Page:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu/24

 AF) on March 1, 1935. This first American "named" air force, under the command of Brigadier General Frank Andrews and headquartered at Langley Field in Virginia, controlled all offensive aviation in the nine corps areas of the United States, including organization, training, and operations. Powerful opponents in the Army separated the GHQAF from the Air Corps under Major General Westover, in charge of individual training, procurement, doctrine, and supply. The Air Corps remained a combatant arm of the Army, while the GHQAF came under the Chief of Staff in peacetime and the commander of field forces in wartime. The two air components remained divided until March 1, 1939, when the GHQAF came under the control of the Chief of Air Corps.

The MacArthur-Pratt agreement of 1931 made the Air Corps responsible for short-range coastal defense and Army operations on land, but left the Navy as America's offensive force on the sea. Two developments changed this division of responsibility. First, advances in aviation technology made restrictions to short-range operations nonsensical, as when three B-17s intercepted the Italian liner Rex in the Atlantic over 700 miles from America's shores in 1937. Still, the Army continued buying, for the most part, short-range tactical aircraft, including the twin-engine B-18, to support ground operations. Second, Adolf Hitler's successful use of air power as a threat in the Sudetenland-Czechoslovakia crisis of 1938 convinced President Franklin Roosevelt that the United States needed a large air force "with which to impress Germany," and ordered the acquisition of 10,000 aircraft (later 5,500) when Congress appropriated $300 million for the buildup.