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Aerospace Power Journal - Winter 1996
 

*This article is the first part of a study of Gen H. H. Arnold and aviation technology, which will continue in the Winter 1997 issue.

 

Hap Arnold's Early Career In Aviation Technology

1903 - 1935

By Maj Dik Daso, USAF

HENRY HARLEY ("Hap") Arnold was not supposed to enter the Army.¹  His older brother, Thomas, was to attend West Point and continue the Arnold family tradition of American military service that began during the War for Independence.  Henry Harley, Hap's namesake and great-great-grandfather, had been a private in the Pennsylvania militia.  Another relative, Peter Arnold, fought with Gen George Washington's army.  Thomas G. Arnold, his grandfather, had been a nail maker who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War.  Herbert, Henry's father, had been a physician during the Spanish-American War, serving in Puerto Rico in 1898.  Despite the military legacy, and after attending Penn State during the year prior to the West Point admission tests, Thomas rejected his parents' persistent urging to attend West Point.  So Henry Arnold, then called Harley, inherited the opportunity to carry on the family's military heritage, which he did with great distinction.²

Cadet Arnold entered the Military Academy in 1903, the same year the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  However, horses, not airplanes, were his first love.  He, along with many West Pointers in the class of 1907, yearned for a cavalry assignment.  The dashing uniforms, the thunder of the charge, and the perceived class distinction between cavalry and every other branch of the Army, except the Engineering Corps, did not escape observation by members of the Corps of Cadets.³  One of the youngest ever admitted to West Point at 17 years and one month, Arnold found a niche at the tradition-laden institution.  He became a founding member, and eventually the leader, of the "Black Hand."  This covert spirit squad was responsible for many of the most spectacular student pranks ever accomplished in West Point's history.  Harley, called "Pewt" and "Benny" by his friends, had a fiery tongue and was frequently late for class.  He earned far fewer demerits, however, than most classmates during his first three years at the Point (table 1).  While leading the legendary Black Hand during his first class year, he amassed over one hundred "ticks" (demerits),  nearly double his previous high for a class year, but still less than many of his friends.  His future wife, Eleanor ("Bee") Pool, recalled that her first visit with Harley at the Point was through the window of his room.  He had been confined to quarters for a disciplinary infraction.⁴

Arnold also channeled his spirit into sports.  He saw frequent playing time as a second-string varsity football running back, put the shot for his class track and field team, and excelled at polo. Academically, Harley had an uncanny memory.  He "specked" (memorized) several pages of logarithmic tables,  which, although impressive, did not raise his final class standing any higher than 66 out of 111.  His standing would have been much higher had it not been for a generally high number of military discipline marks.  Cadet Arnold's last weeks at the Military Academy were perhaps typical for the soon-to-be lieutenant.  During cavalry drill (cadets still rode horses regularly in those days), Arnold was given demerits for chewing tobacco during formation, an act strictly forbidden.  Not only did this infraction keep him from many of the graduation festivities, but some believed that it provided the necessary leverage for the authorities in charge of graduation assignments to issue Arnold a ticket straight into the infantry.  The cavalry, Arnold wrote, was "the last romantic thing left on earth."⁵  His graduation standing was too low for engineering school and after a brief but high-powered struggle, arranged by his father and fought by the new lieutenant against his congressman, his senator, and the adjutant general of the Army, he accepted his commission and assignment as an infantryman.  In later reflection, his wife, Bee, summarized the situation: "Those with brains got the engineers, but I don't think that Hap was the engineering type at all."⁶

Lieutenant Arnold "volunteered" for an assignment in the Philippine Islands.  For the next two years, he worked hand in hand with engineering corpsmen mapping various islands.  In 1909, his unit was transferred to Fort Jay on Governors Island, New York.  There Arnold became aware of the airplane as more than just a curiosity.  Although he had seen the Bleriot airplane briefly while in France on his round-about return from the Philippines, both the Wright Flyer, purchased in 1908 by the Army, and a Glenn Curtiss machine landed at Governors Island during his tour.  Still trying to escape the infantry, Lieutenant Arnold took the entrance tests for the Ordnance Department, which held the most promise for early promotion (the lowest rank allowed in this department was first lieutenant).  While waiting for the results of the exams, Arnold received a letter from the War Department which offered him the opportunity of a lifetime-the chance to learn how to fly.⁷

Against the advice of his commander, but recognizing an opportunity to free himself from infantry ties, he accepted orders for flight instruction.  Arnold recalled his commanding officer's warning, "Young man, I know of no better way for a person to commit suicide!"⁸  The young second lieutenant considered those words a challenge.  By April 1911, Arnold was in Dayton, Ohio, to begin flying lessons at Simms Station, the home of the Wright Brothers' flying school. Arnold joined Lt Thomas DeWitt ("Tommy") Milling for an introduction given by the Wrights to the flying machine.   Arnold and Milling together spent hours learning how the delicate machine was assembled, disassembled, greased, tightened, and repaired.  Sharing the experience of becoming new aviators, the two young lieutenants developed a fast friendship.  Arnold was grateful for the time spent in the factory because, although the Army had decided to train pilots, it had not begun training mechanics or crew chiefs.  In 1911, every pilot was also a mechanic of sorts.

Orville and Wilbur Wright normally taught these ground lessons personally, but Lieutenant Arnold's flight instructor was a Wright employee named Al Welsh.  In fact, it does not appear that Arnold ever took a flying lesson with Orville or Wilbur Wright.  Between 3 May and 13 May, Arnold flew every one of his first 28 lessons with Welsh.  An average flight lasted eight minutes.  In practical terms, Arnold became a "pilot" on the day of his first solo, 13 May, a Saturday.  Technically, his civilian airplane pilot certificate (Fédération Aeronautique Internationale- FAI) was awarded on 6 July 1911 and he did not receive his "official" Military Aviator rating until 22 July 1912, reflected in War Department General Order No. 40.⁹

Following initial flight qualification, Arnold and Milling crated up the Army's two newest Wright Flyers and followed them by train to College Park, Maryland, the home of the first Signal Corps flight school.  The hours spent on the Wright factory floor began to pay off.  Arnold and Milling assembled the craft themselves in preparation for the opening of the flight school.  The Army's only two pilots were now its only flight instructors as well.  Not only did they become skilled pilots, but skilled airplane mechanics and dedicated crew chiefs as well.  They even created the first "Dash-1," the airplane technical manual, which included a picture of the craft with each of the parts meticulously labeled by hand.

Flight then was still a fair-weather game.  As winter approached the Washington area, the aviators boxed up their planes and moved to Barnes Farm, near Augusta, Georgia, hoping for more temperate weather.  Although the flyers endured the only blizzard to hit Augusta in 15 years, much flying and training, including wireless radio work, photography, and even bomb dropping were accomplished before returning to College Park in May 1912.¹⁰

For the rest of that year, tragedy seemed to stalk the flying community.  Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever on 30 May.  Al Welsh died in a plane crash in June.  In July, Arnold crashed off the coast of Massachusetts in a new Burgess/Wright "tractor" airplane.  It was in that crash that Arnold received the scar on his chin which showed distinctively for the rest of his life.  Two more Army aviators were killed in September, Lewis C. Rockwell and Corp Frank Scott (Scott was the first enlisted man to perish in an aircraft accident).  In November, it was Arnold who would once again face the hazards of early flight.¹¹

The month of October was one of achievement rather than disaster.  Arnold was awarded the first Mackay Trophy for the most outstanding military flight of the year.  Arnold and Milling had been challenged to fly a triangular route between Fort Myer, Virginia,  College Park, Maryland; and Washington, D.C., and pinpoint a "troop concentration."  In winning the award, Arnold had completed the reconnaissance course and reported the strength and location of the simulated enemy troop concentrations to the event judges.  In one respect, the "contest" was really not a contest at all.  Milling, the only other participant, had aircraft problems that kept him on the ground.  The flight did, however, demonstrate an actual mission for Army aviation, something the Army air arm was still struggling to define (as demonstrated by the variety of missions practiced while bivouacked in Georgia).  Perhaps because of these circumstances, Arnold did not take himself or his accomplishment too seriously.  The young lieutenant wrote Bee that "it [the trophy] certainly is handsome.  I figure that it will hold about four gallons, so I cannot see how you can fill it with anything but beer."¹²

At the end of the month, Arnold, Milling, and the rest of the College Park airmen traveled to Fort Riley, Kansas, to participate in Army ground force exercises.  Arnold's enthusiasm for flying was temporarily doused by a near-fatal airplane flight on 5 November 1912.  Lieutenant Arnold and an observer, Lt A. L. P. Sands, were inexplicably thrown into a spin toward the ground.  Arnold righted the craft and missed a violent crash by only a few seconds and tens of feet.  The on-board altitude measuring device, a barograph, clearly recorded a drop of 300 feet in ten seconds, ending up just above the ground-zero line.  It was too close a call for Arnold.  He was so rattled that he immediately requested three weeks' leave and temporarily removed himself from flying status.  "From the way I feel now," he explained, "I do not see how I can get in a machine with safety for the next month or two."  By then, Arnold had earned several aviation firsts: winning the first Mackay Trophy, setting several altitude records, and accomplishing the first successful spin recovery in an airplane.¹³

Those few weeks of "grounding" grew into a few months, and then a year as a desk-bound Arnold served as the assistant to the officer in charge of aviation in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Brig Gen George P. Scriven.  When the young lieutenant married Eleanor Pool in September 1913, he was effectively removed from the active flying roster. At that time, Army flyers were not permitted to marry and remain on flying status.  Although this requirement would be softened by World War I, Arnold was relegated to ground duties until November 1916.¹⁴

Back in the infantry, Arnold never wavered in his belief in the importance of airpower.  He recalled that in 1913 flyers fought a constant uphill battle for acceptance as well as for modern equipment.  "At that time," Arnold said, "we in the Air Service looked to foreign countries for engines that might give us better performance."¹⁵  Even as a lieutenant, Arnold looked for the best technology available, regardless of its origin.

