Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945

344 Pages·2013·2.03 MB·English

by  Johnson

Fast Tanks and
Heavy Bombers
I U.S. A , 1917-1945
NNOVATION IN THE RMY
D E. J
AVID OHNSON
Cornell University Press
ITHACA AND LONDON
To Wendy
Contents
Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I. SOLDIERS AND MACHINES: 1917–1920
1. America, the Army, and the Great War
2. The Tank Corps
3. The Air Service
4. The Army in the Aftermath of the Great War
PART II. INERTIA AND INSURGENCY: 1921–1930
5. Peace and Quiet
6. Infantry Tanks
7. The Failed Revolution and the Evolution of Air Force
8. The War Department
PART III. ALTERNATIVES AND AUTONOMY: 1931–1942
9. From Domestic Depression to International Crusade
10. Alternatives for Armor
11. Autonomous Air Power
12. A Crisis in the War Department
PART IV. DYING FOR CHANGE: 1942–1945
13. The Arsenal of Attrition
14. Armored Bludgeon
15. Air Force Triumphant
16. Coequal Land Power and Air Power
Conclusion
Notes
Primary Sources
Tables
1. Army active-duty strength, 1940-1945
2. American tank and airplane production, 1940-1945
3. American and German gun penetration against armor at 30 degrees obliquity
at 500 to 2,000 yards (in millimeters)
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of an intellectual odyssey that started in 1987, when
the U.S. Army gave me, a serving officer at the time, the extraordinary
opportunity to enter the graduate program in history at Duke University. During
three wonderful years at Duke, I enjoyed the privilege of working with a
community of scholars who took quite seriously their obligations as educators.
My development as a historian is the direct result of the efforts of Joel Colton,
Calvin Davis, W. A. B. Douglas, Larry Goodwyn, I. B. Holley Jr., Tim
Lomperis, Kristen Neuschel, Alex Roland, Theodore Ropp, Bill Scott, and Peter
Wood. I thank them all.
I am particularly indebted to Alex Roland, I. B. Holley Jr., and Larry
Goodwyn. Alex Roland subtly challenged me to grow out of my preconceptions
and introduced me to colleagues who have fundamentally influenced my work.
Finally, Alex helped me gain and maintain control over this project. I. B. Holley
gave me the rigorous grounding in research methodology and scholarship that
enabled me to conceptualize and write this book. Larry Goodwyn introduced me
to social history, helped me understand institutions, and in the process
significantly influenced the way I have come to view my work and the world.
Many institutions and individuals have been particularly helpful. The staff of
Perkins Library at Duke University provided every possible assistance. Stuart
Basefsky and Ken Berger were always there when I needed help. Marty
Andresen, John Slonaker, Richard Sommers, and David Keough led me through
the holdings of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks,
Pennsylvania. Richard Morse, Tim Johnson, Robert Johnson, and Archie
DiFante provided similar support at the U.S. Air Force Historical Research
Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. These people made the use of
their institutions’ resources an enjoyable experience.
Later I had the good fortune to work in the U.S. Army Center of Military
History in Washington, D.C. My colleagues there, particularly Jeffrey Clarke,
Harold Nelson, Roger Cirillo, Kavin Coughenaur, Edward Drea, John Elsberg,
John Greenwood, Roger Kaplan, Jim Knight, and Frank Schubert, gave steadfast
assistance and encouragement.
I continued revising this book while serving at the National Defense
University, first as a member of the faculty of the School of Information Warfare
and Strategy, then as the director of academic affairs. David Alberts, Ken Allard,
Brad Barriteau, John Carabello, Karen Carleton, Rob Cox, Tom Czer-winski,
Jim England, Fred Giessler, Gerry Gingrich, Alan Gropman, Dan Kuehl, Martin
Libicki, Michael McDevitt, Ervin Rokke, Rudy Rudolph, Jim Stafford, Susan
Studds, and Dave Tretler all helped me bring the book to closure. John Alger
provided useful critiques and invaluable editorial assistance. By challenging
some of my assertions, my students at the National War College and the
Information Resources Management College helped me tighten my arguments.
I finished this book in my new life as a civilian. Four colleagues at Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Bill Owens, Jim Blaker, Dr. Ed
Frieman, and Wendy Frieman, listened to my arguments about military
innovation and RMAs (revolutions in military affairs) and offered valuable
insights.
The long process of writing this book was immeasurably aided by Roger
Haydon, my editor at Cornell University Press. Roger worked with me over
several years and showed extraordinary patience when the demands of my life
forced delays in the completion of the manuscript.
Five other people have made this work possible. My late father, Eugene
E. Johnson Jr., fostered my interest in World War II. Like many other men
who served in that war, he became an armchair historian in an effort to
understand his personal experience. This book originated in his interests and
doubts, often expressed as asides as we watched motion pictures about the war. I
thank Tim Tyson for reading this book in an earlier incarnation and being a
friend in every sense of the word. Whenever the frustrations of the process
approached the unendurable, I could always turn to Tim.
The freedom to devote an extraordinary measure of my time and energies to
this project was made possible by the sacrifices of Sharon Johnson and our son,
Sean Johnson. It took me seven intense months to write the first draft of this
book—and seven years of stolen weekends to complete it. Without their support
and understanding, I could not have completed it.
Finally, I want to thank Wendy Frieman—the woman who has changed my
life. To her I dedicate this book.
D. E. J.
Washington, D.C.
Introduction
“History is lived forward,” the English historian C. V. Wedgwood
perceptively noted, “but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we
consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was like to
know the beginning only.”1 This cognitive constraint is particularly compelling
in a study of the U.S. Army between the two World Wars. Conditioned by the
reality of World War II and some fifty years of a large, standing postwar army,
we find it too easy to assume we know what needs to be analyzed.
The most familiar version of the Army’s fate during the interwar era suggests
that although it endeavored to maintain its readiness, the Army was unprepared
for the enormous demands of World War II. A miserly Congress, supported by a
peace-minded and isolationist American public, denied it the funds and
personnel needed to maintain an adequate military establishment. The official
history of the U.S. Army emphasized that this public and official malaise had
dire consequences. The Army “became tragically insufficient and…incapable of
restoration save after the loss of many lives and the expenditure of other
resources beyond man’s comprehension.”2 In short, as a contemporary historian
has noted: “Although many dedicated individual professional soldiers had during
the 1920s and 1930s conscientiously studied to be ready for the next war,
decline, neglect, and stagnation marked America’s military forces.”3
This view of the origins of the Army’s unpreparedness at the beginning of
World War II is important for at least three reasons. First, the successes of World
War II are the bedrock on which existing American military doctrines are
constructed. Second, the high costs of American unpreparedness at the beginning
of World War II served to justify large standing military forces and their
associated defense budgets in the postwar years. Third, the “lessons” of the
interwar era provide compelling arguments to avoid the dismantling and neglect
of American defense institutions at the end of the cold war. Thus, the interwar
period is frequently cast as one analogous to the present post-cold war era, with
its ambiguous threats to American security and concomitant demands for cuts in