This made it necessary for me to relinquish the presidency of my company and accept the chairmanship of the board of governors of our trade association. The first step was to decide on an industry policy and obtain agreement on a program. Out of the history of aviation I drew the analogy between sea power and air power and formulated a program of peace through air power. We took for our objective the appointment of a new Presidential advisory commission to hear testimony in public and recommend a new air policy revised to conform with technological developments. As the basis for our operations we covenanted to cooperate with one another in the public interest in matters pertaining to policy but to continue to compete vigorously in our business operations.
In an effort to crystallize aeronautic opinion, I published a book called Air Power for Peace. This study, an objective technical treatise, patterned on Adm. A. T. Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History, disclosed that, despite spectacular war performances by Army and Navy air forces, the Mahan doctrine still prevailed: victory had again rested with those who had secured to themselves—and denied to their enemies—freedom of communication by sea. No overseas assault could have been mounted nor could our own supply lines have been secured without first subduing German submarines in the Atlantic and sweeping Japanese sea power from the Pacific. Yet in both actions an important new strategic factor had developed: command of the air over the sea had become vital to command of the sea itself. It was the carrier task forces that had proved to be the decisive instruments in both oceans. Furthermore, brilliant, though limited, success by military air transports had disclosed that air power was an integration of air force, air transport, aircraft production, and in fact all that went to make us strong in the air. Yet, until air transport could assume the full burden of overseas trade, victory in war and prosperity in peace must still rest with him who is strong enough—and wise enough—to retain command of the sea. Russia’s submarine fleet later gave added strength to this conclusion.
Meanwhile, as spokesman for the aircraft manufacturers, I addressed organizations of all kinds, seeking to interest the molders of public opinion in the air power problem. Our association and our members participated in a nationwide program of public information. The key to our effort was our endeavor to promote the public interest as the means of serving our own enlightened self-interest.
Yet for all our effort, we were unable to get full cooperation from the two other elements of integrated air power, air transport and the armed forces. The Army Air Force, fighting for its autonomy, tangled with naval aviation in a jurisdictional dispute. The airline transport operators, jockeying for individual advantage under the policy of so-called “reasonable regulation,” split wide open on such questions as “the chosen instrument.” Government agencies, fearful of the possible loss of their prerogatives, gave less than enthusiastic support to our plea for a public policy-forming board. The appointment of the commission therefore lagged, while both airline transport and aircraft manufacturing suffered crippling losses. Convinced that this situation called for a new book on aviation, a sort of bible of air-power, or at least its gospel, I decided to write Slipstream. In December, 1946, in order to gain freedom to express my personal points of view without compromising my company, I resigned from United Aircraft.
While it was Mahan, the historian, who first revealed to the world the decisive influence of sea power upon history, it was Richard Hakluyt, author of The English Voyages, who inspired Englishmen to exploit sea power to their commercial advantage. By collecting the journals of the world’s leading merchants and the adventure narratives of its greatest navigators, and by editing them so as both to entertain his readers and stimulate them to seek their fortunes on the high seas, he influenced the course of history. There are no such journals and narratives of contemporary aviation. Although the whole record is comprised in the lifetimes of a single generation of still-active men so that no protracted research is needed to reveal the intimate background, much of it already tends to become dim, even in the minds of men who wrote the record. Unless it be set down now it may be forever lost, and that would be a pity, for the fantastic story holds lessons that apply equally well to other technological developments such as atomic energy. In undertaking to set forth the intimate narrative of events which, in the last quarter century, have helped shape the destiny of American aviation, I am impelled to proceed partly because of deep convictions and partly because my unusually varied experience gives me a somewhat broader point of view from which to judge the impact of events.
While engaged on this task, I was disturbed to note that matters were going from bad to worse. In the summer of 1948, however, help came from an unexpected source. The Russians imposed their blockade on Berlin. The American public, aroused now to the need for preserving American air power, clamored for action. The Republican Congress voted a Congressional Aviation Policy Board; President Truman countered with his own Air Policy Commission. Before this latter organization, known as the “Finletter Board,” the aircraft manufacturers presented a well-prepared case. The airline transport operators, having suffered disastrous losses, were demoralized almost to the point where they were willing to accept a subsidy such as that long paid to the merchant marine. The Air Force, having earlier won its autonomy, made a vigorous plea for funds to provide a strong strategic air force.
Under the circumstances, the Finletter Board, whose report was published under the title, “Survival in the Air Age,” naturally gave priority to the military aspects of aviation. The Congressional Aviation Policy Board supported a long list of recommendations made by the Finletter Board and recommended legislative action, little of which has been forthcoming. But military appropriations, easily the immediate answer to the air power problem, were passed largely because the public had been convinced that this country must maintain a technically superior aircraft-manufacturing establishment under private management. Thanks to these appropriations, the aircraft industry has survived the ordeal of reconversion.
Meanwhile, bureaucratic muddling had all but wrecked the airline transport industry when, in the summer of 1949, Senator Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado, chairman of the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, commenced hearings to inquire into its ills. Out of the welter of testimony before this committee—evidence replete with inconsistencies and strongly flavored by self-interest—someone familiar with the intimate history of aviation could crystallize his convictions as to what must be done to make American air power a force for peace. Believing that these convictions should be expressed, even though they might prove distasteful to some of the customers of the aircraft manufacturers, and desiring to avoid embarrassment to my former associates, I resigned the chairmanship of the board of governors of the Aircraft Industries Association and severed my last connection with the industry. Now, I should at least be able to view the whole subject of air power objectively.
Out of the twisting and turning of our slipstream, air policy is revealed, not as so many believe, as a code book of detailed administrative procedures, but as a course of public conduct. It is no technical complexity of materials, money, management, or machines, but rather a simple expression of the spirit of men, one that can be stated in words of one syllable, “Air Power For Peace.”