Not only did the lieutenant look for the best new technology, he constantly sought improvements for the machines the Army already had.  As early as 6 November 1911, Arnold had written Orville Wright about his concerns that aircraft did not carry enough weight or climb fast enough for military use.  Arnold suggested increasing engine power and propeller revolutions to maximize performance.  Brother Wilbur responded with a detailed explanation of how to fine-tune the engines, both new and old, and explained that the propellers and chains "have a large factor of safety and if sudden jerks are avoided, will easily carry 25% more power than our present motors give."¹⁶  But Arnold was not satisfied with the response.  On 18 November, he again wrote the Wrights:

Could we put a 60 or 70 H.P. [horsepower] engine in the standard machine and put 2 or 3 more teeth in the engine sprocket?  This would give us much more power when it was needed but for ordinary flying we could fly on less than the maximum power of the motor.¹⁷

Arnold was always pushing for improved equipment and maximum aircraft capability, whether it was available or not.

After his near-fatal spin, Arnold continued his inquiries, initially with a different emphasis.  "If machines are inverted and given the sand test, what factor of safety should be required? What other tests could be given for determining the factor of safeties [sic] of any important parts?"¹⁸ His concern with aircraft safety began after his spin and never wavered during his career.

Before long, Arnold was back to inquiries about performance and design directed at the Wrights.  "As it is desired by this office to incorporate a stress test of some kind in our specifications for machines," he wrote,  "we would greatly appreciate it if you would send to us . . . the chart showing the travel of the center of pressure for various speeds and weights."  Or, "Will you kindly tell me what, if any, are the objections to having the propellers turn in the opposite direction to what they turn now in your machines?"  And "The light scout machines have caused more or less controversy but I think the Signal Corps is at last persuaded as to the necessity of having them even though there is no one capable of flying them but Milling."¹⁹  The Wrights always answered his letters in detail, but it seemed each response generated two more questions.

Arnold's constant inquisitive attitude about aircraft was a result of his pilot training and mechanical skills.  He was not an aeronautical expert, however, and did not always understand the science behind or the engineering problems associated with his queries.  Changing prop direction, for example, would have required the Wrights to reverse nearly everything internal to the machine.  Yet he was never fully satisfied with a machine as it stood.  As a pilot,  he wanted safer aircraft capable of higher altitude, better load capability, greater range, and faster speed.  As a mechanic, he wanted interchangeable parts, peak engine performance, and substantial margins of safety in construction.  Lieutenant Arnold wanted the best available equipment for the Air Service, and he did what he could to get it.

From December 1913 through 1915, Lieutenant Arnold participated in practicing  ground attacks on different Philippine islands.  During one of these exercises, Arnold watched a young lieutenant plan and execute a flawless attack at Bataan.  He was so impressed that he told Bee upon his return that he had met a future Army chief of staff.  This young man would become Arnold's friend, commander, and staunch supporter nearly a quarter century later.  His name was George Catlett Marshall.  Lieutenant Arnold was gaining experience and contacts that no other Army officer could match over a 50-year career.  His experiences outside of the flying world became as valuable to future air forces as his personal aviation experiences. Then, as unexpected as his orders to join the Wrights in Dayton had been, he received orders to requalify into the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps.

Although joint Army-Navy aeronautical committees had existed before the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), they had no official status and even less authority over the progress of aeronautical science.  The need for a committee with legitimate power to direct research and offer advice became apparent the following year while the Army was providing air support for Brig Gen John J. Pershing's punitive expedition into Mexico.  One plane was lost before the operation even began, while another crashed a few days later,  leaving only six of the original eight for operations.  The craft in use, the Curtiss JN-3, had insufficient power to climb over the mountains and insufficient strength to withstand unpredictable winds and storms.  Replacements were not immediately available.²⁰

Arnold was adjusting to his new assignment as the supply officer at the newly established Aviation School at Rockwell Field near San Diego.  He held the new Junior Military Aviator rating and wore a fresh set of captain's bars.  Arnold arrived in May,  but his re-qualification training did not begin until 18 November 1916 and was completed in six days when he soloed again for the first time in over four years.²¹  Soon he was off to Panama as commander of a squadron there.  In Panama, he was supposed to find an acceptable location for an air base before bringing his squadron to assist in the defense of the Canal Zone.  No consensus could be reached on a location between the Americans-both Army and Navy-and the Panamanians, and he was sent back to Washington to take up the matter directly with Gen Leonard Wood, commanding general of the Atlantic Department.  Arnold heard the news of America's entry into the Great War on the ship to Washington on 6 April 1917.  He knew he would not be back to Panama any time soon.²²

By August, Col (temporary) Henry Arnold  was permanently assigned to his wartime post in Washington, D.C., as executive officer of the Air Division (the furthest up the chain of his "dozen jobs in one").  He had pressed for an assignment to Europe but was denied a transfer to the combat zone.  Again, his assignment offered experience in the administration and, more importantly, the buildup of American air forces,  which would pay off two decades later.  Arnold rapidly became an indispensable aid to his superiors, who had little knowledge of air matters. While stuck in Washington, Arnold saw firsthand the immense problems facing the air division: lack of trained mechanics, lack of pilots, lack of funding, and lack of an aircraft production system (which Arnold considered the biggest headache of the war).  Arnold spent most of his time traveling around the United States checking on aircraft production and development and keeping his superiors informed of the slow progress being made in these areas.²³

All of these problems resulted from America's policy of neutrality, which until February 1917 was publicly supported by President Woodrow Wilson.  To build the American military in any form was to abandon neutrality as a policy.  Not until German unrestricted U-boat warfare threatened American overseas trade with continental Europe had public opinion shifted dramatically to one of active intervention.  The interception of the Zimmermann telegram, a memo from Berlin to Mexico City seeking a military alliance against the US, added insult to injury, but interventionist politics had already ensured funding for the military.  Still, this funding came too late to build a fully functional Air Service.²⁴

Arnold continued searching for improvements in planes and weapons.  He teamed up with a task force of civilian scientists and produced the first "guided missile," dubbed the "Flying Bug," which was a beautiful wood-crafted, mini-biplane.  Early versions were simply made of papier-mâché.  It housed a two-stroke, Ford engine and carried a "warhead" of 200-300 pounds of explosives.  The Bug had no wheels and was launched from a wagon-like contraption that ran on a long section of portable track.  The "missile" engine was started at one side of the track.  When the engine was fully revved, the mechanical counter was engaged and the Bug was released.  When it reached flying speed, it lifted off and flew straight ahead, climbing to a preset altitude controlled by a supersensitive aneroid barometer.  When the Bug reached its altitude, the barometer sent signals to small flight controls, which were moved by a system of cranks and a bellows (from a player piano) for altitude control.  A gyro helped maintain the stability of the craft, the barometer helped maintain altitude, but only the design of the wings assured directional stability. The Bug flew straight ahead until the mechanical counter had sensed the calculated number of engine rotations required to carry the weapon the intended target distance.  A cam fell into place and the wings folded, looking much like a diving falcon swooping down on its prey.  The Bug was rarely as deadly, and certainly not as fast, as a falcon.²⁵

On the Bug team were Elmer Sperry, who had spearheaded the Navy's "aerial torpedo" project a few months earlier, Orville Wright, Robert Millikan, and the primary engineer, Charles Kettering.  Most test flights were accomplished at Eglin Field, Florida, on the wide-open sand dunes that existed in that day.  A first test, however, was attempted at Wright Field, Ohio, one that nearly ended in disaster as the errant missile narrowly missed crashing into the reviewing stands.  After witnessing the initial test of the Bug,  Arnold recalled that the gadget flew "like a thing possessed of the devil."²⁶  Lateral controls added shortly after these tests rectified the control problem that was the result of over-dependence on the dihedral of the wings for lateral stability.  More important than the gadget itself were the members of the team, particularly Millikan, who would play a vital scientific role in the 1930s and during the Second World War. Arnold never forgot his experiences in production, administration, scientific experimentation, or testing.  Nor did he forget the men who had helped create the fledgling force.

Arnold did, finally, make it over to Europe.  He was convinced that General Pershing would want to bring the Bug into combat as soon as possible and was sent to convince him. Officially his orders were to sail by mid-October and become familiar with training organization methods in France and combat operations at the front.²⁷  His trip was not a success, however.  He immediately fell victim to Spanish Flu, which was rampant on the East Coast.  After recovery, he made it to the western front during November, shortly before the armistice went into effect.  Because the weather was so terrible, however, he flew no combat missions. The Bug project died shortly thereafter.²⁸

Arnold later recalled the importance of many advances that occurred in aviation during the war years.  Some of the most significant were oxygen masks with communications devices all in one, air-to-ground radio communication sets, automatic cameras, armored pilot seats, increased firepower for strafing, the Bug, and improved aeronautical medical research equipment.  Additionally, the establishment of the NACA held promise for the future of airplane research and development.  Aircraft production, however, never reached acceptable levels.  For example, even though Liberty engines were produced in great quantity, the United States never figured out how to build enough aircraft for the engines. By the end of the war, 1,213 American-built DH-4 aircraft had made it overseas but only about 600 had been sent to the front.²⁹  Arnold had witnessed the production bottlenecks firsthand and would remember the consequences of a failed production arrangement when he was in a position to do something about it.

After returning from Europe, and no longer being needed in D.C., Arnold received orders back to Rockwell Field.  There he assumed the post of district supervisor, Western District of the Air Service.  From January to June 1919, Arnold supervised the postwar demobilization of the Western District.  Even while dealing with massive reductions in the size of the Army, Arnold promoted aviation as best he could.  He held air shows and ordered his "Low Flying Team" to perform for California crowds.  At one of these events, Arnold "decorated" movie star Mary Pickford with a banner making her an "Honorary Ace."  The positive publicity generated by events such as these was desperately needed in the immediate postwar years.³⁰

Arnold was well aware that public opinion was a powerful tool in maintaining support for the Air Service.  When Rockwell Field closed temporarily, Arnold was transferred to San Francisco as air liaison officer for the Ninth Corps Area.  A witness to the rapid drawdown, Arnold was determined to do what he could to bolster support for airpower.  On his own initiative, Arnold established "fire patrols" over the western region.  That not only saved thousands of acres of timber, but millions of dollars as well.  His activities caught the public's attention.  A peacetime use for military airplanes kept the shrinking service in the air, at least for a while.³¹  Arnold the "politician" was developing during these early days in San Francisco.

