History of the United States Military Aviation
The military aviation of the United States several times in the since 1907 the armed forces of the United States has been reorganized and has grown in importance from one experiment to strategic primacy of American warfare.
Aeronautical Division of the United States Army Signal Corps
In January 1905, the War Department , the forerunner of today's Department of Defense, considered an offer it had received from two inventors in Dayton , Ohio , who wanted to supply the government with a flying machine heavier than air. The fact that at the time many doubted that the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright had really built a working airplane is part of aviation history. But the Board of Ordnance and Fortifications , the committee examining the Wright brothers' proposal, had other facts to consider. Outside of science fiction, it was by no means entirely clear at the time what role airships , gliders, and airplanes would play in warfare. Only balloons had shown their practical value. Revolutionary France had used a balloon in the Battle of Fleurus in 1794 . Balloons had also been used in the American Civil War , and the US Army Signal Corps had been given the task of acquiring and operating them. However, the Signal Corps did not create a permanent balloon department until 1892, but its use in the war with Spain in 1898 was not very successful. From the end of the Civil War until 1907, the Signal Corps had procured eight balloons.
In 1898, the Signal Corps commissioned Samuel P. Langley , Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution , to build an aircraft , but its testing ended on December 8, 1903 with a spectacular fall into the Potomac River , just nine days before the first flight the Wright brothers. The War Department, which in 1905 was still thinking about this embarrassing episode, therefore declined the new offer.
On August 1, 1907, Brigadier General James Allen , as Chief Signal Officer of the Army commander of the Signal Corps , founded an Aeronautical Division in his sixth memorandum of the year at the suggestion of his new executive officer George Owen Squier to oversee all matters relating to the “military Ballooning, air machines and related subjects "should lead:
"This division will have charge of all matters pertaining to military ballooning, air machines, and all kindred subjects. All data on hand will be carefully classified and plans perfected for future tests and experiments. The operations of this division are strictly confidential, and no information will be given out by any party except through the Chief Signal Officer of the Army or his authorized representative. "
The division initially consisted of an officer, Captain Charles deForest Chandler , and two men. A short time later, 1st Lt., coming from the cavalry, was given to her. Frank P. Lahm assigned.
In July 1908, the Aeronautical Division bought its first steering balloon from balloon pioneer Thomas Scott Baldwin , which they wanted to use in Fort Omaha , Nebraska , for training soldiers. On test flights by Baldwin and Glenn Curtiss , all specifications except for the speed could be met and the airship was named Signal Corps Dirigible No. 1 (SC-1) taken into service. Baldwin then trained Lieutenant Lahm, Thomas E. Selfridge and Benjamin D. Foulois with the device. Lahm and Foulois undertook the first solo flight by army officers with the SC-1 in May 1909.
Their first motorized airplane that 25,000 dollars had been bought by the brothers Wright, tested the Department of August 20, 1908 in Fort Myer in the state of Virginia . On September 9 of the same year, Lieutenant Selfridge had a fatal accident in a failed test flight, while his companion Orville Wright survived. After additional experimental flights , which were increasingly without complications, the Army named the Wright Model A aircraft on August 2, 1909, the designation Airplane No. 1 .
In fiscal year 1911, the United States Congress allocated $ 125,000 to the Signal Corps to purchase a fleet of ten more aircraft. Towards the end of October 1912, however, it only owned nine, as one of the new acquisitions was destroyed in an accident and Airplane No. 1 had been given to the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1913, Airmen training in Augusta , Georgia and Palm Beach , Florida were assigned to maneuvers by the 2nd Infantry Division near Galveston , Texas . A few days before the start of the exercises, the Chief Signal Officer George P. Scriven assigned them as a unit to the name of 1st Provisional Aero Squadron (Eng .: "1. Provisional Air Squadron "). On December 8, 1913, the renaming as 1st Aero Squadron ("1st Air Squadron ") , which had been ordered four days earlier, came into force. This association has been in service to this day under changing names and was also the first pure flight unit that flew a combat mission against Mexico in 1916. The decree designated Captain Charles deForest Chandler as squadron commander.
On July 18, 1914, Congress established the Aviation Section, US Signal Corps, in the Aviation Service Act (ch. 186, 38 Stat. 514) . The Aeronautical Division served from then on as the representative of the Aviation Section in Washington, DC The law extended the competence to all material matters, which affected the military aviation, as well as the training of all officers in this area.
