Citizen Airmen

565 Pages·2003·10.69 MB·English

by  Gerald T. Cantwell

&en A r m e n
1946-1 994
Gerald T. Cantwell
AIR
PROGRAM
1997
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationD ata
Cantwell, Gerald T., d. 1994.
Citizen airmen : a history of the Air Force Reserve, 1946-1994 /
Gerald T. Cantwell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. United States. Air Force Reserve-History. I. Title.
UG853.C36 1997 95-44624
359.4’1 37’0973-DC20 CIP
The Air Force Reserve received its first F-16s (shown being refueled,
front cover) in January 1984. The C-5 (top image, back cover) came
into the Reserve’s strategic airlift force in December 1984; C-141s
(middle image, back cover) came in July 1986. Tactical airlift groups
obtained C-130s (lower left, back cover) in this same Total Force
period of the 1980s. All aircraft images are from the photograph col-
lection maintained by the 1l th Communications Squadron, Andrews
AFB, Maryland.
For sale by the US. Government Printing Oftice
Superintendent of Documents, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-9328
ISBN 0-1 6-049269-6
. . . to the ”Eighty-five Percenters”
The Reservists: ”pure, downtown, of-base”

FOREWORD
For nearly fifty years, citizen airmen have served in the nation’s defense
as members of the Air Force Reserve. Citizen Airmen: A History of the Air
Force Reserve, 1946-1994 begins with the fledgling air reserve program
initiated in 1916, traces its progress through World War 11, and then concen-
trates on the period 1946 through 1994. The study skillfully describes the
process by which a loosely organized program evolved into today’s impressive
force. The Air Force Reserve story is told within the context of national
political and military policy and stresses that over the decades, as national
needs have increased, reservists have met the challenges.
Initially, the Air Force treated its reserve units as supplemental forces and
equipped them with surplus equipment. Shortly after the Air Force Reserve was
established in 1948, its members mobilized for Korean War duty and they
served throughout the conflict. The Reserve program subsequently fell into
disarray and required patient rebuilding. The passage of a series of key federal
laws related to personnel issues and the introduction of the air reserve
technician program greatly assisted in this rejuvenation process. In the 1960s,
the Air Force Reserve demonstrated its mettle as it participated in numerous
mobilizations reflecting the Cold War tensions of the era. Reservists were
involved in operations ranging from the Berlin Crisis of 1961-1962 to the
Southeast Asia mobilizations in 1968.
In the 1970s, the Air Force Reserve program assumed heightened
importance when the Department of Defense adopted the Total Force Policy.
This concept treated the active forces, the National Guard, and all reserve
forces as an integrated force. Reservists were now expected to meet the same
readiness standards as their active duty counterparts. Since then, the Air Force
Reserve has demonstrated its ability to perform a wide variety of missions. Air
Reservists participated in American military operations in Grenada and
Panama. During DESERTS HIELDan d STORMs, ome 23,500 reservists were
mobilized for service. They performed in combat in the Persian Gulf and
provided vital support services at overseas locations. Stateside, they served at
home stations or other locations in place of deployed active duty personnel.
Today, the Air Force Reserve performs major portions of the Air Force
mission. Reservists are equipped with front-line weapons systems and have
supported United Nations operations in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Iraq.
V
The Air Force Reserve
They have exclusive responsibility for aerial spray operations and weather
reconnaissance and they contribute large portions of the airlift and rescue
missions. Reservists may also be found performing humanitarian medical
missions and varied nation-building projects.
The book’s author, Gerald T. Cantwell, passed away in 1994, before he
could see the work through final publication. He brought to the study a wealth
of knowledge-he served as the Air Force Reserve Command Historian for
nearly twenty years-and a continuing desire to bring the Reserve story to a
wider public. The account stands as but one example of his dedication to this
purpose. His former colleagues, Dr. Charles F. O’Connell, Jr., Dr. Kenneth C.
Kan, Ms. Margaret L. MacMackin, and Mr. Christiaan J. Husing, dedicate their
contributions to Mr. Cantwell’s volume in his memory.
RICHARD P. HALLION
Air Force Historian
vi
PREFACE
Lt. Col. William R. Berkeley, an Air Force information officer with whom
I enjoyed consecutive tours at two headquarters when Air Force historians were
assigned to the information function as the 1950s turned into the 1960s, used
to talk about the Air Force Reserve’s many “publics” and our obligation to
explain the component to them.
These publics included the reservist’s neighbors, his church, his employer,
his co-workers, members of the active Air Force, his family, and, above all, the
reservists themselves. Each public was in some way puzzled, and often
irritated, by a reservist’s behavior, because it often set him apart from normal
community activities. Neighbors andcongregations wondered about this person
among them who came and went in military uniform; employers denied, or
only grudgingly approved, absences required by annual military encampments;
members of the active force derided the reservist as an occasional and amateur
soldier; his family resented the lost vacations, late hours, and weekends that
took their family member away from them; and the reservist himself had his
own questions, not the least of which was why the active force treated the Air
Force Reserve program and its members as country cousins while giving the
Air National Guard the best equipment and missions.
Fifteen years later, those publics that Bill talked about were still out there
with the same unanswered questions. This was especially so as the nation
recovered from the trauma of its Southeast Asia experience. My intent in
writing this book is to answer those questions for the reservist and all his
publics. The book’s concept is to discuss these problems in terms of changing
national policy.
Planning for employment of the post-World War I1 Air Force Reserve was
seldom precise or prescient, and funding was often limited. Nevertheless, as
one of the two civilian components of the Air Force (the other being the Air
National Guard), the component was active in the nation’s defense through
thirty-five years and seven presidential administrations.
In the early 1950s, when President Harry S. Truman committed the nation