It was during the years 1919 to 1924 that Arnold's working relationship with other Army officers began taking shape.  William ("Billy") Mitchell's zealous approach to creating an independent air force taught Arnold how not to tackle a political hot potato.  Arnold recalled that Mitchell himself had warned him away from the outspoken methods that he had been using.  Mitchell realized that he was financially able to survive expulsion from the Army while most of his followers did not come from wealthy backgrounds.  Carl A. ("Tooey") Spaatz and Ira C. Eaker served under Arnold during his next tour, again at Rockwell Field.  These men became Arnold's right-hand and left-hand men over the next two decades. Eaker coauthored three books with Arnold, and Spaatz succeeded Arnold's command and become the first chief of staff of the independent Air Force in 1947. The amazing James H. ("Jimmy") Doolittle caught Arnold's attention after pulling off a dangerous flying stunt for a gathered crowd of onlookers.  Arnold grounded the young second lieutenant for one month but later called on him to command the famous raid on Tokyo.³²

While Arnold successfully pressed for publicity out west, Billy Mitchell held most of the headlines everywhere else.  On 21 and 22 July 1921, Mitchell's bombers sank the ex-German battleship Ostfriesland, considered unsinkable by most naval officers.  The wild publicity that followed marked the event as the Air Service's first major victory over the Navy in terms of service roles and missions.  The seeds of strategic bombing had been sown.  Another one of Mitchell's ideas was the Barling bomber, a six-engined behemoth capable of carrying a 10,000-pound payload.  Although it seemed logical to build this monster in support of a "strategic" bombing mission, its performance was so poor that it could not fly over the mountains between Dayton and Washington while fully fueled.  The Appalachians exceeded the bomber's service ceiling.

But the Barling was not a total loss.  Valuable wind-tunnel data, parts design, and other aeronautical engineering problems were addressed and solved during the Barling's development.  In that way, the Barling influenced the design of the B-17 and B-29,  which were the American backbone of true strategic bombing in World War II.  Although Arnold found the Barling operationally worthless, he realized that sometimes "the full-scale article must be built to get the pattern for the future."³³

In the fall of 1924, Arnold was recalled to Washington by Gen Mason Patrick, then chief of the Air Service.  Patrick, a classmate of Blackjack Pershing, had been so impressed with Arnold's California performance that he had added a commendation to Arnold's military record (201 file).  Before joining Patrick's staff, however, Arnold attended the Army Industrial College in Washington.  His World War I experience with aircraft production had been less than satisfying and now Major Arnold knew why.  The Army planners were determined to utilize the American auto industry as the primary contractor to manufacture airplanes in time of crisis.  Arnold lobbied for a different approach.  He argued that the aircraft industry should remain the major contractor while using the auto industry for small parts and other subcontracting jobs.  This short "college" assignment was one of the most valuable of his career, one which he said was to stand him in good stead in later years.³⁴  Not only did Major Arnold have a plan for future buildups in his mind, but he realized that his civilian industry contacts from earlier tours would be essential if a sizable production scheme had any hope of success.  Glenn Curtiss, Elmer Sperry, Donald Douglas, and Larry Bell were only a few of those contacts.

During 1925 and much of 1926, Arnold served as Patrick's chief of information.  In this function he was able to keep his eyes and ears open to new developments in foreign and domestic aviation in both the civil and military arenas. In a failed effort, he attempted to keep Billy Mitchell out of trouble by urging him to temper his language and writings while campaigning for an independent air force.  Mitchell caused too much trouble and was "exiled" to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, in February 1925.  Colonel Mitchell was not gone long.  When he returned to face a military court-martial, Arnold was his Washington liaison officer.  By Christmas 1926, with Mitchell "martyred," Arnold considered resigning but gained the resolve needed to endure his own punishment.³⁵  In the turbulence of Billy Mitchell's trial, Arnold was under the threat of a court-martial of his own.  The official charge, made by Mason Patrick, was violation of the Articles of War for misappropriation of government supplies in an effort to sway legislators in support of Mitchell's viewpoint. Arnold himself was "exiled" to Fort Riley, Kansas, the Army's largest cavalry post.³⁶

It was at Fort Riley in 1927 that Arnold made his choice to remain a military officer.  Beyond the malice of his superiors, both personally and toward aviation, Arnold believed that he had suffered numerous career setbacks.  He had never been assigned to the cavalry, even after repeated requests.  He had been denied any opportunity to participate in the American war effort in Europe.  He had testified on Mitchell's behalf despite warnings from his superiors that by siding with Mitchell he was jeopardizing his career.  The national economic picture was very good.  The New York Stock Exchange was higher than it had been on the same date for the previous five years. Cotton and coffee hit all-time highs on the market, and General Motors reported record profits during the week of 23-30 July 1927.³⁷  Additionally, Arnold had reached his 20th year of military service, which entitled him to half pay and full benefits if he were to retire.

John K. Montgomery, then president of American International Airways (a branch of Pan American Airways), had offered the major a lucrative position as the first president of Pan Am.³⁸  On 24 July, Arnold replied: "As much as I would like to tell you that I will resign and take up work with the company,  I hesitate doing it on account of the obligations which I have with my family."  Further, Arnold suggested that he might take four months' leave to work for Pan Am and then make his final decision.³⁹  This leave was apparently never taken even though Montgomery had called Jack Jouett, a mutual military friend of Arnold's now stationed in Washington, to expedite the leave request.⁴⁰  Thus, family concerns were foremost on Arnold's mind at the time his final decision was made.  Remarkably, Maj Henry Arnold and his family remained in the Army.

Arnold never mentioned his family as a motive in his recollections.  "I couldn't very well quit the service under fire," he said.⁴¹  One of Arnold's biographers, Thomas Coffey, suggested that the frustrated major had many things to accomplish in the Air Corps, many ideas to test.⁴²  At that moment, however, there was no chance that Arnold would ever hold a position which would allow him to "test" anything.  He had been banished within the Army, his reputation preceding him, and was sent to the "worst post" in the country as punishment for his clear violation of official regulations.  Henry Arnold was lucky he was still an Army aviator at all.

He survived this tour and even attended the Army Staff College, despite the protests of the Staff College commandant, who had served on the court that had tried Billy Mitchell.  After his tour at the Staff College, Arnold took command of the Fairfield Air Service Depot, near Dayton, Ohio, in the fall of 1928.  In an expanded role during 1931, Arnold also served as executive officer to the chief of the Materiel Division at Wright Field, Brig Gen H. Conger Pratt.  It was while in these assignments that Arnold developed his understanding of, and distaste for, the Army research and development (R&D) system.⁴³  Arnold was sickened by the lack of progress that he perceived at Wright Field.  New in 1930, for example, the Douglas O-38 two-seat observation biplane was capable of only 130 miles per hour. "What the hell have we gained in twenty years?" he rhetorically asked his son Hank, "Nothing!"⁴⁴  These perceptions were etched deeply into his memory and stayed with him for the rest of his career.

By November 1931, Arnold assumed command at March Field near Los Angeles.  Lieutenant Colonel Arnold's World War I associate, Dr Robert Millikan, was now president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 40 miles away in Pasadena.  Winner of a Nobel Prize for physics in 1923, he was continuing his cosmic ray research in the face of a challenge to its validity by Karl Compton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Arnold had little understanding of the nature of these experiments that involved moving a lead sphere to different altitudes and taking electronic measurements. Nonetheless, Millikan had no trouble convincing Arnold to lend him a Curtiss B-2 Condor bomber to complete his charged-particle experiments.  Arnold had his mechanics build a special "bomb" rack for the sphere and affix it to the Condor.  These experiments were carried out from Canada to Mexico over a period of months.  As part of this project, measurements were also taken underground, in mines, and at a variety of elevations on the earth.  On one occasion, Millikan transported the ball to Lake Arrowhead on top of a high mountain peak.  Unfortunately, the ball was so heavy that it broke through the bottom of the rickety boat in which he was transporting the experiment.  It sank to the bottom of the lake.  Arnold recalled that the first time they met following the unfortunate mishap, he addressed the professor as "Admiral" Millikan.⁴⁵

New Deal reforms, air shows, public relations campaigns, and exercises, as well as support of scientific research, kept Arnold's 1st Wing busy in the early 1930s.  Even though the American economy had collapsed, Arnold did not forget the technical development of his airplanes.  Military funding continued at forecast levels into 1934 but faded somewhat with the advent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's reforms.  Air shows at March Field were major public events in Southern California as they had been at Rockwell Field a decade before.  Movie stars and celebrities of all sorts visited the field on show days.  The inevitable result was a page of favorable publicity in several Southern California newspapers the following day.  But perhaps Arnold's most impressive accomplishment during this tour of duty was not accomplished at March Field or even with his own airplanes.

Lieutenant Colonel Arnold won his second Mackay Trophy as commander of a flight of 10 new B-10 bombers conducting a round-trip flight from Washington, D.C., to Fairbanks, Alaska.  The first all-metal low-wing monoplane, the Martin B-10 bomber, was the most technologically advanced airplane in the US inventory.  After a solid month's preparation, Arnold took his planes on the 18,000-mile round-trip flight with only one major foul-up and no aircraft losses along the way.  Planning was meticulous.  A poor showing would have been a catastrophic embarrassment, particularly since the Air Corps was still stinging from its lackluster performance while carrying the US Mail in the spring of 1934.⁴⁶  The success of the mission brought Arnold a well-earned decoration, a trophy, and proof that long-range bombers could threaten once impenetrable and isolated territorial boundaries, both those of potential enemies and those of the United States.

