American Airpower Comes of Age

PARIS, CANNES, ITALY, NORTH AFRICA, SOUTH AMERICA
to carry on was clear in his diary entry of 29 April. He cabled
Chief of Staff Marshall from Marrakesh that he was “back in
the ring and would like to be notified” when the CCS was going
to have a meeting so that I could change my itinerary. None
could have predicted that, within three months of Arnold’s
return to the Pentagon from Europe, a second atomic bomb
would have been dropped on Japan and World War II was at
an end. But not before Hap made his second wartime trip to
the Pacific and attended a final military/diplomatic conference
in Europe.
Notes
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Eisenhower Diaries, ed. Robert H. Ferrell
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1981), 135.
2. Arnold to Spaatz, 14 January 1945, Gen Henry Harley Arnold Papers,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C., hereinafter
cited as AP.
3. Spaatz to Arnold, 5 February 1945, Gen Carl Andrew Spaatz Papers,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.
4. Thomas M. Coffey, Hap: The Story of the U.S. Air Force and the Man
Who Built It: General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold (New York: Viking Press, 1982),
359.
5. Giles to Eaker, 2 February 1945, Gen Ira C. Eaker Papers, Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.
6. Kuter to Arnold, 28 January 1945, AP.
7. The quotes are from Maj James Parton’s letter to his family, 31 March
1945, Maj James Parton Papers, Harvard University Library, Cambridge,
Mass. The recommendation that Eaker return as Arnold’s deputy appears to
have been made originally by Marshall and quickly concurred in by Hap
while the latter recuperated in Florida; Marshall to Arnold, 15 March; Arnold
to Marshall, 19 March 1945, George C. Marshall Papers, George C. Marshall
Research Library, Lexington, Va., hereinafter cited as MPMS. In a note that
probably came close to an apology, the AAF chief wrote Eaker three months
after the latter had come to Washington that he realized “fully the disappointment
which you felt” when “on the threshold of victory, you were forced
to lay down command . . . the development of which you made so tremendous
a contribution” to undertake a position in Washington “never sought
by any airmen . . . of your experience”; Arnold to Eaker, 8 June 1945, AP. It
is not unreasonable to speculate that Hap may have had some pangs of conscience
from having concurred in this new assignment as well as his role in
the reassignment of Eaker as Eighth Air Force commander in December
1943 covered in vol. 1, chap. 5.
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