to war in Korea to support the United Nations in its first major challenge, the
Air Force Reserve provided the necessary augmentation while the skimpy
active force rebuilt itself under wartime conditions. During the presidency of
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961), the component became a training force
vii
The Air Force Reserve
for reservists with no prior military service. The experienced troop carrier force
meanwhile provided actual peacetime airlift missions for the Air Force.
In the fall of 196 1, the Soviets threatened to deny the United States access
to Berlin. President John F. Kennedy mobilized reserve units of all the services
including five Air Force Reserve transport groups as he bought time to rebuild
and restructure the active forces. A year later, when Soviet offensive missiles
appeared in Cuba, the Air Force Reserve helped deploy an invasion force to the
southeast corner of the United States. Then, as the crisis deepened, the
President mobilized eight reserve troop carrier wings and supporting aerial port
units to participate in the apparently inevitable invasion of Cuba. Assembly of
the invasion force, including the recall of citizen airmen to participate,
demonstrated U.S. resolve and contributed to a resolution of the crisis short of
war.
During the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969),
the Air Force Reserve continued its inactive duty contribution to the nation’s
airlift operations and again experienced partial mobilization as the war in
Southeast Asia ground on. Volunteer air reservists participated in U.S. airlift
operations into the Dominican Republic during the revolution there in 1965,
and at about the same time that Air Force Reserve troop carrier units took over
Atlantic coast airlift operations from the active force, the heavier air transport
units began flights into Southeast Asia that continued until war’s end.
Reservists on inactive duty participated in all of the war’s major airlifts,
including the repatriation of U.S. prisoners of war and the evacuation of
refugees and U.S. personnel from Vietnam. On the other side of the world, in
1973 volunteer reserve aircrews flew hundreds of missions into the Middle East
during the Arab-Israeli conflict.
As an aftermath of the Southeast Asia experience, President Richard M.
Nixon (1969-1974) did away with the draft and established the reserve forces
as the primary source of augmentation in future military contingencies. His
administration also began the process of integrating the reserve forces more
completely into defense plans.
Becoming President in 1977, Jimmy Carter continued the process of
defining the role of the reserve forces more precisely and of integrating them
into war and mobilization plans. Consequently, the Air Force Reserve, units
and individuals, began to participate in deployments to overseas locations
where plans called for them to fight upon mobilization.
Along the way, the Air Force took three significant steps which stimulated
the development of the Air Force Reserve as an active part of the total
operational Air Force. In 1957 it authorized implementation of the Air Reserve
technician program which provided the reserve units management and training
continuity. In 1968, far more than the other services, the Air Force conscien-
tiously applied Public Law 90-168 which called for the creation of the Office
of the Chief of Air Force Reserve, among other provisions to strengthen
management and advocacy of the Air Force Reserve. Finally, long before the
...
Vlll
Preface
Defense Department adopted the concept as national policy, the Air Force
embarked on its own Total Force, under which, fully integrated with the active
force in matters of programming, planning, equipping, and training, the air
reserve components made a proportionate contribution to peacetime operations
as they prepared for mobilization. Air Force Chief of Staff General David C.
Jones could assert unequivocally that the Air Force Reserve was simply “part’’
of the Air Force.
This is a story about the Air Force Reserve, not the Air Force’s civilian
components and auxiliaries generally. It touches upon the Air National Guard
and the Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps at isolated points only
insofar as the commentary would be awkward if their contributions were to be
omitted. Since the record presented here deals solely with a national force, it
includes no mention of individual state militia nor national guard policies.
Also, as an account that focuses on the component itself, management agencies,
the Continental Air Command, and Headquarters Air Force Reserve are
mentioned only when such a discussion is essential to the flow of the narrative.
All history is to some extent revisionist and presented from the peculiar
perspective of the author. Honesty to my readers requires some indication of
my stance on some of the issues the book discusses. I agree with the late, very
popular historian, Barbara W. Tuchman when she declared that there is no such
thing as a neutral or purely objective historian. “Without an opinion, a historian
would be simply a ticking clock, and unreadable besides,” she said. Elsewhere
she wrote that it was better that her bias stuck out than be hidden; it could then
be taken into account. “To take no sides in history,” she wrote, “would be as
false as to take no sides in life.”
I could not spend a quarter of a century as a contemporary historian in
management headquarters of the Air Force Reserve without having acquired
certain biases. The most pervasive of these is my belief that many failures in
managing and administering Air Force Reserve programs resulted from the
failure of the active Air Force, which is to say the Air Staff and the major
gaining commands, to fully ascertain the nature of the reservist as an immobile
citizen for whom reserve participation is a patriotic avocation. That is why the
establishment of the Office of Air Force Reserve under a reservist was so
important. I hasten to add, however, that this has not led me to share the
paranoiac belief held by some Air Force Reserve officials as an article of faith
that the active force is out to persecute the reserves.
Foremost among the unknowing on the Air Staff is the manpower
community. Blinded by an addiction to numbers that surpasses even that of the
accountants in the budget world, the Air Force’s manpower officials have
created some disharmony in forcing structures that mirror the active force upon
reserve organizations which really did not have the same peacetime role as the
active force units.
Almost equally dominant in my view of things is my belief that the staff
of the Office of the Air Force Reserve is permitted to take a too active role in
ix