First World War
When the First World War broke out in August, the 1st Aero Squadron provided the entire tactical air force of the United States with a nominal strength of 12 officers , 54 non-commissioned officers and men and six aircraft; it was therefore militarily worthless in relation to the air forces of the major European powers. Congress, which to this day not only determines the budget, but also the maximum size of the military up to certain units, approved a restricted expansion so that the Aviation Section consisted of 44 officers, 224 NCOs and 23 aircraft in December 1915. At that time an air company was established in the Philippines and an aviation school for officers in San Diego , California . The Aviation Section asked the Army Command and Congress to increase the air force to 24 squadrons. These were to be distributed with seven on the Regular Army and with twelve squadrons on the National Guard , while the remaining five were intended for the defense of the coasts. By the spring of 1917, the aviation section's demand was implemented, but the 1st Air Squadron was still solely responsible for the organizational, personnel and technical target strength. Therefore, the entry of the United States into World War I on April 6 of the same year caught military aviation unprepared.
The division of American military aviation across several army units and institutions at the front made the coordination of American air activities difficult, which led to the establishment of higher levels of command. Units with a similar function were organized into groups , the first of which was the I Corps Observation Group . In the following month, the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) formed the first subdivided fighter pilot unit and later the first group for daytime bombing.
In their almost nine months of service in the American expeditionary force on the side of the Triple Entente on the Western Front , the 740 aircraft of the United States ultimately made up almost 10% of the Western air force. 150 bombing attacks were carried out by the American air forces, which advanced up to 160 miles behind the German lines and dropped a total of around 138 tons of bombs. The Air Service lost 289 aircraft and 38 balloons during the war. This was offset by 756 enemy aircraft and 76 balloons shot down.
In contrast, there were massive problems in the area of production. It was not possible to adapt the Allied aircraft to American standards and the production of spare parts was not even rudimentary. Since the USA mainly provided personnel, but often lacked equipment, the AEF deployed French aircraft wherever trained pilots did not have a machine. Despite ambitious goals and generous funding, the United States did not succeed in catching up with the technical lead of the major European powers.
On May 20, 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson therefore decreed the transfer of the overall supervision of military aviation to two newly established agencies in the United States Department of War . The Bureau of Aircraft Production , headed by John D. Ryan, was primarily responsible for the acquisition of new aircraft, while aircraft construction initially remained in the hands of the military. In contrast, the authority passed to Major General William L. Kenly in the Division of Military Aeronautics .
The War Department recognized this agency on May 24th as the Air Service of the US Army . On August 27, 1918, Wilson appointed Ryan Director of the Air Service and Second Assistant Secretary of War. The common practice of American defense policy of radically demobilizing after a certain end of the war also affected the air force. At the time of the armistice, they had 185 flying squadrons, 44 construction units, 114 air force supply squadrons, 11 replacement squadrons, 86 balloon companies, 6 balloon group headquarters, 15 construction companies and 55 photography sections. By November 22nd, 1919 this composition had fallen to one construction, one replacement, 22 air squadrons, 32 balloon companies and 15 photographer sections. During the same period, the number of officers decreased from 19,189 to 1,168 men. The remaining number of personnel fell from 178,149 to 8,428 men in peacetime.
Interwar period
In 1920, Congress passed the Army Reorganization Act , which made the air force a separate branch of the army. Now the Chief of the Air Service was automatically a major general and his deputy a brigadier general. He was given command of all aeronautical training centers, depots and similar facilities. The tactical air strike capabilities of the United States were also subordinated to nine regional corps commanders. For the majority of the 1920s, the Air Service's offensive capacity was one fighter, one attack and one bomber group. In addition, one group each was planned for the Philippines, the Panama Canal and other foreign assignments.
At the same time, training in this type of weapon was increasingly taking shape. Most of the flight training took place in Texas. Technical schools for officers and non-officers alike were located in Chanute Field , Illinois . The Air Service Tactical School moved from Langley Field in Virginia to Maxwell Field in Alabama in 1931 .
Through the Air Corps Act , Congress renamed the United States Army Air Service the United States Army Air Corps in 1926 . In addition, the law recognized the increasing importance of military aviation through the creation of the post of State Secretary in the Ministry of War for the Air Force ( Assistant Secretary of War for Air ). At that time the Air Corps consisted of 919 officers and 8,725 NCOs and men. The equipment consisted of almost 1,000 aircraft, of which 60 were fighters and 169 were observation aircraft.