But Arnold always pushed for improvement.  His airplanes made the trip to Fairbanks, but now the route would have to be flown faster or higher.  One of his favorite places to search for improvements in aeronautics was Caltech.  There "Admiral" Millikan had gone a long way in fulfilling his dreams for American aviation.  Caltech had the best wind-tunnel facilities in the western United States, and it had one of the finest academic faculties.  The civil aviation industry was beginning to locate nearby in Southern California.  Caltech had definitely aroused the interest of the commanding officer at March Field.⁴⁷

By March 1935, Millikan, Brigadier General Arnold, and Professor Theodore von Kármán, director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) wind tunnels had become well acquainted.  Kármán recalled that he had first seen Arnold as a major, perhaps on one of Arnold's inspection tours to the Los Angeles area while still assigned to Wright Field.  "Maj. Arnold," Kármán remembered, "came `alvays in the vind toonel' and asked me questions."⁴⁸  By 1930, Kármán, second in the field of aeronautics only to his former professor, Ludwig Prandtl, had come permanently to Caltech from Aachen, Germany, enticed by a Guggenheim Fund stipend.  Arnold's association with the Hungarian professor provided him with a lifelong, personal tutor in theoretical aeronautical science and its application to airpower.  During the first half of the 1930s, both Arnold and Kármán developed a similar vision for military aviation: the United States needed a cooperative aeronautics establishment that coupled civilian scientific and industrial expertise with the practical needs of the Army Air Corps.⁴⁹  To Arnold, this collaboration meant better Air Corps airplanes.  To Kármán, it meant great possibilities for Caltech and the West Coast aviation industry.  A decade later, with a five-star Arnold commanding the Army Air Forces (AAF), their vision would become a reality.

It was with the experience gained during his early career that General Arnold began to transform the AAF into a technology-minded service.  His task was daunting but with the help of scientists like Kármán and Millikan, and associates like Marshall, Spaatz, and Eaker, he would influence the thinking of an entire generation of AAF leadership.  That process had begun in earnest when Maj Gen Oscar Westover's plane crashed in September 1938.  

 

Table 1
The Military Career of Henry Harley Arnold (Cadet No. 4596)
Born: 25 June 1886, Gladwyne, Pa.
Died: 15 January 1950, Sonoma, Calif., age 63.

CADET RECORD (all numbers refer to class standing rather than a % grade)
SUBJECT	1903/04	1904/05	1905/06	1906/07
Overall Ranking	82/136	63/119	61/113	66/111
Conduct	25	27	21	52
Demerits (actual)	45	66	36	105
Military/Drill	97	X	70	78
Engineering	X	73	X	47/62
Math	74	49	X	X
English	103	94	X	X
French	98	89	X	X
Spanish	X	94	X	X
Drawing	X	70	51	X
Philosophy	X	X	66	X
Chemistry	X	X	53	X
Hygiene	X	X	94	X
Law	X	X	X	100
History	X	X	X	89
Gunnery	X	X	X	54
Military Efficiency	X	X	X	76
Deportment and Discipline	X	X	X	60

 

CAREER ASSIGNMENTS
1 Aug 1903	Entered  West Point, the Military  Academy
14 Jun 1907	Graduated
5 Dec 1907	Fort William McKinley, P. I.
9 Apr 1908	San  Mateo, P. I., and various other temporary locations
18 Jun 1909	En route to US through Asia and Europe
1 Oct 1909	Governors Island, New York
20 Apr 1911	Aviation School, Dayton, Ohio, Simms Station
15 Jun 1911	College Park, Md.  Aviation duty as instructor/supply officer
25 Nov 1911	Augusta, Ga. Same duty
15 Apr 1912	Fort Leavenworth, Kans.
1 May 1912	College Park, Md.
1 Jul 1912	Connecticut Maneuvers
5 Aug 1912	College Park, Md.
1 Oct 1912	Fort Riley, Kans.  (near--fatal spin)
15 Nov 1912	Washington, D.C.  Duty in Office of the Chief Signal Officer
1 Sep 1913	Fort Thomas, Ky. Infantry
25 Nov 1913	En route to Philippine Islands
5 Jan 1914	Fort William McKinley, P. I.
5 Jan 1916	En route to Madison Barracks, N.Y.
15 Mar 1916	Madison Barracks, N.Y.
20 May 1916	Aviation School at North Island, San Diego, Calif.
5 Feb 1917	Panama Canal Zone
20 Mar 1917	Washington, D.C.  Asst. Executive and Executive Officer, Air Division, Signal Corps; Board Control Member; Asst. Director Military Aeronautics; Director of Military Aeronautics
10 Jan 1919	Rockwell Field, Coronado, Calif.  District Supervisor, Western District, Air Service.
30 May 1919	Crissy Field, San Francisco, Calif. Air Officer, 9th Air Corps Area
17 Oct 1922	Rockwell Field, Calif.  Commanding Officer, Air Depot
15 Aug 1924	Washington, D.C. Student, Army industrial College
Mar 1925	Graduated AIC, then assigned to the Office, Chief Air Corps
Mar 1926	Marshal Field, Fort Riley, Kans.  (“Exile.” Wrote Bill Bruce books)
Aug 1928	Fort Leavenworth, Kans.  Student, General Service School
12 Jun 1929	Graduated, then to Fairfield Air Depot, Ohio.  Commanding Officer; Chief, Field Service Section, Materiel Division, Air Corps; Executive Officer, Material Division
29 Oct 1931	En route to March Field, Calif.
26 Nov 1931	March Field, Calif.  Commanding Officer
17 Jan 1936	Washington, D.C.  Assistant Chief of the Air Corps
21 Sep 1938	Chief of the Air Corps
20 Jun 1941	Chief, Army Air Forces
9 Mar 1942	Commanding General, Army Air Forces; Member Joint Chiefs of Staff; Member Combined Chiefs of Staff
21 Dec 1944	General of the Army (5--star rank)
9 Feb 1946	Office of the Chief of Staff
3 Mar 1946	End tour
30 Jun 1946	Retired with disability (heart problems), 43 years service
7 May 1949	General of the Air Force

 

MILITARY RANK PROGRESSION
1 Aug 1903	Cadet
14 Jun 1907	Second Lieutenant, 29th Infantry
10 Apr 1913	First Lieutenant of Infantry
20 May 1916	Captain, Aviation Section, Signal Corps
23 Sep 1916	Captain of Infantry
27 Jun 1917	Major, Aviation Section, Signal Corps
5 Aug 1917	Colonel, temporary, Signal Corps
15 Jan 1918	Major, temporary, Infantry
30 Jun 1920	Captain, permanent grade
1 Jul 1920	Major of Infantry (transferred to Air Service 11 August 1920)
1 Feb 1931	Lieutenant Colonel, Air Corps
2 Mar 1935	Brigadier General, temporary, Air Corps (one source: 11 Feb)
22 Sep 1938	Major General, Chief of Air Corps (30 October, Deputy Chief of Staff, Army, for Air Matters)
15 Dec 1941	Lieutenant General
19 Mar 1943	General
21 Dec 1944	General of the Army
30 Jun 1946	General of the Army (ret.)
7 May 1949	General of the Air Force

By Maj Dik Daso

Notes

1. The origin of the name "Hap" is still a matter of dispute.  Arnold's original West Point tag was "Pewt."  Arnold's West Point diary, located at the USAF Academy Library, carries that name proudly across the front cover.  The Howitzer, West Point's yearbook, also noted the nickname "Benny."  One of these two tags is a reference to a cartoon character of the day.  In his youth, Arnold was called "Harley," his middle name, by family members.  One account claimed that his "perpetual smile" while flying as a stunt double on an early motion picture led a Hollywood producer, who probably could not remember his name, to call him "Happy."  This was then shortened.  Another suggested that Hap, when angry, would involuntarily tighten his lips in an insidious smile.  This famous "smile" deceptively portrayed Arnold as "happy" when he was, in reality, quite the opposite.  It is most likely that Hap is short for "Happy," the name which Bee, his wife, used for him in many of their personal letters.  Hap's mother called him "Sunny," (not s-o-n-n-y) most of her life which indicated a cheerful appearance or sunny disposition.  The name Hap did not catch on in his military/personal correspondence until about 1930.  Until then, many classmates still addressed correspondence to Pewt, his West Point nickname.

2. Address by Brig. Gen. H. H. Arnold, Gladwyne, Pa., 30 May 1938. Papers of Ira C. Eaker, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., box 38, Arnold speeches, 2; Mrs Barbara Arnold, interview with author, 6 April 1995, Washington, D.C. Mrs Arnold is the daughter of Donald Douglas and widow of the late William Bruce Arnold, General Arnold's son.

3. Maj Gen John W. Huston, USAF, Retired, to author, 22 February 1996.  General Huston is currently editing Arnold's wartime diaries and is an authority on General Arnold and his military career.

4. Gen H. H. Arnold, Reminiscences of Friends and Acquaintances, Mrs. H. H. Arnold section, Special Collections, USAF Academy, Colorado(hereafter, Friends of Arnold);  also see the Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the USMA at West Point, New York, supp. vol. 5, 1900-1910; and Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the USMA, June 1904; and The Howitzer, 1907, the student yearbook.  All of these are available at the West Point Archives.

5. The Henry H. Arnold Collection, box 262A, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter Arnold Collection); also The Howitzer, 1907; also see Murray Green Collection (hereafter MGC), notes from the Columbia University Oral History Review (hereafter CUOHR); Henry H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York:  Harper and Brothers, 1949), 7-8; a generally accurate but hard-to-find book by Flint O. Dupre, Hap Arnold: Architect of American Air Power (New York: Macmillan Co., 1972), 1-14, is a shorter version of Global Mission. Henry H. Arnold and Ira C. Eaker, Army Flyer (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942), 40-41.

6. New York Daily Tribune, 13 June 1907.  The article also displayed a marvelous, informal class picture of the graduates; also see Mrs H. H. Arnold, interviewed by Murray Green, n.d., transcript, MGC, USAF Academy, Colorado.  Mrs Arnold was known by all as "Bee."  Arnold titled his letters to "Beadle," a pet name.  In the early 1900s, "B-e-a" was the short form of "Bertha," a name that Mrs Arnold would have likely found unacceptable.

7. Arnold Collection, box 3, folder 9; a copy of the flight log is also available at the National Air and Space Museum Archives, H. H. Arnold folder; also see Global Mission, 1-21.  Arnold just barely failed the ordnance exam.

8. Global Mission, 15. Draft manuscripts of Global Mission are available in the Library of Congress, but book page references are used here as a convention.

