Army Air Corps struggled to attain the resources and independence necessary to make its concept of decisive airpower a reality.
6 The Interwar Periodĭuring the interwar period, the U.S. Two of his closest aides, Kenneth Walker and Robert Olds, would go on to integrate his thoughts on bombing and his forceful approach into their work at the Air Corps Tactic al School. 5 As America’s first true airpower theorist, Mitchell and his ideas influenced generations of airmen, especially those of the interwar period and World War II. 4 Within the Army, Mitchell also argued influentially for the division of the Air Service into strategic and tactical forces-and that the strategic force would affect the war’s outcome more than any other combat arms branch. 3 His public and insubordinate crusade made an impact on popular opinion and the government, but it eventually cost him his career. He raised the public profile and expectations of military airpower in the United States, despite deep institutional resistance in the U.S. 2 Called a “crusader for airpower” by one biographer, Brigadier General Mitchell became an unusually political Airman after the war. Most famously in the United States, Billy Mitchell cemented his reputation as an early airpower leader, and his own belief that airpower would decide future wars, while commanding more than 1,400 Allied aircraft at St. World War I also gave many of the Airmen who would drive interwar airpower development their first formative experiences with combat aviation. Nevertheless, the huge leaps forward in airpower driven by the demands of the war cleared paths for most modern functions of military aviation, including reconnaissance, transport, counter-air, interdiction, and of course, strategic bombing. While aerial battles and bombardments captured worldwide attention, airpower did not exert a determinative influence on the course of the war. Despite tribulations and losses, Airmen adapted and persevered to achieve many operational successes over the course of the war. World War Iĭuring World War I, airpower was new.
Despite the broad contributions of airpower in World War I, World War II, and the smaller hot wars within the Cold War, from the 1920s until at least the 1970s the Air Force continued to cling to an early vision of airpower that promised decisive victory through strateg ic bombing. The Air Force transitioned from war to war following a similar pattern. By focusing instead on strategic bombing as the primary purpose of airpower, Airmen and airpower theorists unnecessarily channelized American airpower thought.
The Air Force in its first 50 years would have benefited from developing and refining the great variety of capabilities that airpower offered.
The inadequacy of Air Force ideas and equipment at the outset of several successive wars speaks to a need for education and innovation, rather than indoctrination and dogma. These adaptations in wartime yielded varying degrees of success, depending on the enemy’s capabilities, the war’s particular character, and the abilities and will of the Airmen themselves. As a result, wartime Airmen adapted equipment designed for strategic bombing to a variety of other roles, or persevered with old equipment while the Service developed and fielded new technology. Yet whenever an actual shooting war broke out, the United States called upon Airmen to do far more than just strategic bombing, while the results of strategic bombing were often ambiguous at best. This narrow focus occurred most obviously during peacetime, as strategic bombing in one form or another represented the most cost-effective means of deterring threats to the homeland, and the most decisive means to defeat enemy states if necessary. From the early days of airpower to the Cold War, a variety of geopolitical, domestic, and institutional factors led influential American Airmen to focus narrowly on the idea of strategic bombing.