AU History

Air University
History

Introduction to AU History

Major General Mason M. Patrick, Chief of the Air Service, presents diplomas to the graduates of the 1925 Air Service Tactical School class at Langley Field, Virginia.

Unfortunately, most of the officers assigned to the newly established Air Service were poorly trained in air tactics and techniques and lacked actual aerial combat experience. Worst still, the principles of employing the new arm were still relatively new to the airmen of that time and there was little precedent on which to build solid air doctrines and concepts. Thus, Air Service leaders quickly realized that their principal need was for an efficient school system for training and educating officers to command air units and to develop aerial concepts and doctrine. As a result, in February 1920, the Air Service established several specialized and general schools to provide professional education and training for its future planners and leaders.

Among these schools was an institution located at Langley Field, Virginia, called the Air Service School. A year later, on 10 February 1921, the Air Service redesignated this institution as the Air Service Field Officers' School to reflect the school's primary mission of "preparing senior officers for higher Air Service command duty." It retained this name until 8 November 1922 when the Air Service changed the institution's name to the Air Service Tactical School. This was as a result of the decision to let all Air Service officers (not just field grade personnel) attend the institution. Then, in conjunction with the 1926 redesignation of the Air Service as the Air Corps, on 18 August 1926 the institution became known as the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS). This school continued to operate at Langley until the summer of 1931 when the Air Corps moved it to Maxwell Field, Alabama.

Austin Hall was the primary Air Corps Tactical School administrative and academic facility at Maxwell Field in the 1930s.

Throughout its existence, the Tactical School, as it was known, was the intellectual center of the pre-World War II Army air arm. Though its basic mission was to educate air officers in the strategy, tactics, and techniques of air power, the school, by necessity, also became inextricably involved in the development of air doctrine. In fact, doctrinal development subsequently emerged as one of the school's primary functions, and for over 20 years, this institution served "as the sounding board for ideas concerning the critical issue of the role of airpower in war."

Students at the Air Corps Tactical School participated in map problem-solving exercises at Maxwell Field, Alabama, during the 1930s.

Much of the school's basic instruction centered around the belief that the airplane provided a new and highly effective method of waging war. As Lt Col. Kenneth Walker, a member of the faculty at the Air Corps Tactical School, often explained, "the object of war is now and always has been, the overcoming of the hostile will to resist .... When that will is broken down, when that will disintegrates, then capitulation follows." Airpower, according to Colonel Walker, "offered a revolutionary means whereby pressure could be applied directly to break down the hostile will without first defeating or containing the hostile surface forces."

Initially, the school's curriculum reflected the dominating influence of Gen William "Billy" Mitchell. Mitchell, a strong believer in the importance of gaining and maintaining air superiority during a conflict, argued strongly for pursuit aviation as well as bombers. He regarded enemy pursuit forces as the most serious threat to successful bombing operations and felt that the task of American pursuit was not necessarily to escort bombers but to seek out and attack enemy fighters. During the first five years of the school's operation, Mitchell's beliefs formed the basis for instruction at the tactical school.

By the mid-1920s, however, the school's emphasis had shifted from pursuit to bombardment aviation. While previous texts had identified the enemy's air forces as the chief targets, the school's 1925-26 training manuals suggested that independent strategic operations could have a decisive impact in war by destroying vital parts of an enemy's industrial life. Once these targets were destroyed, the texts maintained that a collapse in the enemy's entire economic structure and ability to wage war would follow.

Additionally, such technical advances as heavier bombs and more capable bombers caused the emphasis at the school to lean increasingly more toward precision daylight bombing unprotected by pursuit. In fact, by the early thirties, the general feeling at the tactical school was that pursuit aviation was obsolete and that "a well-planned and well-conducted bombardment attack, once launched, cannot be stopped."