9. Arnold's ratings were: FAI, airplane pilot certificate no. 29, July 1911; Military Aviator, War Department 1912-1914, July 1912; Expert Aviator, Aero Club of America no. 4, September 1912; and Junior Military Aviator, May 1916; see also Memorandum for Special Assistant to the JCS for Arms Control, 21 September 1970, USAF Historical Research Agency (hereafter USAFHRA), 168.7265-8.  This document contains a study by the Office of Air Force History listing the first 22 military pilots and their license dates, verified in published War Department GO files at the Pentagon.

10. Arnold Collection, box 3; and Global Mission, 3038.

11. Global Mission, 35-41.

12. Arnold to Bee, 20 June 1913, MGC.  Arnold loved to have fun, and a drink was never out of the question in his early career.  His father had been rather strict about the use of alcohol and did not even permit it at Henry and Bee's wedding, a decision he later wished he had modified to allow champagne.  Tommy Milling, Arnold's best man for the affair and a fellow pilot, smuggled some liquor up from the Arnold cellar during the reception anyway.  It was interesting that after World War II, Arnold and Bee were both subjects of a Pabst Beer ad that showed them at their ranch in the Sonoma Valley.  Robert Arnold, interview with author, 14-16 July 1995, Sonoma, Calif.

13. 2d Lt H. H. Arnold to commanding officer, Signal Corps Aviation School, 6 November 1912, Fort Riley, Kansas, USAFHRA, 168.65-38.  The first portion of the letter describes the progress being made with the various airplanes at Fort Riley.  Observation techniques were discussed in addition to mention of a number of engine problems.  Arnold's disclosure of the near accident is added at the end of the report in a straightforward paragraph explaining the event.  Letters from this period are also located in the Arnold Collection, box 3.  The collection is now available on microfilm.

14. Global Mission, 41-43; Arnold Collection, box 222; also see Arnold 201, 94, National Archives, stack W-3; and CUOHR, B. Foulois.  The safety statistics during the 1990-91 flying year for the US Air Force showed that less than two major accidents (not necessarily even a fatality) occurred every 100,000 flying hours.  This included combat operations in the Persian Gulf War.  In 1913, the safety rate equivalent would have been 950 deaths per 100,000 flying hours, not including major accidents where planes could not be repaired.

15. General of the Air Force Henry H. Arnold, USAF, Retired, interviewed by T. A. Boyd, 19 October 1949, El Rancho Feliz, Sonoma, Calif.  Transcript in MGC.

16. Arnold to O. Wright, 6 November 1911 and W. Wright to Arnold, H. H. Arnold folder, 10 November 1911, Wright Brothers Papers (hereafter Wright Papers), box 9, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

17. Arnold to W. Wright, 18 November 1911, Wright Papers, box 9, H. H. Arnold folder.

18. Arnold to Mr Wright, 27 January 1913, H. H. Arnold folder, Wright Papers, box 9.  The "sand test" was accomplished by flipping the aircraft over and loading the wings with sand until the wing spars began to crack.  Thus, aircraft strength was determined by inverted sand weight, which simulated the forces of lift on the wings themselves.  This test is still used today in modified form, most recently to test the wing strength of the C-17.

19. Arnold to Mr Wright, 1 February 1913, Arnold to O. Wright, 23 February 1913, and Arnold to Mr Wright, 15 March 1913. Orville tried to reassure Arnold that the scout ship was the "easiest machine that we build.  Its high speed in landing is its only drawback.  It is a very strong machine and has a larger factor of safety than any of the other models." Wright to Arnold, 22 March 1913,  Arnold folder, Wright Papers, box 9.

20. Frank Walter Anderson, Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915-1980 (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1981), 1-15; Howard S. Wolko, In the Cause of Flight:  Technologists of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), 18; and Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, vol. 1,1907-1960 (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University Press, 1989), 19; and Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II , vol. 1, Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), 7; and Maurer Maurer, The U.S. Air Service in World War I, vol. 1, The Final Report and a Tactical History (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1978), 75-89.  The Air Service sent a few ill-prepared planes with Pershing as aerial observation platforms.  Before long, many of them were destroyed, and several pilots killed due to crashes.

21. Arnold Papers, box 3, folder 13.

22. Global Mission, 46-47.

23. Arnold Papers, box 3, folder 13, Washington Service Diary, 1917-1918.

24. Dik Daso, "Events in Foreign Policy: The End of American Neutrality, 1917," (manuscript, University of South Carolina, 1993), 1-12. Copy in author's possession, Burke, Virginia.

25. USAF Museum, "Kettering Bug" folder.  Many photos are included as well as many of the original documents describing the weapon and its construction.  Interestingly, Elmer Sperry claimed that he had invented the Bug and quit the project in 1919, thoroughly disgusted with Kettering.

26. Global Mission, 74-76; Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 130-34; and Glenn Infield, "Hap Arnold's WW I Buzz Bomb," Air Force Magazine (May 1974).

27. General Huston to author, 22 February 1996.

28. Arnold Papers, World War I Diary.

29. Maurer, 88; also Global Mission, 63-64.

30. Arnold Papers, Photo Albums.

31. Global Mission, 92-93.

32. Ibid., 91-98.  For an excellent tribute to "Jimmy" Doolittle, one should review the Winter 1993 issue of Air Power History, which was dedicated to the life of the aviation pioneer.

33. Alfred F. Hurley, Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1975), 64-70. For a highly detailed account of the trial, see Michael L. Grumelli, "Trial of Faith: The Dissent and Court Martial of Billy Mitchell" (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 1991); and Global Mission, 109-12.

34. Arnold Papers, box 3, folder 17;  Global Mission, 113.

35. Global Mission, 113-23; and Hurley, 100-105.

36. General Huston to author, 22 February 1996.  General Huston was kind enough to clear up the circumstances of Arnold's "exile" in this correspondence.

37. New York Times, 23-30 July 1927, various pages.

38. Maj H. H. Arnold to John K. Montgomery, 15 and 24 July 1927, John K. Montgomery Papers, Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia (hereafter Montgomery Papers); Global Mission, 123-28.

39. Arnold to Montgomery, 24 July 1927,  Montgomery Papers.

40. Montgomery to Arnold, 27 July 1927, Montgomery Papers.  Included in this letter are the specifics of the salary and "perks" offer to Arnold:  (1) The presidency of Pan Am; (2) $8,000 per year salary; and (3) 300 shares of B stock (voting shares) and 1,200 more if he stayed on with the company.  I cannot verify that the 300 shares offered were intended to be delivered had Arnold decided not to stay on, but he never went.

41. Global Mission, 122.

42. Thomas M. Coffey, Hap: The Story of the U.S. Air Force and the Man Who Built It, General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold (New York: Viking Press, 1982), 126.

43. Lois E. Walker and Shelby E. Wickman, From Huffman Prairie to the Moon:  The History of Wright Patterson Air Force Base (Washington, D.C.: Air Force Logistics Command, 1986), 59-61, 149.  Arnold had commanded the Rockwell Air Depot in California from 1922 to 1924.  He also wrote the history of Rockwell Field while he was there.  A copy of the manuscript is located in the USAFHRA.

44. Gen H. H. Arnold, Jr., USAF, Retired, interviewed by Murray Green, Sheridan, Wyoming, 29-30 August 1972, MGC.  Huffman Prairie,  218-19.  Arnold appeared to be getting used to the system during these two years.  He directed projects on flame suppression from engine exhausts and contrail dissipation. The intent of both was to make American aircraft less visible to enemy gunners.  Maj Gen Donald J. Keirn, USAF, Retired, interviewed by Murray Green, Delaplane, Virginia, 25 September 1970, MGC.

45. Brig Gen H. W. Bowman, USAF, Retired, interviewed by Murray Green, 23 August 1969. Transcript in MGC.  Bowman flew several of Millikan's experimental missions.  His task was to orbit a particular area with a 500-pound lead ball at various altitudes up to 21,000 feet.  Bowman felt certain that Millikan introduced Arnold to Kármán at Caltech; also Global Mission, 139; and Robert H. Kargon, The Rise of Robert Millikan (New York:  Cornell University Press, 1982) for a fair description of the Karl Compton challenge.

46. Global Mission, 133-47; For some unknown reason, Arnold allowed an inexperienced B-10 pilot to take one of the birds out on a flight.  The pilot ended up in Cook's Bay, and the B-10 was swamped in 20-40 feet of icy water.  Remarkably, the other crews were able to save the plane and drain the water from the fuselage.  It cranked up on the first try and flew the rest of the way to Washington, much to Arnold's relief.

47. William Rees Sears, interview with author, Tucson, Arizona, 8 July 1995.  Since Clark Millikan, Robert Millikan's son, had joined the faculty at Caltech, Kármán used to differentiate the two by calling Robert "Old Millikan" to everyone but Old Millikan himself.  Dr Sears is a former student, colleague, and friend of Theodore von Kármán, one of only a few who called him by his informal name, Todor; for an excellent summary of the Guggenheim influence, see Richard P. Hallion, Legacy of Flight: The Guggenheim Contribution to American Aviation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977).

48. Theodore von Kármán, oral interview, 27 January 1960, USAF Academy Oral History Interviews, USAF Academy, Colorado; and Michael H. Gorn, Universal Man:  Theodore von Kármán's Life in Aeronautics (Washington:  Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 81; also, in the NBC newsreel that covered the Rose Garden ceremony (January 1963) in which Kármán was given the first Medal of Science by President John F. Kennedy, Kármán remembered Arnold and his inquisitive nature back in the early days; Arnold's flight logs carefully document his trips to California while he was at Fairfield Depot.  On one trip,  he spent nearly one month in the Los Angeles area during which he might have visited Caltech, Old Millikan, and, later, Kármán.  A copy of these logs is located in both the Arnold Collection, Library of Congress, and the Arnold file at the USAF Museum, Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio.  The fact that Kármán ranks Arnold as a major would date their initial meetings to sometime before 1 February 1931, when he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

49. Gorn, 116, 158.

---

Contributor

Maj Dik Daso (USAFA; MA, PhD, University of South Carolina) is currently assigned to the Air Staff Doctrine Division at Headquarters USAF. Previous assignments include flying tours in F-15, RF-4C, and T-38 aircraft and one tour as an instructor in military and world history at the USAF Academy.

