CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Before the Bar of Public Opinion
The Finletter Board, convened by the President under date of July 18, 1947, held extensive hearings and on December 30, 1947, submitted its report, “Survival in the Air Age.” Like the Morrow Board before it, the Board comprised able and distinguished men, including besides its chairman, Mr. Finletter, its vice-chairman, George P. Baker, and members, Palmer Hoyt, John A. McCone, and Arthur D. Whiteside. Prior to the Board’s being convened, a step of far-reaching importance had been taken—the reorganization of the armed forces and the establishment of the Department of Defense, under the able leadership of James V. Forrestal.
Prior to this step, the Aircraft Industries Association had inaugurated an annual conference of its board of governors held in Williamsburg, Virginia, to provide a forum for the interchange of ideas among the representatives of industry and those of government and military services concerned with aeronautics, with a view to acquainting industry and government with each other’s problems and responsibilities and to aid in finding solutions to these problems. At the first conference in 1946, it developed that the Army and Navy had become concerned over their faulty public relations and wanted advice and assistance.
Of course their unfavorable press had resulted from the ancient feud still being carried on in the press by Army and Navy over the problem of “integration” and “unification.” Behind its façade, the battle was still the same jurisdictional dispute that had agitated Admiral Moffett and General Mitchell back in the early ’twenties. From the industry point of view, the dogfight tended to neutralize our efforts to develop a public understanding of air power in its broad aspects, and the board of governors now asked me to confer with Army, Navy, and Air Force with a view to relieving the situation.
Since the industry had always refrained from participation in the old feud, this mission posed a problem. To me, the arguments against the organization of a separate air force had always outweighed those for it, but I now realized that I had been influenced against the project by the Army’s insistence on trying to grab off naval aviation. The record of what had happened in England under the Air Ministry had always stood out in my mind. But now, with commercial air transport coming of age, and with the brilliant record of military and naval air transport in the war, I began to see the problem in a different light. Air transport had opened up a new frontier. If the mission of the ground forces was the defense of the land frontier, and the mission of the seaborne forces was the defense of the sea frontier, then, logically, the mission of the air force must be the defense of the air frontier. The key to the problem was the advent of commercial air transport.
Pursuing this idea further, I came to the conclusion that our thinking had been confused by two unsound concepts. First, we had tended to organize the military on the basis of types of weapons or vehicles, and second, we had looked at the airplane as a weapon instead of a vehicle. Clearly, if the ground, sea, and air forces were to be held responsible for the defense of their frontiers, then each must have the implements essential to the discharge of that responsibility, and must have full authority over their design, development, and use. The ground, sea, and air forces must each have the aircraft necessary to the discharge of their responsibilities. The air is an ocean that gives uninterrupted access to every corner of the land and every reach of the sea. The air force is charged with responsibility for keeping the airlanes open to aerial commerce and should be provided with the ground or sea transport necessary to that job, but by the same token the ground and sea forces must develop and control all the instruments they require to perform their functions. And aside from the sound basis for this concept that lies in logic, the record is clear that it is equally sound in practice.
With this idea clarified in my own mind, I called on Vice Adm. de Witt C. Ramsey, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, and later on Gen. Carl Spaatz, Commander, United States Army Air Force, to sound them out on this concept as a solution to the conflict. In the Navy, Vice Adm. Forrest Sherman, when called in by Admiral Ramsey, pointed out that this was the traditional position of the Navy but that they had been forced to fight to retain their own aviation. However, Vice Adm. Arthur Radford, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air, looked at the matter somewhat differently. He saw the Naval Air Force as a mobile air force, one, to quote Admiral Moffett, “able to go anywhere on the backs of the fleet.” The Army Air Force, anchored as it was, to the ground, was less mobile. From the Army’s point of view, the vulnerability of the carrier to submarine attack compromised its usefulness. And here, I found, lay the nubbin of a great conflict of opinion. For my part, this difference of opinion was not one to be resolved on theoretical grounds alone. Our whole experience showed how dangerous it was to take decisions, especially those involving the national security, on the basis of prejudice or partisanship. The only safe course was to pursue both developments with an open mind and be ready to adapt either or both in support of national policy.
General Spaatz, after our interesting discussion, suggested that I call on Mr. Stuart Symington, Assistant Secretary of War for Air, and lay these ideas before him, in the hope of contributing something to the solution of the ancient dispute. I did so, but was disappointed. Mr. Symington, recalling my old Navy background, apparently recognized in me a trojan horse, a partisan bent on dividing the Army and its Air Force so that the Navy might defeat both in detail. Wholly unprepared for this novel reception, I was forced to retire in disorder. As time passed, however, it became clear that my one-man foray in the role of interservice peacemaking had not been without result. After my visit with “Duke” Ramsey, Secretary Forrestal abandoned his opposition to autonomy for the Air Force and supported reorganization along lines recommended to him by Ferdinand Eberstadt. That my visit may have helped tilt the scales in favor of unification is indicated in a letter to me from Jim Forrestal dated August 4, 1947, in which he said, “Your thinking and mine has had an evolution which has been more or less in phase.”
A few months later, prior to the publication of the report of the Finletter Board, I discussed with the secretary some of the problems he faced in his effort to get agreement among the military with respect to a long-term program for aircraft procurement, development, and research. He expressed deep concern over the implications of the many major decisions he was called on to make in areas where no precedent or experience existed and asked me if I were in a position to help him.
To men like Jim Forrestal who understood the principles of war, catch phrases like “strategic bombing” and “unification” aroused deep concern. The first phrase overemphasized that doubtful tactic of indiscriminate bombing of nonmilitary objectives, and obscured the decisive character of such real strategic bombing as the assault on the Ploesti oil fields which brought German transport to a clanking halt. The second phrase screened a dangerous drift toward such a national general staff as had cost Germany two wars. Earnest students, fearing a dominant Air Force, leaned toward the opposite idea that the Ground Forces, like the Navy, must control its own air arm. Civilians like myself hoped to see such fundamental questions of national policy resolved by an informed public opinion through an air policy commission, but such was not to be. What might have been a decisive moment in history proved but another victory for the Douhet doctrine.