal partner under the National Security Act of 1947.

Since the National Security Act and Executive Order 9877 neglected to fix the division of service responsibilities, the sensitive area of air power roles and missions was left open to broad interpretation. This circumstance occurred because, as written, the act was a compromise on the key issues of unification, which the U.S. Navy had opposed during months of divisive postwar dialogue. Ancestral voices from this period remind us that today's concerns for military reform are not much different from that earlier struggle.

The U.S. Army led the drive for unification, for its top leaders were convinced that an autonomous air force and unified direction of the armed forces were imperative lessons to be drawn from their experience in World War II. Generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower were two of unification's strongest advocates. They both believed in a single defense establishment with three coequal branches––land, sea, and air.

Determined Navy opposition was keyed more to the relatively new dimension of air power than it was to the Army's traditional domain of ground warfare. Prior to the rise of the air weapon as a major force in war, the Army and the Navy had drawn generally accepted boundaries between land and sea warfare, but these had become clouded in the tridimensional operations of World War II. The Navy harbored some concern for the integrity of the Marine Corps, since its operations in the Pacific had overlapped with those of the army, but its greatest fear was that of losing its naval and marine aviation to an autonomous air force.

Adding to the Navy's misgivings was the precedent set by our wartime ally, Great Britain, whose naval aviation was controlled by the Royal Air Force. Although this was not an officially stated position by unification proponents in the United States,¹ it is evident that the founding fathers of the U.S. Air Force did believe that all military aviation should be integrated into a single organization. Their unshakable faith in the indivisibility of air power would have demanded this, for it was seen as the ideal alternative to the duplication and fragmentation of effort inherent in the existing structure. In his memoirs, Admiral Arthur W. Radford recalls that General Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, who became the Air Force's first Chief of Staff, spoke frankly to him about wanting all naval aviation integrated into the autonomous air force.²

Any form of unification that would break up the Navy's own integrated team of air, sea, and land components was anathema to Admiral Radford and his fellow flag officers. The war in the Pacific had brought the aircraft carrier to the fore of fleet operations, and the Navy was not about to relinquish control to another service. On the other hand, the admirals' plans to build a 65,000-ton carrier capable of launching atomic strikes smacked of encroachment on the strategic air mission.³

Both sides of the unification issue had strong political support. No one seemed more dedicated to unifying the armed forces than did President Harry S. Truman, but even he wearied of the bickering and supported compromise legislation that would be acceptable to both sides. Thus, the resultant National Security Act established the U.S. Air Force as a separate service from the U.S. Army but gave the country only the semblance of defense unification.⁴

Although the National Security Act ended their long struggle for independence, the Air Force founding fathers generally deplored the compromise of key unification issues that led to its enactment. Some believed that it might still be possible to gain control of all strategic air elements which were not tied directly to fleet operations, but even this idea proved wishful. Years later, Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker would note wryly that by failing to unify all military aviation, the act had accomplished the exact opposite. It had "legitimized four military air forces."⁵

Perhaps dissatisfaction with the act was best expressed by Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, whose thoughts on unification appeared in the December 1948 issue of Air Force magazine. He labeled it "an unfortunate compromise" that had made the new Air Force primarily responsible for national air power but had left the Navy free to pursue its policy of self-sufficiency. This contradiction resulted in "two self-sufficient, competing air forces, each planning to win the air war in its own way." The general's article underscored the failure of the act to establish a strong, coordinating head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to clearly designate roles and missions by Executive Order. Only unification of a sort had been achieved.⁶ The Air Force Association, at its annual convention, had endorsed the principle of a single integrated Air Force. Fully supporting this principle, Jimmy Doolittle saw no reason why naval aviation could not be integrated into the Air Force as a special branch, just as had been done with tactical aviation for the Army. He was concerned that the compromises had already "intensified rather than reduced the undesirable effects" of interservice competition. Quarreling had already broken out over funding priorities for the Air Force's B-36 intercontinental bomber program and the Navy's supercarrier, United States, even after roles and missions differences presumably had been put to rest at the Key West and Newport conferences.⁷

