Air Corps Tactical School - School Closure and Legacy

School Closure and Legacy

Before the short courses began, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for an expansion of the Air Corps in January 1939. The need for experienced officers to supervise the expansion led to plans to reduce the size of the faculty and long course classes as a compromise to keep the school functioning. Six of the 24 Air Corps instructors would be returned to regular duty and class sizes would be reduced from 60 to 20 students. However World War II in Europe began on 1 September 1939, before the staff and class reductions could be implemented. The Air Corps permitted the short courses to be finished, but suspended all instruction on 30 June 1940. The Tactical School was reduced to a caretaker staff of seven officers, including two librarians.

In June 1941 the Tactical School came under the control of the Southeast Air Corps Training Center (precursor of the Third Air Force), headquartered at Maxwell. A study was completed by SACTC that recommended the Tactical School be modified as a ten-week basic course in tactics for squadron and group level officers, instructing 2,000 officers its first year and 5,000 officers thereafter. However the Air Corps Board was soon moved to Eglin Field, Florida, and absorbed by the Air Corps Proving Ground, while all remaining staff and functions of the Tactical School (mainly the production of training literature) were transferred to Washington, D.C., where it continued work until 30 June 1942.

The ACTS at Maxwell graduated 870 officers, 400 of them in the short courses. During its entire history, the Tactical School trained 1,091 officers, 916 of them in the Air Service or Air Corps. 158 graduates from other arms included 118 Army officers, 35 Marines, and five Naval officers. The Tactical School also trained 17 officers from foreign countries. Of the 320 general officers in the Army Air Forces at the end of World War II, 261 were Tactical School graduates, including 14 of the 18 highest-ranking AAF generals. 134 officers (including 21 from the Army and Navy) served on the faculty of the Tactical School during its 20 years of existence, 58 of whom became general officers.

The tactical school concept was abandoned for the duration of World War II in favor of development of an actual tactical center, responsible for the mass teaching of all aspects of air warfare to inexperienced officers who would become commanders of newly created units. Although commandants at ACTS had lobbied throughout its existence for the Tactical School to serve as the nucleus of such a center, the tactical center instead became the function of a new school, the Army Air Force School of Applied Tactics, activated 27 October 1942, in Orlando, Florida, both for the training of unit cadres and the continuing development of tactical doctrine.

The experiences of World War II created a new impetus for professional education of air commanders, as it had after World War I, but on a much vaster scale. The expectation of becoming a separate service from the Army resulted in planning for a service-wide educational system, the nucleus of which would be the Air University. Established in 1946, AU coordinated all professional education for Air Force officers, and "fell heir to the purpose and tradition of the old Tactical School".