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GHQ Air Force Headquarters Chapter XVI GHQ Air Force Headquarters The history of General Headquarters Air Force went back at least to 1917 and the men who drew the first plans for the American Expeditionary Force. They conceived aviation as having two principal functions-tactical and strategic. Tactical air units worked with ground units, furnishing direct support. Strategic units operated on their own, beyond the battlezone. William Mitchell, Edgar S. Gorrell, Benjamin D. Foulois, and other AEF members developed plans for an air force to fly strategic missions against Germany. Pershing balked at the idea of independent operations but approved creation of a strategic air force under control of General Headquarters AEF. This air force was never formed, since the war ended before aircraft for strategic operations came on the scene.’ The postwar organization the U.S. Army adopted in 1920 provided a GHQ Reserve which included aviation to be used as a centrally controlled strike force and for reconnaissance. The Lassiter Board in 1923 suggested an air force for combat operations and special missions under the control of General Headquarters. Army regulations the following year authorized a GHQ Air Force in time of war. Mobilization plans in the mid-1920s allotted attack, pursuit, and observation aviation to armies, and observation units to army corps, for direct support of ground forces. They also called for a GHQ Air Force of 5,200 officers, 46,000 enlisted men, and 2,300 airplanes. Under the command of an air officer who reported to the commander in chief in the field, the GHQ Air Force would further the commander in chiefs strategic and tactical plans. It 283 AVIATION IN THE U.S. ARMY would operate against enemy air, ground, or naval forces in both direct and indirect support of ground forces.’ In peacetime, during the 1920s and early 1930s GHQ Air Force existed solely as a vague “something” that supposedly would come into being when the Army took the field for defense of the United States. Corps area and department commanders controlled the training and operations of Air Corps tactical units designated to form the nucleus of GHQ Air Force in an emergency. The Chief of Air Corps commanded combat units only for some particular demonstration, exercise, or maneuver authorized by the War Department. With War Department approval, the Air Corps temporarily established an air division for maneuvers in 1931, that being the closest it came to exercising GHQ Air Force. Mitchell and Foulois had long wanted an air force that was separate from and not controlled by the Army. By the early 1930s however, the attitude of General Foulois and many Air Corps officers was changing. They were discouraged by the repeated failures to secure an independent air force, and seemed inclined to accept, as an interim arrangement, a GHQ Air Force as better than nothing. At the same time, the attitude of the General Staff and several high-ranking officers of other Army branches was gradually growing more favorable toward aviation. A number of these ofIicers felt that creation of a GHQ Air Force might reduce agitation for a separate service. The trend ran toward putting all combat units into GHQ Air Force and assigning just observation aircraft to divisions, corps, and armies. By early 1932, the War Plans Division of the General Staff was describing GHQ Air Force as containing all bombardment, attack, and pursuit, plus some observation.3 This is what General Patrick had advocated in 1923 but the Lassiter Board had rejected. A series of events in the early 1930s (related in this and later chapters) led to the formation of the headquarters of GHQ Air Force. After assignment of air units to GHQ Air Force, it became a component of the Regular Army. Coastal Defense Both the Air Corps and the General Staff regarded coastal defense as one of the chief functions of GHQ Air Force. But for years the Army and Navy quarreled over the role of each in defending the nation’s sea frontier. Claiming sole responsibility for operating land-based aircraft for coastal defense, the Air Corps opposed the Navy’s attempts to develop air stations and land-based planes for the same purpose. Inclusion of torpedo planes in the Navy’s program for Panama and Hawaii violated an Army-Navy agreement limiting the Navy to scouting and patrol planes. From the Navy’s disingenuous explanation, the Army understood the planes in the Navy’s 284 GHQ AIR FORCE HEADQUARTERS program were of the scouting or patrol type, or of the so-called “three- purpose” type normally used for scouting and patrol but which might be used incidentally for bombing. Examining the Army’s and Navy’s five-year programs, the Joint Army and Navy Board reported on August 16, 1928, that it found no duplication. Late the following year, the General Staff discovered the Navy’s program contained torpedo and bombing as well as scouting and patrol aircraft for Panama and