In August 1926, the Army centralized pilot training at the Air Corps Training Center in San Antonio , Texas. In addition, it placed the supply of their weapon branch on a stronger basis through the subdivision called Materiel Division, Air Corps, which was specifically responsible for logistics, and created synergies. Of Dayton , Ohio , he moved a year later to the nearby Wright Field , which thereby the most important supply base of the Air Corps was raised.
During this time, technical developments were advanced in many areas, for example air refueling and the testing of new fighter planes and bombers such as the Martin B-10 .
By 1932 the Air Corps had grown to 1,305 officers, 13,400 non-officers (including cadets) and 1,709 aircraft. It consisted of two airship and two balloon squadrons. In 1935 the army activated a headquarters in preparation since 1933 called General Headquarters Air Force (GHAF) . It placed the nine command areas of the Air Corps under a central authority. The Office of the Chief of the Air Corps and the GHAF were arranged at the same level of command and reported to the Army representative on the General Staff on an equal footing.
From 1937 the B-17 Flying Fortress was used.
At the time, US President Franklin Roosevelt feared that the United States would become involved in the Second World War, which was then restricted to Europe . Against this background, he recognized the increasing importance of air warfare and advocated a massive expansion of the Air Corps . After he had made sure of the political support of his closest employees in the White House in 1938 , he applied to Congress on January 12, 1939 for funding of a program that would expand the Air Corps to 10,000 aircraft. Of these, 7,500 should be combat aircraft. This represented a further increase over the original plan of 7,000 aircraft. Congress approved a budget of $ 300 million for the air power, but with special reference to the fact that the total number of aircraft must not exceed 6,000.
Second World War
After the outbreak of war, the critical stance of Congress eased to such an extent that the Air Corps now received almost smoothly everything it requested. Under the influence of the German Blitzkrieg strategy , commanders of military aviation demanded 54 combat-ready groups. Congress trumped this by approving funds for 84 combat formations with 7,800 aircraft and 400,000 personnel by June 30, 1942. By the end of the war, the Air Corps swelled from 26,500 men and 2,200 aircraft in 1939 to 2,253,000 men and Women and 63,715 aircraft. As early as 1939, the War Ministry had massively expanded the bases and training institutions for the air forces, especially overseas.
The first years of the war were also marked by hectic organizational measures, despite a temporary reluctance by the USA. On November 19, 1940, the General Headquarters Air Force was removed from the command of the Chief of the Air Corps and reassigned to the Commander of the Army Field Forces . On June 20, 1941, the then incumbent Army Representative on the General Staff, George C. Marshall , founded the United States Army Air Forces in order to keep both the Air Corps and the Air Force Combat Command under suitable military supervision in view of their massive growth.
In the first half of 1941 the War Ministry introduced a series of measures to create a hierarchy for institutions that were not directly involved in the fighting . This also resulted in the Flying Training Command , which was supposed to develop, assign and coordinate new training programs for both ground crews and technical staff. In the next year, it also took on responsibility for pilot training. The Air Corps Ferrying Command , established in mid-1942, controlled the allocation of aircraft and pilots to the other allies . With increasing expansion, it was assigned to the Air Transport Command .
Likewise, a command post was needed to direct the supply and maintenance of the air force. This was done in the Air Corps Maintenance Command , which was assigned to the Air Corps Materiel Division . The Materiel Division then focused on procurement policy and the development of new technologies.
The War Ministry introduced a major structural measure on March 9, 1942 by creating three independent army commands: Army Ground Forces , Services of Supply (from 1943 under the name Army Service Forces ), and Army Air Forces . Although this step was in itself of an administrative nature, it signaled, among others, the growing importance of army aviation, which also rose in the hierarchy of the branches of arms due to the various structural measures at command and ministerial level. If military aviation was still in its infancy at the beginning of the Second World War, at the end of the Second World War it had grown to become one of the most important military branches and organizations with countless squadrons , corps , commandos and assigned troop units and with several million men. This had made a decisive contribution to the victory of the Allies over the Axis powers in the air war .
The aviation pioneer and General Henry H. Arnold , under whose leadership the range of aircraft types had steadily increased from 1941 to 1945, and the USAAF adapted to its task profile , had campaigned for the air force . These types included such well-known models as the C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft , the versatile P-51 Mustang fighter , the sturdy B-17 Flying Fortress bomber and the B-29 Superfortress long-range bomber . The United States used this model to carry out the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945.