The first Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal, had convened the Joint Chiefs at Key West, Florida, in March 1948 to resolve differences that had already arisen over roles and missions. Forrestal (who as former Navy Secretary had led the fight against unification) seemed intent on achieving jointness in defense planning and direction but also sought to preserve the tridimensional self-sufficiency of the Navy. That the primary air power role, including strategic operations, belonged to the Air Force was reaffirmed at Key West, but this did not exclude the Navy from "acquiring and maintaining an air component consistent with its primary mission of controlling the seas." Some limits were placed on the growth of the U.S. Marine Corps, but the Marines, too, were free to develop their own air component.⁸

The Key West conferees produced a functions paper that replaced Executive Order 9877, but the Air Force's first Chief of Staff was unhappy with the results. Before stepping down as chief in April 1948, "Tooey" Spaatz expressed his concern to Forrestal that the Key West discussions had failed to answer the prevailing question of "whether there were to be two air forces or one air force."⁹ This concern proved well founded in the days ahead.

In 1946, Spaatz had testified before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs that he considered unity of direction for the nation's air potential "an absolute imperative" stemming from the lessons of the past war.¹⁰ He remained true to this belief during his years as chief and afterward as a senior spokesman for air power. In a Life magazine article appearing a few days before the Joint Chiefs were to convene a meeting at Newport, Rhode Island, in August 1948, Spaatz expressed his opinion that the Navy's planning for atomic-capable aircraft carriers was an unnecessary and costly duplication of land-based strategic strike forces. His words fell on deaf ears at Newport, however, for the Navy gained reassurance of at least a collateral role in strategic air operations that included planning for the use of atomic weapons.¹¹

Beginning in August 1948, the retired Air Force general was on the staff of Newsweek magazine for more than a dozen years as air and military consultant and as contributing editor. During bitter public airing of the B-36 controversy in 1949, which intensified after Forrestal's successor, Louis Johnson, canceled the Navy's supercarrier, Spaatz's periodic Newsweek column was an articulate and informed voice speaking for stronger unification and for the new role of air power––that of having displaced the Navy as the nation's first line of defense. If the Navy gained from the controversy, it was the reassurance from Spaatz's successor, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, and Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington that the Air Force did not officially covet control of carrier aviation.¹² It first appeared that proponents of stronger unification might have gained more from congressional hearings on the controversy, but their hopes waned with the outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950.

When the services reached their "unfortunate compromise" in 1946, the Joint Chiefs had agreed to formalize the unified theater concept they had adopted during World War II. Unified commands were established with single commanders in chief charged with directing all assigned air, sea, and land forces through service component commanders. When the Korean War started a few years later, however, the Far East Command under General Douglas MacArthur had taken no formal steps to organize a truly unified command headquarters.¹³

Under unified theater planning, the air component commander was responsible to the theater commander for the centralized direction of his total available air assets. Prosecution of the war in Korea by the United Nations Command did not alter this basic conceptual arrangement, since it applied equally to either joint or combined operations. The Far East Air Forces commander, Lieutenant General George Stratemeyer, obtained MacArthur's personal assurance that he would centrally control all theater air power in his air component role, but this proved difficult in actual practice.¹⁴

General Vandenberg readily placed under Stratemeyer's control all Air Force combat units in the war zone, including those of the Strategic Air Command. This decision was in keeping with Air Force doctrine, for the principle of centralized control (with decentralized execution) had been accepted practice since the North African campaign in World War II. Centralized control provided the most efficient and economical use of available resources. More important, it took maximum advantage of air power's inherent flexibility by assuring the theater commander of air support when and where he most needed it. However, it was not compatible with naval doctrine, which employed its air power as an integral part of fleet operations.¹⁵

The Navy hedged on placing its carriers under the air component commander's control, even though there was no naval campaign, as such, in the Korean War and the carriers were used mainly for strikes against land targets in North Korea. There was no active requirement to defend the fleet from enemy air attack, for U.S. planes readily achieved total air superiority over the battlefield. Incompatible communications equipment was a major obstacle to centralized control of the Navy's aircraft, but the primary reason given for the Navy's refusal to place its carriers under the Air Force was the flexibility required to shift its forces whenever and wherever they were needed across the expanse of Asian waters. The Navy routinely coordinated its air operations with the Air Force but would not participate actively in the joint operations center activities until the very end of the fighting.¹⁶

