American Airpower Comes of Age

AMERICAN AIRPOWER COMES OF AGE
8. Hap to Bruce Arnold, 10 March 1945, Henry H. Arnold Personal
Papers, Arnold Ranch, Sonoma, Calif., hereinafter cited as APR.
9. Arnold to Mary Streett, wife of Maj Gen St. Clair Streett, n. d., c. 15
March 1945, copy in possession of editor.
10. Ibid.
11. Arnold to Marshall, 19 March 1945, MPMS. For speculation among
AAF officers closely associated with Hap and his office in the Pentagon while
Arnold was abroad that there would be a new AAF CG who would be Spaatz,
see James Gould Cozzens, A Time of War: Air Force Diaries and Pentagon
Memos, 1943–1945, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli (Columbia, S.C.: Bruccoli
Clark, 1984), diary entries for 25 and 27 April 1945, 274, 281. The careers
of the two four-star generals then serving in Europe as possible successors
to Arnold, Spaatz, and McNarney, had many similarities. Six and eight years
respectively younger than Arnold, McNarney graduated from West Point a
year after Spaatz and they both became pilots. Both served in France during
World War I where Spaatz was credited with shooting down three German
Fokkers. In the postwar period, they both worked under Arnold in California
and attended the requisite staff schools before being assigned to the
General Headquarters Air Force. Both had been sent by Hap as observers of
the air war over Britain before Pearl Harbor. After the US entered the war,
Spaatz saw much more extensive combat command, McNarney not arriving
overseas until October 1944, two and one-half years after Spaatz. Meanwhile,
McNarney had served in positions of increasing responsibility within
the War Department, representing the AAF successfully at high-level conferences
when illness or travel precluded Arnold’s participation. Hap’s rapport
with Spaatz was much warmer, including a closeness between their two
families, and the Hap–Tooey correspondence evinces a relaxed, confident
candor as opposed to the stiffer, essentially businesslike but not unfriendly
communications with McNarney. Although McNarney was viewed more as a
headquarters staff officer than an active combat commander, he was much
more familiar with the wartime Washington environment, its protocol and
bureaucracy, much of which was appreciated but essentially disdained by
the operationally oriented Spaatz. Arnold’s choice of Tooey as the strategic
air force commander in the Pacific when the war in Europe ended reflected
his complete confidence in this airman. It is difficult to conclude other than
Arnold’s choice at the time would have been Spaatz, although they were
both promoted to four-star rank within days of one another in March 1945
while Arnold recuperated in Florida. Hap’s interest in Spaatz becoming his
successor was illustrated in his conversation with Eisenhower at Potsdam
on 20 July. According to his recollection, Hap “wanted to discuss with him
whom he would like” since he considered that Ike would “undoubtedly” succeed
Marshall. The result was that it “was decided then and there that General
Spaatz would take my place.” H. H. Arnold, General of the Air Force,
Global Mission (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 587.
12. Hap to daughter Lois Snowden, 22 February 1945, AP; and Arnold to
Marshall, 22 March 1945, MPMS.
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