 

 

Aerospace Power Journal - Winter 1997
 

*This article is the second part of a study of Gen H. H. Arnold and aviation technology, which began in the Winter 1996 issue.

 

Hap Arnold's Command Years And Aviation Technology

1936-1945*

By Maj Dik Daso, USAF

 

IN JANUARY 1936, Brig Gen Henry H. Arnold was transferred back to Washington, D.C. Maj Gen Oscar F. Westover had taken over as chief of the Air Corps and had convinced Gen Malin Craig, chief of staff, that he needed Arnold as his assistant. Another candidate for that job was General Headquarters (GHQ) Air Force commander Brig Gen Frank M. Andrews. Andrews and Westover had clashed regarding independence of the air arm. Westover, who had opposed separation from the Army throughout his career, and Arnold, perhaps having learned a lesson about bucking the system at too high a level, agreed that remaining part of the Army held definite advantages for the Air Corps, particularly in the area of logistical support. From that point, Andrews’s career took a different path from Arnold’s. By 1939, Andrews had moved over to the General Staff under Gen George C. Marshall, and Arnold held command of the Air Corps. Arnold used this position to ensure, among other things, continued scientific and technological advances in his command.¹

Even before assuming command, Arnold chaired a committee formed in 1936 to examine how best to create a “Balanced Air Program.” There was nothing unusual in his final report; in fact, it followed very closely the recommendations made previously by the Drum Board (a committee headed by Maj Gen Hugh Drum that was appointed to review and revise the Air Corps’s five-year procurement plan). The numbers reflected in each report for personnel and planes were similar. Surprising today but realistic at that time, the forecast for airplanes required was only 1,399 in 1936, increasing to a meager 2,708 in 1941.² Although Arnold’s report was primarily an attempt to reckon with depression budgets, no mention was made of scientific research or technological development. Rather, the program’s primary concern was to save dollars in all areas except purchasing airplanes.

In September 1937, Arnold modified the conservative approach which his Balanced Air Program report had taken. While addressing the Western Aviation Planning Conference, Arnold summarized his philosophy for creating a top-notch aeronautical institution in America:

Remember that the seed comes first; if you are to reap a harvest of aeronautical development, you must plant the seed called experimental research. Install aeronautical branches in your universities; encourage your young men to take up aeronautical engineering. It is a new field but it is likely to prove a very productive one indeed. Spend all the funds you can possibly make available on experimentation and research. Next, do not visualize aviation merely as a collection of airplanes. It is broad and far reaching. It combines manufacture, schools, transportation, airdrome, building and management, air munitions and armaments, metallurgy, mills and mines, finance and banking, and finally, public security–national defense. (Emphasis in original)³

In this statement, Arnold had issued the broadest description of the evolving technological system of airpower, even if he didn’t make a distinction between empirical (based on observation) versus theoretical (based on calculations) research. If the Air Corps had little money for research and development (R&D), then perhaps universities and industry could be persuaded to find some. After all, it had been the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics that had funded the fledgling departments in that discipline at several universities almost a decade earlier.⁴ No matter the source, experimental research was the key to future airpower. Arnold had very cleverly linked Air Corps development to civilian prosperity in the aviation industry, hoping that civilian institutions would pick up the fumbled research ball while the Air Corps was struggling just to acquire planes. His ideas reflected the “Millikan philosophy,” that of bringing the center of aeronautical science in America to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which had shaped that university since the 1920s. This philosophy, coupled with Arnold’s realization that airpower was a complex system of logistics, procurement, ground support bases, and operations, guided his vision for future growth.⁵ Arnold’s approach to airpower development was actually the first notion of what became the military-industrial-academic complex after World War II.⁶

As was all too frequent an occurrence in these early years of aviation, a tragic aircraft accident took the life of General Westover on 21 September 1938. Arnold was now the top man in the Air Corps. Arnold’s experience in Army aviation had prepared him for the tasks which loomed ahead, and now he was in a position to tackle these problems.

When Arnold “shook the stick” and officially took command of the Air Corps on 29 September 1938, many military aviation projects were under consideration both at Wright Field and at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) facility at Langley: radar, aircraft windshield deicing, jet assisted takeoff (JATO) system (which was actually a rocket), and a host of aircraft and engine design modifications. Many of these projects were related to the brand new B-17, an aviation technology leap in itself.⁷ Arnold wasted no time in calling the “long hairs” to a meeting at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) under the auspices of the Committee on Air Corps Research, to solve these problems.⁸ It was no surprise that Arnold immediately accelerated Air Corps R&D efforts. In his first message as Air Corps commander, Arnold devoted a separate paragraph to the subject that reflected his public views on airpower. “Until quite recently,” he said, “we have had marked superiority in airplanes, engines, and accessories. That superiority is now definitely challenged by recent developments abroad. This means that our experimental development programs must be speeded up.”⁹ But his views were already commonly known to most airmen.

Assisting the speeding-up process, the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sent representatives to this NAS meeting. Vannevar Bush and Jerome Hunsaker of MIT grabbed the windshield deicing problem for their institution while openly dismissing JATO as a fantasy. Hunsaker called JATO the “Buck Rogers” job. Bush explained to Robert Millikan and Theodore von Kármán that he never understood how “a serious engineer or scientist could play around with rockets.”¹⁰ Arnold knew that GALCIT had already demonstrated some success in that area. Bush’s condescending attitude did not go over well with General Arnold. From that meeting onward, Arnold thought of Bush as something less than forward-looking, despite his excellent, even pioneering, record in electrical engineering. The case of Vannevar Bush was a classic example of how a talented individual had been dropped from confidence because of personal perceptions.

On the other hand, Millikan and Kármán, representing GALCIT, eagerly accepted the JATO challenge, an attitude that Arnold no doubt appreciated. JATO represented potential funding for the struggling GALCIT Rocket Research Project, initiated in 1936. This project, also known as GALCIT Project #1, was established by Dr. Kármán and Dr. Frank Malina, and exists today as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).¹¹

It was after this NAS meeting that the Arnold/Kármán association officially began. Arnold saw Kármán as a useful tool, a tap for recognizing undeveloped technologies. Kármán saw the Army Air Corps as a worthy recipient of his services. More importantly, however, the funding Arnold made available seemed bottomless and helped Caltech maintain its status as the leading aeronautical university in the country. Kármán was dedicated to helping the Army but was also dedicated to Caltech, the GALCIT, and Robert Millikan. Nonetheless, this alliance, above all others which Arnold held with scientists and engineers, proved one of the most significant and engaging collaborations in the early history of American airpower.

This meeting was just the beginning of Major General Arnold’s push to make science and technology an integral part of the Air Corps. He even invited General Marshall to a luncheon with the visiting scientists. Marshall wondered, “What on earth are you doing with people like that?” Arnold replied that he was “using” their brainpower to develop devices “too difficult for the Air Force engineers to develop themselves.”¹² The realization that civilian help was the only way to ensure that the Army Air Corps had the best technology available was typical of Arnold. He didn’t care where the devices came from; he only cared whether his Air Corps was utilizing them. By including Marshall in this circle of scientists, Arnold began winning support for advanced technology from the highest ranking Army officers.

Not only did Arnold utilize the advice of scientists, he gathered information from civilian aviators as well. One in particular influenced Arnold’s commitment to technology. In late 1938, Arnold had exchanged letters with Charles Lindbergh, then touring Europe, which expressed Lindbergh’s concern over US lethargy in airplane development. “It seems to me,” Lindbergh wrote, “that we should be developing prototypes with a top speed in the vicinity of 500 mph at altitude. . . . The trend over here seems to be toward very high speed.”¹³ This revelation worried Arnold. In March 1939, Arnold established a special air board to study the problems that Lindbergh had addressed. By April 1939, Arnold had convinced Lindbergh to accept an active duty commission as a member of the study group. This group, known as the Kilner Board, produced a five-year plan for research and development within the Air Corps. The report was shortsighted in many respects but did represent the immediate needs of the air arm. Jet propulsion and missiles, for example, were not even considered.¹⁴

Lindbergh’s impact was immediate but short-lived. In a written recommendation for the NACA, Lindbergh gained support for an expanded aeronautical research facility to be located at Moffett Field, California. The funding was approved on 15 September 1939. That same morning, Lindbergh spoke out against American participation in the European war on three major national radio networks. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to dissuade him from taking his views directly to the nation. After Lindbergh’s historic flight, the Guggenheim Fund had invested $100,000 to subsidize a national tour expressly designed to generate support for aviation. By the late 1920s, Lindbergh had toured over 80 cities and influenced millions of Americans. “Lindy” was a skilled communicator. In many respects, he became the American spokesman for aviation.¹⁵ As such, his words carried an inordinate amount of influence. Fearing a major effect on public opinion, FDR promised Lindbergh a new cabinet post if he remained silent concerning American participation in the European war. Arnold had been caught in the middle of the presidential offer, but there was never any doubt in the general’s mind that Lindbergh would turn down such an offer and speak his own mind. Arnold was right. Consequently, Lindbergh “resigned” his commission, but Arnold had already taken his earlier warnings to heart.¹⁶

Arnold’s public campaigns reflected Lindbergh’s warnings. In January 1939, while speaking to the Society of Automotive Engineers in Detroit, Arnold— now the Air Corps’s No. 1 man—reemphasized that America was falling behind in aircraft development. He attributed this failing to an inadequate program of scientific research. He stated:

All of us in the Army Air Corps realize that America owes its present prestige and standing in the air world in large measure to the money, time, and effort expended in aeronautical experimentation and research. We know that our future supremacy in the air depends on the brains and efforts of our engineers. . . .¹⁷

His dedication to continuous research, experimentation, and development was more focused, more defined than it had ever been, and now he carried the message across the country.

