General Staff Resistance To Air Corps Doctrine
The Army and Navy, both cognizant of the continuing movement within the Air Corps for independence, cooperated to resist it. On 11 September 1935, the Joint Board, at the behest of the Navy and the concurrence of MacArthur, issued a "Joint Action Statement" that reasserted the limited role of the Air Corps as merely an auxiliary to the "mobile Army" in all its missions, including coastal defense. The edict was issued with the intent of shoving an upstart Air Corps back into its place. However, the bomber advocates interpreted its language to mean that the Air Corps could conduct long range reconnaissance, attack approaching fleets, reinforce distant bases, and attack enemy air bases, all in furtherance of its mission to prevent an air attack on America. The lack of inter-service cooperation on coastal defense fostered by the Joint Action Statement continued until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
A month later (15 October 1935), the General Staff sought to mitigate criticism of the statement by releasing a revision of Training Regulation TR 440-15 Employment of the Air Forces of the Army, which served as the doctrinal guide for the Air Corps prior to the replacement of training regulations by Army field manuals beginning in 1939. In 1934 MacArthur ordered a revision of TR 440-15 with the purpose of restating "the Air Corps's place in the scheme of national defense and...(to do away with)...misconceptions and interbranch prejudices." While calling the revision a "compromise" with airpower advocates, the General Staff parroted the conclusions of the Baker and Drum Boards, and reasserted its long-held position (and that of the Secretary Dern) that auxiliary support of the ground forces was the primary mission of the Air Corps. TR 440-15 did acknowledge some doctrinal principles asserted by the ACTS (including the necessity of destroying an enemy's air forces and concentrating air forces against primary objectives) and recognized that future wars would probably entail some missions "beyond the sphere of influence of the Ground Forces" (strategic bombardment), but it also completely ignored prioritization of such targets, weakening its effectiveness as doctrine. The Air Corps in general assented to the changes, as it did to other compromises of the period, as acceptable for the moment. TR 440-15 remained the doctrinal position of the Air Corps until it was superseded by the first Air Corps Field Manual, FM 1–5 Employment of Aviation of the Army, on 15 April 1940.
In the fall of 1937 the Army War College's course on the use of airpower reiterated the General Staff position and taught that airpower was of limited value when employed independently. Using attaché reports from both Spain and Ethiopia, and endorsed by a senior Air Corps instructor, Col. Byron Q. Jones, the course declared that the Flying Fortress concept had "died in Spain", and that airpower was useful mainly as "long range artillery." Air Corps officers in the G-3 Department of the General Staff pointed out that Jones' conclusions were inconsistent with the revised TR 440-15, but their views were dismissed by the Deputy Chief of Staff with the comment: "No doctrine is sacrosanct, and of all military doctrines, that of the Air Corps should be the last to be so regarded."
At the same time the General Staff had ordered studies from all the service branches to develop drafts for the coming field manuals. The Air Corps Board, a function of the ACTS, submitted a draft in September 1938 that included descriptions of independent air operations, strategic air attacks, and air action against naval forces, all of which the General Staff rejected in March 1939. Instead it ordered that the opening chapter of the Air Corps manual be a doctrinal statement developed by the G-3 that "left little doubt" that the General Staff's intention was "to develop and employ aviation in support of ground forces." The Air Corps Board, on the orders of Arnold, developed a secret study for "defense of the Monroe Doctrine" that recommended development of long-range, high altitude, high-speed aircraft for bombardment and reconnaissance to accomplish that defense.
The War Department, seeking to stifle procurement of the B-17 and in belated recognition that coordinated air-ground support had been long neglected, decided that it would develop and order only twin-engined "light" bombers in fiscal years 1939 and 1940, and refused funding for further experimental development of a very long range (VLR) bomber. In collaboration with the Navy, it placed a moratorium on the long range bomber program in June 1938 by issuing a Joint Board ruling that it could foresee no use for a long range bomber in future conflict. However the moratorium would last only a year, as it went against not only the trends of technological development, but against the geopolitical realities of coming war.
Between 1930 and 1938 the Air Corps had obtained a mission in coastal defense that justified both the creation of a centralized strike force and the development of four-engined bombers, and was lobbying for another mission, strategic bombardment, with which it could persuasively argue for independence from the Army.
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