The Marine air units presented a different problem. Since the Marine Corps equipped and trained its air and ground units to conduct self-contained combat, it was reluctant to pool its aircraft under the centralized control of another service commander. Marine forces were traditionally wed to amphibious operations, which made them more dependent on their own air support, with Navy ships providing most of the heavy artillery. In Korea, however, the Marines fought beside Army units in a sustained land campaign. The landing at Inchon was the only amphibious operation of any real military significance in Korea, and it was a joint undertaking between crack Army and Marine units.¹⁷

The Marine air units were put under the air component commander's centralized control in Korea eventually, but they did not go quietly. Their displeasure was aired in the news media, making the issue a controversy of intense national interest. There was accompanying criticism of the Air Force for its alleged neglect of tactical aviation. Thus, joining the Marines in their hour of discontent were some Army infantrymen who doubted the wisdom of having given up their own dedicated air support.¹⁸

One of the more enlightened responses to these critics was an article by General Vandenberg that appeared in the 17 February 1951 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. This analysis of the Air Force's role in Korea was a thoughtful reminder of air power's indivisibility. "We don't speak of a 'strategic' or a 'tactical' Army or Navy," Vandenberg wrote, "yet those terms constantly are applied to the Air Force."¹⁹

General Vandenberg reminded readers that the first and overriding demand on the air forces was "to win the air battle on which final victory on land or sea is predicated." Achieving this objective required the concentrated effort of both fighters and bombers, as did the role of interdicting enemy lines of communication. Similarly with total victory in mind, the Air Force often diverted its bombers from their primary missions to support troops in contact. This flexibility of directing air power where it was most needed served the principle of economy of force by ensuring that air resources were not harnessed solely to missions or segments of the front where they were not always in use.²⁰

Conversely, the Marines shared in the benefits of air superiority and interdiction operations and had added USAF fighters and bombers available for close support in emergencies, yet sought to isolate their own air resources. True, their specialized doctrine, training, and ordnance limited the usefulness of Marine air units for roles and missions other than close support, but their integration under centralized control did substantially increase the air component commander's capabilities in support of the total ground battle.²¹

General Vandenberg knew that the Air Force was not blameless in the other services' arriving at misperceptions about the indivisibility of air power. Certainly, the organizational development of the Air Force into strategic air and tactical air contributed to this misunderstanding. Among others, Major General Orvil A. Anderson, who was the founding commandant of Air War College, belabored this arbitrary division of functions. He warned that the compartmentalized entities that comprised the new autonomous organization were "shibboleths" which would "hang as lodestones around our necks ... long beyond our time."²²

The armed force's first combat experience with halfway unification was not an entirely satisfactory one. A war of sanctuaries and constraints fought under the umbrella of nuclear deterrence, the Korean conflict was fought with deliberate limits that were no boon to unification. The Army's flirtation with helicopters there started the Army on the road back to rebuilding its own air force. The Navy and the Marine Corps hardened their resistance to unification, both pursuing an active course of roles and missions duplication in the years ahead.²³

Achieving the presidency on a platform that promised no more Koreas, Dwight Eisenhower was dedicated to a national policy of nuclear deterrence. He also sought closer unification of the armed forces, for intense rivalry had developed over the need for conventional forces and the question of who would control new atomic weapons such as missiles. Eisenhower began his second term in 1957 with the admonition that the country wanted interservice rivalry to stop.²⁴

By June 1956, retired Air Force leaders, such as Spaatz and Eaker, had begun again to speak out for more complete unification. Spaatz noted that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had "a fatal weakness in that its members are also the senior military officers of their own services." They were regarded "as service advocates instead of over-all military planners." Spaatz thought what was needed was "complete integration of the services––one uniform, a single promotion list, interchangeability of personnel, and a General Staff presided over by a Chief of Staff under a civilian Secretary of Defense." Eaker, too, said that he thought "all three services may one day be in the same uniform with one promotion list."²⁵