It was from this belief in the invincibility and destructibility of bombers that the basic tenets of the school's airpower employment theories evolved. Using this basic premise, brilliant young officers - such as Haywood Hartsell, Harold L. George, Kenneth Walker, Laurence Kuter, Robert Webster, Claire Chennault, Donald Wilson, and Muir S. Fairchild - were able to hammer out the aerial warfare doctrines, tactics, and strategies that were later employed during the air battles and strategic bombing campaigns of World War II.

The tactical school was also successful in producing most of the World War 11 Army Air Forces (AAF) leaders. Of the 320 AAF general officers serving on V-J Day, 261 were Air Corps Tactical School graduates, including three four-star generals and eleven of thirteen three-star generals. In addition, the first generation of post-World War II Air Force leaders had been associated with the tactical school, including USAF Chiefs of Staff Carl A. Spaatz, Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Nathan F. Twining, Thomas D. White, and Curtis E. LeMay. Thus, the tactical school also successfully accomplished its primary objective of producing the Air Corps' future planners and leaders.

Yet, in spite of the school's many successes, the wartime requirements for well-educated and trained officers proved too great to permit the continuation of academic pursuits. As a result, on 30 June 1940, the Army Air Corps suspended instruction at the Tactical School and reduced its staff and faculty to five Air Corps officers and two officers from the other services. Though they initially assumed that the school would be reopened as soon as possible, during the summer of 1941 the Air Corps moved the skeletonized academic section of the Tactical School to Washington and placed it under the Directorate of Individual Training. Since the school's library remained at Maxwell, the staff was deprived of its research facility which, in effect, led to the institution's final breakup and discontinuation on 9 October 1942.

Though the Army Air Forces suspended ACTS classes, the school remained in existence for over two years. By that time, the need for reopening some sort of tactical school was already quite apparent to most AAF officials. The expansion of the Army Air Forces' peacetime strength from about 23,600 men in 1938 to over 25,000,000 by the fall of 1942 required the activation of more than 900 operational squadrons. This obviously created a serious shortage in the number of experienced officers qualified to command these units, and the need for some type of institution for accomplishing this was high on the Army Air Force's list of priorities.

Worse still, the United States was engaged in air wars in several widely dispersed theaters such as New Guinea, Tunisia, and Alaska. Based on experiences in these areas, it quickly became apparent to AAF officials that some type of agency for evaluating the doctrines and techniques developed in the war zones was needed for evaluating these experiences in some organized, systematic manner so they could be applied in subsequent battles. Consequently, on 9 October 1942, the same day the War Department discontinued the Tactical School, the Army Air Forces authorized the establishment of the AAF School of Applied Tactics (SAT) to "train selected officers and enlisted men in the doctrine, tactics, and techniques pertaining to their respective specialties."

The school, which was officially activated on 16 October 1942, opened its doors at Orlando Field, Florida, under the command of Col. Willis R. Taylor. Its mission was to train "selected officers under simulated combat conditions" and to conduct "investigations and research in the science of military aviation ... in accordance with the policies established by the Commanding General, Army Air Forces." AAF officials selected the Orlando site because it had been the home of the old Fighter Command School, and they felt the tactics school could take advantage of the facilities and other units already at the field.

From the beginning, the AAF School of Applied Tactics made every effort to relate the training its students received to tactical developments and lessons learned in overseas combat theaters. To enhance this effort, AAF officials made sure that most of the SAT instructors and unit commanders were officers who had just returned from the various theaters of operation and could tell the students from firsthand, personal experiences what they might confront in the various combat zones. Most of the students in the School of Applied Tactics were from newly activated units. They received 14 days of academic and synthetic training before moving on for another 14 days of operational training at one of the satellite air fields. These month-long classes began every two weeks, resulting in overlapping periods of instruction that reflected the urgency of the times.