Cold War
After the Second World War, as after the First, a rapid demobilization of the entire military began, which also affected the USAAF . In an order dated March 21, 1946, the War Ministry ordered the creation of two new high commands. The Continental Air Forces formed the new Strategic Air Command . The resources that had been available to the former Continental Air Forces were now divided between the SAC and the two new agencies, the Air Defense Command and the Tactical Air Command . Together with the Air Transport Command , all of the war-important tasks of an air force - strategic, tactical, defensive and logistical - were now embodied in a separate department, so that the organizational foundation for an independent armed force was laid.
On July 26, 1947, the National Security Act came into force, which raised the USAAF to an independent military force and gave it the name United States Air Force , which is still used today . The Ministry of War and the Ministry of the Army, Navy and Air Force were combined in the new Ministry of Defense and the General Staff reorganized. First Secretary of State for the Air Force was Stuart Symington , first General Staff Deputy Carl A. Spaatz . In technical terms, too, military aviation in the United States entered a new age when test pilot Chuck Yeager accelerated the Bell X-1 experimental aircraft beyond the sound limit on October 14 .
During the Berlin blockade in 1948/49, " Raisin Bombers ", mostly from the inventory of the USAF and the British Royal Air Force, supplied the city via an airlift for almost a year . With 278,000 flights and 2.1 million tons of material transported, the airlift , known internally as Operation Vittles , was the largest air transport operation to date. Here were transport aircraft as Douglas C-47 , Douglas C-54 Skymaster and Lockheed C-121 is used.
The successful detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 caused a stir in the political and military leadership. This event sparked a doctrine discussion within the military as to whether the aspiring American air force or the traditional navy should be the strategic primacy and bearer of nuclear deterrence . The tendency towards the Air Force triggered the uprising of the admirals in the leadership of the Navy . The core of this conflict was the dispute over whether a large strategic bomber fleet or a large aircraft carrier-based Navy, as they had proved to be successful, especially in the previous World War II for the US, the best way was to the Soviet Union deter and successful as possible nuclear first strike to to lead.
Due to its tradition under the umbrella of the army , the former parent force of military aviation tried to slow down the development of the Air Force. This competition between the two branches of the armed forces led to the Key West Agreement , which forbade the Army from designing, producing and procuring " fixed-wing aircraft ". This terminology serves the army to this day as (now accepted) legitimation to operate an army aviation consisting entirely of helicopters .
The course of the Korean War shifted attitudes in the United States in favor of aerial warfare. In cooperation with military and - Marine aviators succeeded the Air Force , especially with their fast and agile F-86 Saber , the air superiority over the Korean peninsula to secure, allowing the stalemate in the 1953rd The leadership of the Air Force drew the consequence of developing massive forward stationing at possible hot spots, for example the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) . This association was a fundamental condition for the establishment and continued existence of NATO .
During the Cold War, the American Air Force regularly undertook reconnaissance flights in violation of Soviet airspace, with several spectacular downings of American aircraft (see also Downing a Hercules over Armenia , Francis Gary Powers , MiG-17 # USSR ).
Trusting the Strategic Air Command , General Curtis LeMay developed strategic bombing as the air strategy of choice. From the 1960s onwards , he had the B-52 Stratofortress bomber fleet supplemented by a growing number of ICBMs , which were protected from enemy fire in silos , for example by the Minuteman and Titan types . Together with the Navy's launchable nuclear submarines , they formed the “triad” of American deterrence and at the same time a compromise between the rival branches of the armed forces. During the same period, the Air Force began to take on more and more responsibilities in space, which the military increasingly relied on satellites for navigation and orientation.
After the Tonkin incident in 1964, the Vietnam War openly broke out. Once again the importance of air supremacy crystallized. While the United States did not succeed on the ground in converting its military superiority into a legitimate political victory, the air supremacy of the United States is considered to be relatively undisputed, even if the body count between the Air Force and naval aviation versus the communist air force supported by the Eastern Bloc fluctuated greatly . In this war, the United States mainly used four types of aircraft: the F-4 Phantom II served as a general-purpose aircraft , while the F-105 Thunderchief was used for the tactical bombing of northern Vietnam . The SAC used the B-52 Stratofortress for the strategic bombing of alleged jungle forts and camps, but also of airfields, train stations, tank farms and other targets in Hanoi and Haiphong . The possible flight times of all combat aircraft increased enormously due to the first need-covering use of the KC-135 Stratotanker tanker .