Recognizing that the country might not be ready to accept such complete unification, Spaatz suggested in December 1957 that Congress should pass a new reorganization act which would place all three services under the control of a single Secretary of Defense served by a limited number of assistant secretaries. He thought that the civilian departments of Army, Navy, and Air Force should be abolished. A single military Chief of Staff would take charge of advising the Secretary of Defense in matters of military policy. Service commanders would be answerable directly to the Secretary of Defense.²⁶

Calling "the middle way the wise way," however, Spaatz came out in support of President Eisenhower's more moderate reorganization plan in April 1957. This plan failed to create a single Chief of Staff, but Spaatz thought that it might give the Secretary of Defense enough authority "to weld the individual services into a force sufficiently unified to prepare for a modern war emergency without impoverishing the nation in the process." Eisenhower sought legislation that would organize all "deployed troops into truly unified commands" and do away with "separate ground, sea, and air warfare ... forever."²⁷

Simultaneous crises in Lebanon and Taiwan during the summer of 1958 might have spurred legislative action on the President's proposal, for analyses of U.S. operations in these two crises showed little progress toward formulating coherent joint doctrine. Eisenhower signed the new defense reorganization act into law in October 1958. It laid the groundwork for new JCS guidance, which increased joint planning and preparation for unified operations and led to establishing the U.S. Strike Command in 1961.²⁸

At the same time, however, the U.S. contingency actions in Lebanon and Taiwan had revealed flaws in a national policy of almost exclusive reliance on nuclear arms. Eisenhower's "New Look" had given the nation strong nuclear deterrence but unfortunately had neglected conventional capabilities. During the final days of the Eisenhower presidency, the Army took the lead in reorienting joint thinking toward a course of flexible response.²⁹

President John F. Kennedy adopted this course as the cornerstone of national policy after he took office in 1961. In response to Nikita Khrushchev's bluster about "wars of national liberation," this policy led to an impassioned courtship with counterinsurgency warfare and eventually into the protracted conflict in Southeast Asia. By substantially increasing the range of armed commitment, Kennedy's policies unwittingly hurt the progress of unification because they fostered a greater degree of roles and missions rivalry among the services.³⁰ Where earlier secretaries had placed limits on the development of Army aircraft, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara encouraged the growth of Army aviation. His promotion of free competition in the development of systems and tactics for low-intensity conflict turned the jungles of Vietnam into a virtual laboratory for counterinsurgency testing. Experimentation eventually ran the gamut from equipment that was a throwback to "Terry and the Pirates" combat of World War II to high-tech systems as the "McNamara fence" of electronic sensors along the infiltration routes from North Vietnam.³¹

Besides the wholesale roles and missions duplication in Southeast Asia, our sub-rosa entry into the early stages of the fighting and the Johnson administration's policy of gradualism helped write one of history's most inconclusively fragmented chapters on air warfare. By comparison, the saga of theater air operations in Korea reads like a paradigm of unity when examined against the diffused fighting of three separate air wars in the skies over North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and northern Laos.³² The failure to establish a single, unified theater of operations for the entirety of Southeast Asia seems to have been one of the inexcusable mistakes of the war. General William W. Momyer, who was the senior Air Force commander there during the pivotal years of 1966-68, certainly believed so. The consequence of disunity was a patchwork of command arrangements for air power that were uniquely different for each of the three major geographical divisions of conflict.³³

Within the confines of South Vietnam and the contiguous interdiction routes in Laos, General Momyer and successive senior Air Force commanders were responsible for centrally directing the in-country air war, with exceptions. One anomaly was the Marine Corps air wing that carried out totally independent tactical operations in the northernmost corps area until the North Vietnamese siege of the Marine outpost at Khe Sanh in 1968 forced a change. The inordinate demands on air power in the defense of Khe Sanh and in the simultaneous defeat of countrywide attacks during the 1968 Tet offensive made a convincing case for integrating the Marine air operations under General Momyer's centralized control. The Marines contested this arrangement, however, and it remained a sore spot through the end of the conflict and afterward.³⁴

Army aviation in South Vietnam presented another problem entirely. A joint agreement in 1967 turned over the Army's fixed-wing aircraft to the Air Force, but the Army never put its helicopter gunships in Vietnam under the single-manager system with other tactical air resources. Nor were the Air Force's B-52 bombers that flew missions over South Vietnam placed under theater control. The use of this leg of the nation's nuclear deterrent force for conventional bombing operations in support of in-country ground action might have rounded out the portrait of air power indivisibility, but retention of these B-52s under Strategic Air Command control recognized the fallacy of not having a unified theater structure for directing the war.³⁵