Hawaii. The General Staff believed the matter serious enough to require resolution by the President4 On February 25, 1930, Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley requested President Hoover to halt the Navy’s procurement of land-based aircraft and development of air stations. The Navy told the President the Joint Board had already settled the matter. Hurley sent a second letter to the White House, and the Navy followed with another in which Secretary Charles Francis Adams said he had met with Hurley but could not resolve the “alleged dispute.” Hurley continued to urge the President to restrain the Navy, while Adams asked the President to order the War Department to accept the Joint Board’s decision.5 The matter still wanted resolution when Gen. Douglas MacArthur became Chief of Staff in November 1930. On January 9, 1931, he and Adm. William V. Pratt, Chief of Naval Operations, reached agreement on employment of aircraft. The general said: The naval air forces will be based on the fleet and move with it as an important element in performing the essential missions of the forces afloat. The Army air forces will be land based and employed as an element of the Army in carrying out its mission of defending the coasts, both in the homeland and in overseas possessions.6 MacArthur thought this assured the fleet “absolute freedom of action with no responsibility for coast defense.” Such division of duties, he continued, “enables the air component of each service to proceed with its own planning, training, and procurement activities with little danger of duplicating those of its sister service.” He counted this great progress against seemingly insupera- ble difficulties.’ Preparing for coastal defense, the Air Corps sought permission to set up an Aerial Coast Defense School at Langley Field. This surprised General Staff members for they “supposed that this training was already being accomplished throughout the Air Corps.“’ After MacArthur talked with Foulois, the Air Corps received orders to begin instruction without delay. Turning down the request for a special school, the War Department directed that coastal defense be part of regular Air Corps training. At the same time, the War Department said experimental work and research would be required to develop instruments and training manuals.’ Taking advantage of the opening, General Foulois formed a Frontier Defense Research Unit at Bolling Field. It consisted of Capt. Lawrence J. Carr, 1st Lt. Glen C. Jamison, 2d Lt. Norris B. Harbold, and ten enlisted men. Although concerned with determining requirements for equipment, personnel, and 285 AVIATION IN THE U.S. ARMY Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur (left) seeks agreement with Adm. William V. Pratt (right), Chief of Naval Operations, over which service is responsible for coastal defense. methods, the unit devoted a great deal of effort to problems of instrument flying and navigation. Unless proficient in navigation, Army flyers could not carry out the long overwater flights incident to coastal defense. Expert help appeared in the person of Harold Gatty, the Australian navigator on Wiley Post’s around-the-world flight in the Winnie Mae. Hired by the Air Corps on the recommendation of 1st Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger, Gatty had been giving a course in dead reckoning in the Office of the Chief of Air Corps. Now he helped the Frontier Defense Research Unit develop and test instruments and methods.” As an outgrowth of this, the Air Corps in October 1933 formed units at Langley Field, Virginia, and Rockwell Field, California, to teach navigation and instrument flying. Planning to create an air force for coastal defense, the Air Corps met rebuff from the General Staff. Since planning affected the Navy as well as other branches of the Army, the staff would handle it, and the Air Corps could collaborate when asked.” General Foulois nonetheless went ahead with plans and took them to the Harbor Defense Board, on which he sat.” His “Plan for Defense of Our Seacoast Frontiers” conceived a Frontier Air Defense Command for defense against hostile ships and aircraft. Operating under General Headquarters, the command comprised a Frontier Air Patrol and a Frontier Air Force. The plan divided the nation’s sea frontier into six frontier air defense zones, some with two or more frontier air defense regions. The patrol operated long-range airplanes, seaplanes, amphibians, and airships from “amphibidromes” furnished with servicing facilities, docks, ramps, and 286 GHQ AIR FORCE HEADQUARTERS communications. So far as possible, the patrol used commercial facilities. Its aircraft carried radio, navigation equipment, plotting facilities, arms for self defense, and bombs for attacking submarines and destroyers. Sighting the enemy, the patrol craft reported location, time, speed, and course to shore stations for communication to the zone commander.
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