Arnold’s official correspondence reflected the same commitment to R&D. In a memorandum to the assistant secretary of war dated 2 March 1939, Arnold vigorously defended proposed funding for research and development:

The work of the large number of aeronautical research agencies in this country should be afforded government support and encouragement only through a single coordinating agency which can determine that the individual and collective effort will be to the best interests of the Government. The NACA is the agency designated by law to carry out basic aeronautical research and its own plant and facilities cannot cover all phases of development. Furthermore, there are many public or semi-public institutions whose students or other research personnel are willing and anxious to perform useful investigation that will contribute to a real advancement of the various branches of aeronautical science.¹⁸

As a member of the NACA Main Committee since taking over the Air Corps, Arnold attended the committee meetings regularly and was familiar with the workings of the group. More importantly, he was acquainted with the other Main Committee members who together read like a “Who’s Who” in American aviation. Van Bush, Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh, and Harry Guggenheim were all members of the Main Committee in 1939. Shortly after the 2 March memo was sent, Arnold established an official liaison between the NACA facilities at Langley Field and the Air Corps Materiel Division at Wright Field. Arnold assigned Maj Carl F. Greene to the post in an effort to tighten the relationship between the two organizations.¹⁹ The attempt to consolidate R&D programs was valiant, but time was running short. Conflict in Europe assured that the relationship would never mature.

The expanding war in Europe indicated that a posture of readiness was prudent and necessary for the United States. From the day that Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Arnold realized that all American production efforts would be needed just to build enough aircraft of existing designs to create a fighting air force. “For us to have expended our effort on future weapons to win a war at hand,” he wrote Gen Carl A. Spaatz in 1946, “would be as stupid as trying to win the next war with outmoded weapons and doctrines.”²⁰ While the outcome of the war was in question, and even though the United States was not yet directly involved, Arnold emphasized R&D only to improve weapons or aircraft by using technologies that were already on the drawing board. Essentially, from September 1939 until the spring of 1944, the majority of Army aviation R&D efforts were dedicated to short-term improvements in existing technologies.²¹

The total American production effort that followed Arnold’s early fears and resignation shocked everyone, including Arnold. By April 1943, the four-star general wrote to General Andrews, now air commander in the European theater, “By God, Andy, after all these years it was almost too much—I don’t imagine any of us, even in our most optimistic moments, dreamed that the Air Corps would ever build up the way it has. I know I . . . never did.”²² Airplane production became one of the major reasons for American airpower’s evolution into a massive technological system by 1944. Until the early years of World War II in Europe, the American aircraft industry was still in its infancy. The war forced it into early adolescence. Despite the many challenges inherent in the massive buildup of airplanes, Arnold still found time to push for a few untested technologies that showed exceptional promise while also pressing his field commanders to use “science” to advantage whenever possible.²³

The most spectacular of these technologies was the JATO program being pursued at Caltech since the NAS meeting in November 1938. Since it was most desirable to build aircraft that carried heavy bomb loads, the problems of high wing loading on initial takeoff became extremely important. “In many cases the maximum allowable gross weight of an airplane was limited solely by takeoff considerations. One of the many methods . . . proposed for the elimination of this difficulty involved the use of auxiliary rocket jets to augment the available thrust during takeoff and initial climb.”²⁴ The net result was an increase in range for a desired payload. Frank Malina, “Homerjoe” Stewart, and the rest of the “suicide club” spent most of 1940 and the first half of 1941, developing the JATO system. By summer, Malina’s team was ready to flight-test the device. Capt Homer Boushey flew an Air Corps Ercoupe from Wright to March Field, the selected spot for the test, late in July 1941. After a failed static firing resulted in a spectacular explosion, the rockets were affixed to the underside of the Ercoupe’s wings, near the wing roots. Despite the failed test, it was decided to accomplish an anchored test-firing of the rockets attached to the plane. Although this test was more successful than the previous one, fragments of burning propellant and a small piece of a nozzle still burned a forearm-sized hole in the underside of the Ercoupe tail. “Well, at least it isn’t a big hole,” one of the onlookers observed. After the hole was patched, a successful airborne confidence firing test of the rockets was completed on 6 August, but the big test was yet to come.²⁵

On 12 August, filled with newfound confidence, Boushey strapped himself into the Ercoupe, now loaded with six JATOs, three under each wing. William Durand, long-time friend of Kármán, NACA charter member, and chairman of NACA’s Special Committee on Jet Propulsion, had been invited to witness the JATO flight test. A test aircraft, a Piper Cub, piloted by Dr. Clark Millikan, idled next to the Ercoupe waiting for the soon-to-be-rocket plane to release brakes. Both aircraft revved their engines and released their brakes. In a matter of only a few seconds, having reached a predetermined speed, Boushey ignited his rockets. In a cloud of smoke, followed shortly by the crack of the rocket ignition, the Ercoupe catapulted into the air and over the 50- foot banner that marked the calculated height to be achieved after rocket ignition. The Piper Cub appeared to climb in slow motion. The JATO launch had been a remarkable success.²⁶

It was so successful that Kármán decided that it would be possible to launch the Ercoupe on rocket power alone, sans propeller. To cover up the fact that the prop had been removed, the Ercoupe nose was plastered with safety posters as if it were undergoing some form of repairs. “Be Alert, Don’t Get Hurt!” At least the JATO team had a sense of humor. He calculated that 12 JATO engines would be required to accomplish the first American rocket-powered airplane flight. On 23 August, Boushey strapped in one more time. Kármán had calculated that at least 25 knots ground speed would be needed for the test to work properly, so it was decided to accelerate to that speed and then fire the rockets. But how to accelerate to the required speed without a working prop? A standard pickup truck fitted with a long rope pulled out on the runway in front of the propless Ercoupe. Boushey grabbed the rope like a rodeo bull rider and held on while the truck accelerated to the calculated 25 knots. Boushey released the rope, fired the rockets, now twice as loud and smoky, and hurtled 10 feet into the air on rocket power alone. He had enough runway left to make a safe landing straight ahead. Additional testing continued in both solid and liquid auxiliary propulsion for the next decade.²⁷ Arnold pushed this program because it demonstrated potential for increasing the combat range of his heavy bombers.

Although not initially the most spectacular of all the Air Corps’s scientific and technological research programs, Arnold’s direct involvement in bringing the British Whittle jet engine to America beginning in April 1941 illustrated his personal commitment to technology and its application to the American war effort. As in 1913, Arnold did not care where the technology came from. If it benefited the Air Corps, he wanted it. So it was with the Whittle engine and the development of American jet aircraft.²⁸

Throughout 1938, Arnold had received Lindbergh’s reports which suggested that some German pursuit planes were capable of speeds exceeding 400 MPH.²⁹ He had also assigned Lindbergh to the Kilner Board in an effort to project R&D requirements for the Air Corps. Whether Lindbergh had been “duped” by the Nazis on preplanned factory tours during his visits to Germany turned out to be irrelevant. Lindbergh had convinced Arnold that the Air Corps should begin research that would lead to a 500 MPH fighter. Arnold’s constant quest for better technologies and equipment forced a confrontation with George W. Lewis, director of aeronautical research at NACA. Hap, at that moment not very happy, wanted to know “why . . . we [in the Army Air Corps] haven’t got one [a 400-plus MPH fighter].” Lewis replied, “Because you haven’t ordered one.”³⁰ Arnold was furious. A lengthy dialogue followed during which Arnold discovered that Lewis was well aware that the technology to build faster planes had existed for some time. Lewis had not suggested building one because it was not NACA’s function to dictate what the military should or should not build. To Arnold, NACA was not acting like a true team player. The general might have even considered Lewis’s attitude unpatriotic.³¹ This incident overshadowed the many successful programs NACA had undertaken during Arnold’s tenure.

Having lost trust in the workings and leadership of NACA, Arnold resorted to other civilian agencies in an effort to capitalize on Whittle’s jet engine information made available to him by the combined approval of Lord Beaverbrook, who was in charge of all production; Sir Henry Tizard, scientific expert; Col Moore-Barbazon, minister of aircraft production; and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal in April 1941. Although NACA took steps toward jet engine development directed by the 1941 Durand Board (formed in March 1941 at Arnold’s request), importing the plans and an engine from Britain was the general’s personal achievement.³² In September, he took these plans and created a separate, supersecret production team that included Larry Bell of Bell Aircraft and Donald F. “Truly” Warner of General Electric (GE). GE was selected because of previous work done on “turbo-supercharging” (under the guidance of Sanford Moss), a process similar in nature to the turbojet concept.³³ The project military representative was Col Benjamin Chidlaw. This Bell/GE team was so secret that only 15 men at Wright Field knew of its existence. The contracts with GE had been handwritten and transmitted in person by Arnold’s personal liaison, Maj Donald J. Keirn. Keirn recalled that the first GE contract was for a turboprop which was being built in Schenectady, New York, while the Whittle engine project was undertaken at West Lynn, Massachusetts. The three Durand Board engine teams— one at Westinghouse, a second sponsored by the NACA, and the first GE project— were unaware that Arnold had directed Chidlaw to get a jet in the air under absolute secrecy.³⁴ “Gen. Arnold,” Chidlaw asked bewildered, “How do you keep the Empire State Building a secret?” Sternly, Arnold replied, “You keep it a secret.”³⁵

The supersecret engine was assembled at Lynn, Massachusetts, under the project title “Super-charger Type #1.” At Larry Bell’s factory, the airframe project received an old program number so as not to arouse any suspicion. The workers themselves were segregated from each other so that even the members of the team were not totally sure what they were building. The Army Air Forces (AAF) officer who was to be the first American military man to fly a jet, Col Laurence “Bill” Craigie, never revealed his mission, even to his wife, who found out about it in January 1944 with the rest of the country. Craigie recalled that “the only project I know of that was more secret was the atomic bomb.”³⁶

On 2 October 1942, the Bell XP-59A flew three times. The first two flights were piloted by Bob Stanley, a Bell test pilot and Caltech graduate, and the third was flown by Colonel Craigie. In actuality, the plane had flown for the first time during taxi tests on 30 September and again on 1 October, but Larry Bell insisted that the first flight was not “official” until the brass hats were present as witnesses.³⁷ The internal “cloak of secrecy” was so effective that the general NACA membership had heard only rumors of the technology. Only William Durand himself had been informed of Arnold’s Whittle project but he was sworn to secrecy. The day the XP-59A flew, he was the only member of NACA who knew of the existence of the plane. In fact, he was at Muroc Dry Lake, California, the day of the first “official” flight.³⁸

It was not until 7 January 1944 that the rest of America, including Mrs. Craigie, found out about the flight. The Washington Post carried the inaccurate front-page headline “U.S. Making Rocket War Plane,” which detailed the events of 15 months earlier.³⁹ The development of the XP-59A can legitimately be called the first Air Force “skunk works” project.