Air power was even more rigidly compartmentalized in the on-again, off-again Rolling Thunder campaign against North Vietnam. With unprecedented oversight from Washington, air operations against the North were ostensibly under the Pacific theater commander, a Navy admiral whose headquarters was in Hawaii. One consequence of this peculiar arrangement was the division of North Korea into route packages, with the Navy targeted for isolated strikes in the region nearest their carriers and the Air Force given responsibility for the rest. Thus, the United States, for a second time, fought a major air war involving political constraints and sanctuaries in Asia by having the Navy and the Air Force perform coordinated but totally independent operations.³⁶

Although air strikes in the North were carried out against a defense environment far superior to that of the Korean War, there were similarities, including that of overall U.S. air superiority. Because of the protraction of the war and self-imposed constraints, there were tactical and technological shifts in the advantage afforded strike operations against the North, but U.S. forces on land and sea were completely free from the threat of enemy air attack. There was even more than the usual rivalry between the Navy and the Air Force, with the news media at one point accusing them of resorting to a sortie race in their zeal to outdo each other.³⁷

Momyer and his successors had responsibility for all Air Force operations over the North, except for the B-52s when they were finally unleashed against North Vietnam in the Linebacker campaigns of 1972. The B-52s remained under the Strategic Air Command, which answered directly to the Joint Chiefs in its role as a specified command. Another anomalous command arrangement concerned the Thailand-based tactical units that bore the brunt of operations over North Vietnam and Laos. These units came under the operational control of the senior Air Force commander in Vietnam but were actually assigned to the Thirteenth Air Force commander in the Philippines. These units were prohibited from performing strikes in South Vietnam until the Khe Sanh and Tet emergencies of 1968 demanded the support of all available air power.³⁸

Air operations over northern Laos were even more unique. There was a blend of Air Force and covert Central Intelligence Agency operations there, carried out in support of government forces and those of the Meo leader, General Vang Pao. The U.S. ambassador held tight rein on these air activities, becoming, in effect, another separate air commander in a "theater" of war already hopelessly compartmentalized.³⁹

Although unprovable, logic suggests that the artificial constraints placed on air power, including the compartmentalization of forces, were as much a factor in the unhappy conclusion to the war as the lack of clear-cut military objectives, the gradualistic use of military force, and the war's growing unpopularity at home. There is also popular conjecture that the great concentration in Washington on details for running the war––amid the plethora of technocratic but inexperienced voices accompanying the systems analysis invasion of the Pentagon in the early 1960s––might have been counterproductive to efficient prosecution of the war. The contribution of these leaders and their analysts to the professorial complexity of what might have been a relatively uncomplicated low-intensity conflict may never be known.

It was almost a contradiction that the Kennedy administration chose to retailor national policy into a military "coat of many colors" but embraced the staid Eisenhower pattern for strengthening the powers of the Secretary of Defense. One military observer to the changing scene wrote in 1963 that the new defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, had "centralized authority in his office as never before." This observer was General Thomas D. White, the Air Force's fourth Chief of Staff, who had followed "Tooey" Spaatz on the editorial board of Newsweek after his retirement in 1961.⁴⁰

General White found it ironical, though, that the Air Force, which had been the only service to back greater centralized authority in the defense department, appeared to have suffered most under McNamara's tight controls. "Such cherished AF programs as the RS-70 are meeting slow death, the Skybolt has been canceled, and progress in military space power is not apparent," he wrote. Reasoning that "what is good for the nation is good for the Air Force" and the Chief Executive, his Secretary of Defense, and Congress determine what is good for the nation, General White saluted his service colleagues for their sound attitude in accepting the new roles thrust upon them by recent changes in national policy.⁴¹

