Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

LESSONS BEFORE WORLD WAR I1
keeping air power more closely aligned with naval and ground force needs.
In America, Maj. William C. Sherman, the Air Service instructor at the
Army’s Command and General Staff College, took a more pragmatic stance
than Mitchell. He prepared a War Department pamphlet in 1926 concerning
fundamental principles for Air Service employment and published his
thoughts commercially in a book entitled Air Warfare. “The organization
and training of all air units is based on the fundamental doctrine that their
mission is to aid the ground forces to gain decisive success,” he noted in
the War Department pamphlet. Privately, he expanded upon Mitchell’s theories
by suggesting that the idea of unescorted bombers reaching their targets
unscathed was fallacious, and that pursuit aviation “is in fact, the very
backbone of the air force.” He advocated long-range pursuit escort of
bombers beyond Mitchell’s initial air superiority battle. Such diversity of
thinking reflected fruitful debate in air training schools around the world
and especially at the U.S. Army Air Service Field Officers’ School (subsequently
called the Air Corps Tactical
The theorists focused upon the future. But the present realities of air
power in the 1920s were something quite different. The Chief of the U.S.
Army Air Service, for example, noted in 1923 that while the British might
have 5,000 aircraft, the French some 3,000, and even the Italians about
1,000 machines, most of them were war relics. Including some 267 “aircraft
of modern design” delivered to the U.S. Army and Navy since 1922, he
anticipated that American aviators could realistically expect no more than
289 serviceable aircraft for the two services by mid-1926. This mighi be
less than 20 percent of the requirement, he admitted, but neither cost-conscious
legislators nor suspicious Army and Navy officers would approve
any more than that. Army leadership, at least, permitted the Air Service to
attain comparable status with infantry, cavalry, and artillery branches in
the 1926 Air Corps Act. But, in the opinion of Lt. Laurence S. Kuter, the
service’s squadrons at this time “were more flying clubs or training units
than combat organizations.”27
The primacy of pursuit over bombardment aviation remained constant
until the mid-twenties. This was due in part to pursuit planes being more
advanced technologically. However, it did not prevent aviators from speculating
about the future of strategic air power. They began to distinguish
between basic functions of an “air force” as compared to an “air service.”
Capt. Carl Spatz (later, Spaatz) told one civilian correspondent in 1926 that
“air service” formed that part of aviation that worked directly with and in
conjunction with ground troops, and he cited observation as his example.
An “air force” was that part of aviation capable of independent action
without regard to the land battle and included pursuit, bombardment, and
attack aviation. “These branches of aviation strike independently at enemy
centers such as cities, factories, railroad yards, docks, etc. ,” he explained,
“without regard to location or operation of ground troops.” In other words,
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