Other activities at the school usually supported the academic mission. Tactical training activities, for example, involved the testing of operational aircraft and equipment as a means of improving the strategy, tactics, and techniques of air warfare "under the policies fixed by and under the Army Air Forces Board." At the same time, the School of Applied Tactics devoted considerable time and attention to translating new "doctrinal developments obtained from the school, combat theaters, or the Air Forces into photographs, motion picture outlines, training literature, and other forms of training aids." Similarly, the school was also responsible for its own housekeeping functions at the various SAT installations and for ensuring that the school had the necessary facilities to accomplish its mission.

In addition to teaching fighter tactics, the school later conducted courses for staff officers. With the establishment of the Army-Navy Staff College in April 1943, the War Department directed the school to teach the AAF phase of the familiarization course for selected Army, Navy, and Marine Corps officers to acquaint them with the tactics necessary for combined operations. In early June 1943, the Tactics School began teaching this course, which covered the most recent doctrine and principles of airpower. A month later, the school added another phase to the curriculum called the AAF Staff Officers Course. It provided tactical instruction in staff work for officers assigned to wings and higher level units. Thus, like its predecessor, the Tactics School also had a professional military education (PME) mission.

Though the school successfully accomplished all aspects of its mission during the first year of its existence, by the fall of 1943 it had become quite evident to AAF officials that a change in the school's organizational structure was necessary. The lessons learned in the Tunisian campaign and the actual experiences at the Tactics School all suggested that the classic type of organization along bomber, fighter, air support, and air service Iines was "wasteful of men and of effort." In addition, it was clear to the "founding fathers" by that time that the school had grown into something much bigger than the educational institution they had initially envisioned.

For example, from an initial organization of about 5,000 people, the school had expanded to nearly 32,000 individuals in less than a year. By all indications, "the point of diminishing returns" had been reached, and the school's functions were unacceptably "being eclipsed by other requirements." At the same time, there was an increasing desire among AAF officials "to bring the school into step with changing tactical theories from the war theaters and to effect a more efficient organization to carry out its own training and developmental mission." As a result, in October 1943, the Army Air Forces established the Army Air Forces Tactical Center and made the tactical school one of its key subordinate units.

As an integral part of the center, the school remained responsible for the organization's academic and education mission. However, the changing demands caused by the direction and progress of the war resulted in some modifications to the school's organizational structure and, more importantly, to the number and types of courses it offered. Many of the initial cadre of courses, for example, were eliminated and several new courses were added to meet the newly emerging demands of a wartime operational air force. In fact, by 1944, the school was only teaching one of the initial cadre of courses since all of the others had succumbed to the growing demand for more staff courses. Consequently, by the end of the year, the school had added over 20 new courses to its seemingly endless list of new requirements.

The Army Air Forces reorganized the AAF Tactical Center again on I June 1945 and simply called it the Army Air Forces Center. At the same time, the Army Air Forces redesignated the tactics school as the Army Air Forces Schools even though it continued to conduct its mission of "special training to AAF officer personnel in subjects of staff and command." The school also revamped its educational programs following this restructuring, due primarily to the changing war situation and the Army's shifting educational needs. For example, it shifted the course's emphasis from such basic courses as intelligence and inspection to staff courses like the Senior Officers Course and the Staff Officer's Course. The AAF School, however, continued to operate at Orlando until 29 November 1945 when it was moved to Maxwell Field, Alabama, and assigned directly to the Army Air Forces as a major command. There, on 12 March 1946, it was redesignated as Air University.

During its brief existence, the Tactics School had proven to be a worthy wartime successor to the old Air Corps Tactical School. Though the school did not completely fill the gap left by its more famous ancestor, it did consider and address many of the same types of problems and doctrinal development issues. Unlike its predecessor, however, the Tactics School was a wartime agency concerned primarily with a seemingly endless set of problems associated with an air force engaged in a global air war. As one historian later put it, the "theories of the employment of airpower were less important than the evaluation and analysis of current combat experiences as a means of determining the method of future operations. Only at the end of the war," with the establishment of Air University, "would airmen be able to resume the process of theorizing."