The former Chief of Staff challenged the administration, however, for what he perceived to be derogation of the military role at top levels of government. One of his Newsweek pieces was at once a testimonial for the cherished American system of supreme civil authority over the armed forces and a remonstrance against unseasoned influence from "the vast array of professors, scientists, [and] financial and computer experts, together with hundreds of civil-service employees scattered throughout all echelons of the Pentagon and elsewhere." He warned of a burgeoning belief "that dependence on temporary civilian experts and even computer tapes has overshadowed military advice." Had voices like his been heeded, might the nation have been spared the anguish of vacillation, stratification, and protraction in Vietnam?⁴²

General White's words also have meaning for today. He chided those who taught "that there is no experience of modern war and that military art has now become mathematical science," just as he bristled at their references to "battleship admirals," "bomber [barons],"and "cavalry generals."⁴³ As evidenced by today's ongoing dialogue on military reform, there remains substantial room for disagreement among the military services, but our senior officers must be heard, for only they have the "experience of modern war."

That we continue to make mistakes is almost axiomatic. Costly blunders in the war against terrorism, such as the abortive Iranian rescue attempt in 1980 and the Marine headquarters bombing in Beirut three years later, are made no less tragic by shining successes such as last year's precision interception of the Achille Lauro hijackers aboard an Egyptian airliner and this year's retaliatory raid against Libya. But mistakes are not unique to the Department of Defense: as General White cautioned in his reminder that professional military men must be heard on military matters, "at least as great errors have been made in diplomacy, in economic forecasts, and in business decisions."⁴⁴

Much of today's criticism about interservice rivalry, wasteful procurement practices, and questionable weapon systems programs sounds like yesterday's war of words about military reform. Recently, Time magazine reported charges made by a blue-ribbon government panel that "all too many of our weapon systems cost too much, take too long to develop, and, by the time they are fielded, incorporate obsolete technology."⁴⁵ This appraisal comes as no surprise to those who are treating an old problem, but again relevant are General White's words to the critics of twenty years ago whose cure might have been worse than the disease: "The payoff has come in the cold clear fact that this nation has been militarily safe throughout some of the most critical years in history."⁴⁶

Military professionals have been at the forefront of the present movement toward reform. Among those who led the early charge is David C. Jones, the Air Force's most recent general officer to have served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. While still chairman in 1982, the general spoke out for legislation that would strengthen the powers of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and those of theater commanders. His recommendations were strikingly similar to the position taken by General Spaatz and others before the Eisenhower reorganization nearly thirty years ago.⁴⁷

These reformist views have been supported by a wide variety of former senior officers and defense officials, as well as by at least two studies, one assembled at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1984 and another released by the Senate Armed Services Committee in October 1985. Late last year, the House approved legislation to overhaul the joint military structure––to include increasing the chairman's term from two years to four; making him the principal military adviser to the President, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense; and offering theater commanders more power over deciding personnel, budgeting, and command issues. These fundamental changes remained in the Senate version of the bill that passed unanimously in May of this year.⁴⁸

Proponents believe that this bill may be crucial to achieving true unity of effort in preparing for and conducting joint military operations. They hope that it will resolve the problems with unity of command which the military faced in Korea, in Vietnam, and in more recent actions such as Grenada. Others are not so sure. Our experience since the 1958 reorganization indicates that mere overhauling of the system will not in itself give us unity of effort. What may be needed is legislation that will draw clear and final lines of distinction between roles and missions for land, sea, and air warfare––legislation that will provide the framework for unifying the application of these distinctly separate dimensions of warfare.

For the efficacy of air power, more of the same may not be enough if real war comes. Only if defense reorganizes in a manner that recognizes air power's indivisibility are we likely to see any marked improvement in the American way of air warfare. General Henry H. Arnold's definition of air power as the nation's "total aviation activity ... potential as well as existing," later paraphrased by the Congressional Aviation Policy Board as "an entity not fundamentally divisible as a weapon, or as a carrier," has yet to be improved on.⁴⁹ Today, the Air Force has lived with halfway unification for as long as it took to gain autonomy, but it has come no closer to fulfillment of this basic element of its doctrine.

Military air power, perhaps irrevocably, has been severed four ways. This fragmenting has led to overlap in all roles and missions areas, even to the conceptual extreme of extending rotary-wing operations into the realm of interdiction. Each service has developed its own air doctrine, oftentimes with disregard for the total air power situation. The Air Force has stood almost alone in practicing the principle of unified direction of theater air resources. Consequent air power fragmentation holds grave implications for our readiness for world conflict today but promises to be even more precedential in charting tomorrow's military course in space––now viewed as an extension of existing doctrine but soon likely to become the fourth dimension of modern war.

