Page:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu/17

 grace―strategic bombing directly against the vital centers of a nation's war-making capability.

American airmen came back from France with a unique perspective on modern war. Josiah Rowe, of the 147th Aero Squadron, wrote of the World War I battlefield as "a barren waste, broken only by shell holes, trenches and barbed wire, with not one living thing in sight." He was "glad to get away from such gruesome scenes" by climbing into the sky in his airplane. Billy Mitchell wrote that the Allies could cross the front lines "in a few minutes" in their aircraft, whereas "the armies were locked in the struggle, immovable, powerless to advance, for three years.... It looked as though the war would go on indefinitely until either the airplanes brought [it to an end] or the contending nations dropped from sheer exhaustion."

American airmen knew that aircraft lacked the range, speed, and reliability for strategic bombing, but they had faith that technology could overcome any restrictions. They also knew the importance of concentrating on basic objectives such as winning air superiority or interdicting the front, both of which, they believed, required an independent air force. They had caught tantalizing glimpses of what strategic bombing could do to an enemy's industrial centers. They saw the effectiveness of offense and the futility of defense against a determined aerial assault.

For these and other servicemen, aircraft seemed the answer to the slaughter of trench warfare. German airmen soon envisioned air power as mobile artillery accompanying fast-moving armored units (blitzkrieg warfare). American airmen, however, saw air power as an independent strategic force that could bring an enemy nation to its knees. Throughout history, an attacking army fought its way through a defending army to get to its enemy's vital centers. Strategic bombers would fly over the army to strike at the enemy's heart. Air leaders such as Billy Mitchell believed that with aircraft future wars would be shorter and less bloody.

During World War I America's air force had not coalesced. Afterwards it had to be built in an atmosphere of antiwar fervor and congressional stinginess. In addition, the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, viewing the air force as their auxiliary arms and a supporting weapon, placed obstacles in the way of its further development. The President's Aircraft Board, better known as the Morrow Board for its chairman, the banker Dwight Morrow, called by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925 to evaluate the Air Service's call for independence, reinforced this view: "The next war may well start in the air but in all probability will wind up, as the last war did, in the mud." Evolving technology and irrepressible flyers, however, drove the Air Service in a different direction. 12