The air forces were hardest hit by the recent budget cuts after the end of the Vietnam mission in the 1970s due to their high financial requirements. They invested the remaining funds primarily in the development of new aircraft models and missile types, while they advanced the space presence of the United States. The new developments of the time, some of which are still in service and exported worldwide, include the A-10 Thunderbolt , the multi-purpose aircraft F-14 Tomcat , F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon as well as the reconnaissance aircraft E-3 Sentry and the intercontinental missile MX Peacekeeper . Operation Nickel Grass in support of the Israeli armed forces in the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, which mainly involved the large-capacity transporters C-5 Galaxy and C-141 , made clear the importance of the armed forces’s logistics, which otherwise had little publicity and which made up a large part of its budget Starlifters wore.
In Operation Eagle Claw in 1979, the United States attempted to resolve the hostage situation in Tehran militarily using experienced Air Force and United States Marine Corps pilots and members of the Delta Force . The operation failed because of the risky planning and difficulties that were not factored in.
The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1979, which strained the forces of the Red Army exceptionally hard in the following ten years until the withdrawal, together with the massive budget increase by US President Ronald Reagan, who was elected in 1980, shifted the balance towards the Soviet air forces again in favor of the Soviet air force of the United States Air Force. In addition to the Strategic Defense Initiative , the development of stealth technology and its application to the four B-1 B Lancer , B-2 Spirit , F-117 Nighthawk and F-22 Raptor developed or introduced in the 1980s . The Comanche attack helicopter was also based on this technology, but the Army canceled its procurement in 2004 because too many technical obstacles occurred in its development and the model's operational profile was out of date.
Most U.S. military operations in the 1980s built on the logistical reliability of the Air Force, including Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada in 1983, the air strikes on Libya in 1986, and the intervention in Panama in 1989.
The conflict between American and Russian military aviation is one of the most dramatic and controversial of the Cold War. In no other area of defense policy and armaments was the arms race more competitive than in aircraft construction and aircraft procurement.
The movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in the lead roles sparked a run on the recruiting offices of the Air Force when it appeared in the 1986th
After the cold war
During the 1990s, the air forces carried out several standing orders in addition to war missions. Shortly after the end, the Air Force recorded its first large-scale operation. During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the course of the Second Gulf War, she prepared the four-day destruction of the Iraqi army by the ground offensive with a six-week bombing campaign. During the offensive itself, the helicopter models AH-1 Cobra and OH-58 Kiowa, almost written off by the military, did an unusually good service and were feared by the enemy. This extended their lifespan by almost ten years.
Many Air Force units remained in the Gulf, partly as part of a long-term geostrategy and partly to monitor the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq to protect the country's ethnic minorities. The United States continued to monitor the no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel in Operation Provide Comfort until 1996 , while Operation Southern Watch continued until Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the renewed US intervention.
Despite the victorious conflict in the Persian Gulf, the air forces, like the entire military, appeared disproportionate in the face of the collapse of the Soviet Union . Therefore, the Air Force deactivated many traditional squadrons, closed bases and put aircraft out of service. While the strength of the Air Force was almost 600,000 at the end of the 1980s, it was reduced to 388,000 by 1996. The Strategic Air Command and the Tactical Air Command merged into the Air Combat Command , the Air Mobility Command replaced the Military Airlift Command .
The second major long-term mission occurred in the context of the Yugoslav civil war in the Balkans from 1992-1995. In Operation Deny Flight , the United States enforced a flight ban on aircraft belonging to the Yugoslav Army over Bosnia-Herzegovina . Towards the end of the war, American air forces bombed from bases in Italy and from the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and USS America (CV-66) in the Adriatic from targets of the Army of the Republika Srpska that disregarded protection zones designated by the United Nations . Abused UN peacekeeping forces as protective shields and threatened the local civilian population. In this context, the pilot Scott O'Grady achieved a notoriety through his rescue from Bosnia after his plane was shot down, which was also reflected in popular culture.
In Operation Desert Fox in 1998, American air forces bombed military and infrastructural targets in Iraq for several days in order to enforce UN Security Council resolutions .
As part of NATO, American air forces carried the brunt of the Operation Allied Force air campaign in the 1999 Kosovo war . The accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade became known as an extraordinary failure.
Web links
- Historical overview of the predecessor institutions of the United States Air Force (English)
- History of military aviation in the United States in four parts (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Air Force Magazine ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Vol. 85, No. 12, December 2002. Accessed April 19, 2002.