Short of total air power integration, the Air Force's best hope for the forthcoming reorganization seems to rest on the promise that reorganizing will unify the development, preparation,and employment of air power through centralized direction by a single air component commander. If not, one may listen for the voices asking whether today's version of unification has done any better than its predecessors in dealing with the relevant question of our having two, three, or four air forces or one air force.

USAF Historical Research Center
Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Notes

1. Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, 1907-1964 (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University Press, 1971), p. 98; Herman S. Wolk, Planning and Organizing the Postwar Air Force, 1943-1947 (Washington: Office of Air Force History, USAF, 1984), p. 166.

2. Stephen Jurika, Jr., editor, The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur W. Radford (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1980), p. 82.

3. Futrell, p. 96; Wolk, p. 161; Colonel Alfred F. Hurley and Major Robert C. Ehrhart, editors, Air Power and Warfare: Proceedings of the Eighth Military History Symposium, USAF Academy 1978 (Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1979), pp. 227, 258-59.

4. Wolk, p. 98; Alfred Goldberg, editor, A History of the United States Air Force, 1907-1957 (Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1957), pp. 101-02.

5. Wolk, pp. 166, 174.

6. Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, "Wasted Defense Billions," Air Force, December 1948, pp. 13-15.

7. Ibid.

8. Steven L. Reardon, The Formative Years, 1947-1950 (Washington: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1984), p. 395.

9. Futrell, p. 99.

10. Ibid., p. 95.

11. Ibid., p. 100.

12. Ibid.; Malcolm Muir, "An Announcement by the Publisher," Newsweek, 26 July 1948, p. 5. General Spaatz left Newsweek in November 1961.

13. Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953, revised edition (Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1983), p. 44.

14. Ibid., pp. 47-48. Also see General George Stratemeyer's Korean War Diary, Vol. II, USAF Historical Research Center (USAFHRC) 168.7018-16.

15. Ibid.; General William W. Momyer, Air Power in Three Wars (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 52-59; Colonel Thomas A. Cardwell III, Command Structure for Theater Warfare: The Quest for Unity of Command (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University Press, 1984), pp. 131-17. Also see "The Quest for Unity of Command" by Colonel Caldwell in the Air University Review, May-June 1984, pp. 25-29.

16. See note 15. Also see Wayne Thompson, draft chapter, "The Air War In Korea," Office of Air Force History, pp. 13-14; and Colonel Don Z. Zimmerman, "FEAF: Mission and Command Relationships," Air University Quarterly Review, Summer 1951, pp. 95-96.

17. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, pp. 147-52, 211-14; Momyer, pp. 59-62.

18. See note 17. Also see Stratemeyer's Diary, USAFHRC 168.7018-6; Letter, General Mark W. Clark, Chief of Army Field Forces to Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, subject: Tactical Air Support of Ground Forces, 13 September 1951, USAFHRC K168.15-43; and Lieutenant Colonel Pat Meid and Major James M. Yingling, U.S. Marine Operations in Korea, Vol. 5, Operations in West Korea (Washington: Historical Division, Hq U.S. Marine Corps, 1972), pp. 513-17.

19. General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, as told to Stanley Frank, "The Truth about our Air Power," Saturday Evening Post, 17 February 1951, pp. 20-21, 102-04. Institutional literature for this period is rich in material on the pros and cons of air doctrine for support of the ground battle. A sampling from the Air Force perspective may be found in Colonel Dale O. Smith, in collaboration with Major General John DeF.Barker, "Air Power Indivisible," Air University Quarterly Review, Fall 1950, pp. 5-18; Colonel Francis C. Gideon, "Command of the Tactical Air Force," Military Review, May 1951, pp. 3-8; and Dr. Albert F. Simpson, "Tactical Air Doctrine––Tunisia and Korea," Air University Quarterly Review, Summer 1951, pp. 17-19.

