Bomber Boys - Opposition

Opposition

The term 'bomber mafia' came from the sometimes bitter debates between United States Army staff and Air Corps men who observed, and argued with, the insistence by instructors and students of the ACTS that heavy bombers were the new primary weapon of war, and that a separate air arm was required to command them. For the first few years, the strongest voice at ACTS against the bomber doctrine was Captain (later General) George C. Kenney who called for the use of air power to attack enemy fighting units on the ground. He advocated the close coordination of air and ground forces, with an emphasis on medium bombers and fighter bombers. Kenney left ACTS in 1929, and heavy bomber doctrinarians filled the vacancy. The doctrine also ran counter to the theories of Billy Mitchell himself, who espoused that pursuit support was essential for daylight bombing operations.

Lewis H. Brereton served as instructor at ACTS for one year 1924–1925, then took command of Second Bombardment Group. During his short tenure at ACTS, he spoke in favor of an eclectic air force composed of many different tactical and strategic units. Brereton continued in this stance as instructor at Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas during 1935–1939.

As an expert in the use of air units to aid artillery and infantry, Gordon P. Saville held to the concept of tactical air power through his time as ACTS instructor from 1934 to 1936. Later, Saville successfully implemented his ideas in the Mediterranean Theater.

Captain Claire Lee Chennault, senior instructor in fighter tactics at ACTS, was a vocal Air Corps officer who challenged the bomber mafia for more than a decade; he was forced into early retirement in 1937, leaving the precision bombing advocates unopposed. The teaching of fighter ("pursuit") tactics declined, though Earle E. Partridge and Hoyt S. Vandenberg continued to discuss the role of the fighter.

Other opposition was more subtle. USAAC Fighter Projects officer Lieutenant Benjamin S. Kelsey appreciated that a large bomber fleet would be able to perform many military tasks, not just strategic bombing, and felt that the force's doctrine should remain flexible to meet any demand. Because of his lower rank, he was in no position to challenge the bomber mafia, and instead strove to work around their restrictions on pursuit aircraft. Kelsey formulated a new "interceptor" class of aircraft in order to sustain his idea that a well-armed fighter aircraft could successfully attack enemy bombers, and that, given drop tanks for long range, it could defend friendly bombers all the way to the target and back.

The bomber mafia, through a "failure of imagination" in not expanding the doctrine to include establishing air superiority as a prerequisite for success, would not accept either of these concepts—they believed the heavy bomber fleet could protect itself, and thus they contributed to the delay in the development of a long-range escort fighter until two years into the war. However, the doctrine nonetheless became the foundation for the separation of the Air Force from the Army, and the basis for modern airpower theory. ACTS graduate, instructor, and "Bomber Mafia" member Haywood S. Hansell concurred that both the theorists and the authors of the AWPD-1 war plan (of which he was both) made a serious mistake in neglecting long-range fighter escort in their ideas. Hansell wrote:

It was recognized that fighter escort was inherently desirable, but no one could quite conceive how a small fighter could have the range of the bomber yet retain its combat maneuverability. Failure to see this issue through proved one of the Air Corps Tactical School's major shortcomings.