battle between the Army and the Navy when it came to aviation
There was a battle between the Army and the Navy when it came to aviation. Many perceived aviation as an addition to what was currently in operation in the Army and the Navy. There were a select few who believed that the airplane would take the place of the battlefleet. The United States needed to be ready for any eventualities, and aviation was going to put the country in a better position in preparation for another war if necessary.
The military started buying planes early in the 1900s because they acknowledged the potential use of aviation in the battlefield (The Big Picture: Fifty years of aviation, 2008). The military used its personnel to tests the planes and improvised the airplanes by adding bombs and machine guns (The Big Picture: Fifty years of aviation, 2008). The use of airplanes saw the birth of the aeronautical engineering profession and the development of helicopters during that period (The Big Picture: Fifty years of aviation, 2008).
Aviation was introduced to the public and the government in 1919. In the same year, the Joint Board of Aeronautics advised the government and the Army on the effectiveness of air operations in land and sea campaigns but argued that airpower would not win wars (Millett et al., 2012). From 1926 General William Mitchell was the leader of the aviation campaign for the Army (Millett et al., 2012). Mitchell challenged the statement from The Joint Board of Aeronautics when he claimed that airplanes would replace the battlefleet as the ultimate weapon of coastal defense (Millett et al., 2012).
Internal power struggles were developing between the Army and Navy because usually, all of the military funds would go to the land army with no money going to the development of aviation (Millett et al., 2012). At the time, Aviation was expensive, and its development was not cheap either (Millett et al., 2012). In 1920 Mitchell managed to convince the Navy to allow the Army to participate in the test programs that would assess the probability of airplanes to replace the battlefleet. However, they thought the idea was an exaggeration (Millett et al., 2012).
The bombing tests began in 1921 off the Chesapeake Bay, which saw Mitchell’s pilots drop 1,000 and 2,000-pound bombs on and around an old German battleship (Millett et al., 2012). Mitchell released the tests information to the press with some admirals discrediting his information, arguing that any bomb would sink an anchored, undefended battleship (Millett et al., 2012). I think the doubters found it hard to agree with the fact that Mitchell was right about airplanes replacing battlefleet.
Finally, between 1925 and 1926, military aviation began on a stable course for success and was later changed to Air Corps after Congress passed the Air Corps Act in 1926 (Millett et al., 2012). The Air Corps Act stipulated that naval graduates received mandatory aviation training, which increased the acceptance of aviation in the Navy (Millett et al., 2012). It was a struggle to convince everyone that aviation was effective in war, but once it was established, it became and still is a critical component of the military.
References
Millett, A. R., Maslowski, P., & Feis, W. B. (2012). For the common defense: a military history
of the United States from 1607 to 2012. New York: Free Press.
The Big Picture: Fifty years of aviation [Video file]. (2008). Retrieved June 6, 2017, from
https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=273866&xtid=45030