20. Ibid. Among those who expressed belief in the principle of air power indivisibility differently was General George C. Kenney, who said: "I do not think that an airplane should be considered as a tactical airplane and a strategic airplane; I think it is an airplane," Minutes, Fourth Meeting of the Air Board, 4 December 1946, p. 179.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.; Major General Orvil A. Anderson, Air War College Lecture, "Development of U.S. Strategic Air Doctrine, ETO WWII," 20 September 1951. General Anderson was a controversial officer who was suspended from his post as commandant in September 1950 for his reported advocacy of preventive war, but he was also an able and respected Air Force planner and teacher. His lectures on file at the USAF Historical Research Center offer some fascinating thoughts on air doctrine during World War II and the postwar period.

23. The so-called missile era following the Korean War was rife with roles and missions rivalry as the services vied for dwindling defense dollars under President Eisenhower's New Look policies. By far the most comprehensive record of Air Force thought during this period is in Futrell's monumental study, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine.

24. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1965), pp. 240, 244-53.

25. General Carl Spaatz, "Military Tides 'A Matter of Life or Death,'", Newsweek, 4 June 1956, pp. 24-25.

26. General Carl Spaatz, "Where We Went Wrong––A Plan for the Future," Newsweek, 30 December 1957, p. 19.

27. General Carl Spaatz, "Middle Way the Wise Way," Newsweek, 14 April 1958, p. 36; Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, pp. 287-88.

28. Roger J. Spiller, Not War But Like War: The American Intervention in Lebanon, Leavenworth Papers No. 3 (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute, January 1981), pp. 44-45; Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, pp. 288-89.

29. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, pp. 228-29, 232, 235-36, 303, and 310.

30. Robert F. Futrell, with the assistance of Martin Blumenson, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia: The Advisory Years to 1965 (Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1981), pp. 63-65.

31. Larry Booda, "McNamara Pushing USAF-Army Rivalry," Aviation Week and Space Technology, 14 January 1963, pp. 26-27; Robert A. Olson "Air Mobility for the Army," Military Affairs, Winter 1964-1965, pp. 163-72; Letter, Brigadier General Rollen H. Anthis, to General Jacob E. Smart, 25 November 1963, USAFHRC K526.131.

32. Letter, Major General J. H. Moore, Commander 2d Air Division to Colonel Oakley W. Baron, AWC, 28 January 1965, USAFHRC K526.161; General William W. Momyer, "Observations of the Vietnam War, July 1966-July 1968" (unpublished paper), November 1970, USAFHRC K740.131.

33. General William W. Momyer, "Observations," November 1970, USAFHRC K740.131.

34. Ibid.; Momyer, Air Power in Three Wars, pp. 81-82; Warren A. Trest, Single Manager for Air SVN (Project CHECO Report, 1 July 1968).

35. See note 34. For a discussion of B-52 operations in Southeast Asia and the relationship to air power indivisibility, see General Bennie L. Davis, "Indivisible Air Power," Air Force, March 1984, pp. 46-50.

36. See note 34.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. General Thomas D. White, "What's Wrong with Civil-Military Relations," Newsweek, 27 May 1963, p. 30.

41. General Thomas D. White, "The Air Force: Getting Down to New Business," Newsweek, 13 May 1963, p. 37.

42. Ibid.; White, Newsweek, 17 May l963.

43. White, Newsweek, 27 May 1963.

44. Thomas Evans, reported by Bruce van Voorst, "Questions and Reforms," Time, 14 April 1986, p. 25.

45. Ibid.

46. White, Newsweek, 27 May l963.

47. General David C. Jones, "Why the Joint Chiefs of Staff Must Change," Armed Forces Journal International, March 1982, pp. 62-72.

48. Bill Keller, New York Times writer, "Military Reforms Proposed," [Montgomery, Alabama] Advertiser, 22 January 1985, pp. IA, 5A; Editorial, "Military under Fire," Advertiser, 24 October 1985, p. 3E; William V. Kennedy, "Is the United States Creating a 'Prussian General Staff'?" Christian Science Monitor, 2 January 1986, p. 15; John H. Cushman, Jr., "Senate Approves Military Changes," New York Times, 8 May 1986, p. 1.

49. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, p. 87. Dr. Futrell notes that this definition was an extrapolation from Mahan's classic one on sea power.

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