America’s development of the jet engine was a typical example of how Arnold utilized technological advancement in attempting to improve Army Air Forces capability. Once aware of a particular technology, he decided whether or not it was applicable to AAF airplanes or their combat capability. As late as January 1939, for example, Arnold had stated, “Because of the high efficiency and flexibility of operation of the controllable propeller as it exists today, it will be many years before any means of propulsion, such as rocket or jet propulsion, can be expected on a large scale.”⁴⁰ But British engine developments, coupled with the underpinnings of early American turbojet concepts, and the promising work done at GALCIT Project #1 during 1940, convinced him that jets and rockets held significant potential for his air forces. Arnold always wanted the most advanced capabilities for his airplanes. But during the period 1939–1944, he wanted them within two years, no later.⁴¹

Once convinced of a program’s efficacy, he gathered trusted scientists, engineers, and officers. Then, using the force of his personality, he directed what he wanted done with the technology. His teams were given considerable latitude in accomplishing the task and rarely failed to produce results.⁴² Some who had served on these “Hap-directed” task forces had private reservations about specified tasks. “You never thought the things he asked you to do were possible,” one Douglas Aircraft engineer recalled, “but then you went out and did them.”⁴³ Colonel Chidlaw’s XP-59A team was one glittering example.

The XP-59A was an exceptional program in that it seemed to violate Arnold’s general tendency to expend R&D efforts only on current production equipment from late 1939 until mid-1944. But Arnold saw the possibility for unbelievable capability from continuous research concerning jets. He envisioned aircraft capable of speeds exceeding 1,000 MPH and, despite criticism, completely believed in the future of jets. Arnold, having seen the British Gloster Meteor during its initial ground tests, realized that the first jets would not be the production models. Instead, he felt it more important to get a jet aircraft flying and then work on the modifications necessary to make it combat worthy. Perhaps he remembered the lesson of Billy Mitchell’s Barling bomber, which had provided vital data and production techniques even though it was an operational failure. Additionally, Arnold was able to get a substantial jump on the program by promising the British an improved formula for high-speed, high-temperature turbine blades in return for all available British jet experimental data and an engine. As it stood, jet aircraft did not have the necessary range to be of much value to the AAF, who would soon be flying missions from England to Germany. Consequently, until the problem of limited range was solved, the production effort was not pushed as hard as that of combat-proven aircraft. For that reason, American jets did not contribute directly to the World War II victory.⁴⁴ Arnold’s push for the B-29 Superfortress can be better understood, however, in light of his perception of the importance of combat range to mission success. This was particularly true for operations in the Pacific, although the airplane was not designed specifically for that theater.

Another Hap-directed project was established while the XP-59A was under development. In May 1942, Arnold ordered the formation of the Sea-Search Attack Development Unit (SADU). This unit was composed of scientists from MIT, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), and operations personnel from the Navy and the Army Air Forces. Total control of all assets having to do with submarine destruction—research and development, production, even combat execution—fell to this organization. Arnold viewed this specific task with such high priority that he attached the unit directly under his command, eliminating all bureaucratic obstacles to mission accomplishment.⁴⁵ Having seen “American-version” radars at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, as early as May 1937, General Arnold was satisfied with the potential that radar had demonstrated and pushed hard for combat capability in that area.

The multicavity magnetron, which made shortwave radar practical, was a British invention. In April 1942, Dr. Edward L. Bowles, from the MIT Radiation Laboratory (RADLAB), was assigned as a special consultant for radar installations. Arnold’s commitment and Bowles’s expertise helped make SADU an extremely effective unit. Arnold reminded Spaatz of the ultimate impact of SADU and the development of microwave radar in a letter after the war. “The use of microwave search radars during the campaign against the submarine was mainly instrumental in ending the menace of the U-boats. Germany had no comparable radar, or any countermeasures against it. In fact, for a long time the Germans were not even aware of what it was that was revealing the position of their subs so frequently.”⁴⁶ As Arnold counted on Caltech for much of his aeronautical advice, he depended on MIT for similar advice concerning electronic advances, particularly radar.

In fact, it was German (and eventually Japanese) treachery in the conduct of the war, particularly with U-boats, that jolted Arnold into an attempt to rekindle an earlier pet project: the “Flying Bug.” Although using the World War I surplus Bugs was actively considered during the war, the idea was finally dismissed due to the relatively short range of the weapon (only 200 miles). Other projects, however, did result from this initial rekindling. In the fall of 1939, Arnold wrote his old friend Charles Kettering, now vice president of General Motors, wanting to develop “glide bombs” to be used if war came. Arnold envisioned a device that could be used by the hundreds that might keep his pilots away from enemy flak barrages. He wanted the weapon to glide one mile for each one thousand feet of altitude, carry a sizable amount of high explosives, have a circular error of probability (CEP) less than one-half mile, and cost less than seven hundred dollars each. Kettering was convinced that it could be done fairly quickly. By December 1942, the GB-1 (glide bomb) was well under development and by spring 1943 was being used in Europe. Although the GB-1 provided some protection to American airmen, it was highly inaccurate. Since the AAF held closely to the doctrine of precision bombing, the GB-1 was quickly shelved.⁴⁷ The GT-1, a glide torpedo, was somewhat more successful and saw some use in the Pacific theater. The development of the glide bomb series of weapons, which later included radio steering and television cameras, demonstrated one thing very clearly: General Arnold was not completely sold on manned, daylight, precision bombing doctrine.

As the air war progressed, B-17 and B-24 bombers literally began to wear out. These surplus bombers occupied valuable ramp space and even more valuable maintenance time. By late 1943, General Arnold had directed Brig Gen Grandison Gardner’s Eglin Field engineers to outfit these “Weary Willies” with automatic pilots so that the airplanes, both B-17s and B-24s, could be filled with TNT or liquid petroleum and remotely flown to enemy targets. The idea behind Project Aphrodite was to crash the orphan aircraft into the target, a large city or industrial complex, detonating the explosives. General Spaatz utilized several of these “guided missiles” in the fall of 1944 against targets in Europe. They were largely unsuccessful because they were easy to shoot down before they reached the target area. At Yalta, shortly after the first Willies were used in combat, the British vetoed further Aphrodite missions because of possible German retaliation to the undeniable “terror” nature of the weapon. Weary Willies were grounded after Yalta, much to General Arnold’s disappointment.

Interestingly, Project Aphrodite clearly involved the use of a non-precision weapon system. Yet, Arnold staunchly supported its development well before Germany launched its first V-1 at England in the early morning hours of 13 June 1944. Not only were Willies capable of carrying large amounts of explosives, using them as guided missiles assured that none would remain in American stockpiles. Arnold remembered the painful Liberty engine lessons from World War I production days. He didn’t want B-17s flying a decade after this war was over as the DH-4 had done.⁴⁸

The importance of Aphrodite was not its impact on the outcome of the war. Arnold had no great hopes for the ultimate decisiveness of these “area bombing” weapons. Rather, Aphrodite demonstrated Arnold’s willingness to supplement precision-bombing doctrine in an effort to save the lives of American airmen, particularly since he was feeling confident that the war in Europe was essentially under control by late spring 1944. In a staff memo, Arnold explained that he didn’t care if the Willies were actually radio controlled or just pointed at the enemy and allowed to run out of gas.⁴⁹ Aphrodite did provide an opportunity to test new automated piloting technology in a combat situation. Additionally, and more importantly, destroying weary bombers made room for new airplanes that the prescient Arnold knew the air forces would need after the war ended.

Although Arnold was determined to rid the inventory of useless machines, in most combat situations he preferred manned bombers to Willies. In November 1944, Arnold reminded Spaatz of the salvage rules for damaged aircraft: “The accelerated activities of our fighting forces in all theaters makes it increasingly important that we utilize our material resources to the maximum, not only for the sake of the economy, but also in order that the greatest possible pressure be brought to bear against the enemy.”⁵⁰ The experienced Arnold realized that to win a war one side must “try and kill as many men and destroy as much property as you can. If you can get mechanical machines to do this, then you are saving lives at the outset.”⁵¹ At this point, though willing to try non-precision methods on occasion, Arnold realized that technology had not surpassed the abilities of manned bombers in accuracy or guile for accomplishing that mission.⁵²

Having established and tested his working pattern, General Arnold began actively planning for the future of airpower. NACA methodology under George Lewis left Arnold feeling let down, particularly in the field of advanced aircraft research.⁵³ And although Wright Field had been vital to AAF production research and problem solving, personnel shortages made long-range studies a simple impossibility. Additionally, Arnold said he was irritated with the Materiel Division engineers’ no-can-do attitude. Perhaps frustrated was a better description. Arnold once told a gathering of Materiel Division engineers, “I wish some of you would get in and help me row this boat. I can’t do it alone.”⁵⁴ Finally, any request for formal assistance from Vannevar Bush, now chief of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), was not an option for Arnold—even though OSRD and its predecessor, the NDRC, had played a vital role during the war, particularly with radar and the development of the atomic bomb. Bush’s attitude toward the JATO project had proved to Arnold that, although an excellent electrical engineer, Bush was no visionary. Bush once told Major Keirn, Whittle project liaison officer, that the AAF “would be further along with the jet engine had the NDRC been brought into the jet engine business,” sarcastically adding, “but who am I to argue with Hap Arnold?”⁵⁵ The general and the OSRD chief held widely different views concerning military involvement in R&D that appeared diametrically opposed. Bush believed that the military should be excluded from any type of research other than production R&D. Arnold was adamant in the belief that long-term R&D also required military input lest the civilian world drive the development and implementation of airpower doctrine and policy. Their personal differences likely began to develop in 1938–1939 when Bush held the reins at NACA and Arnold served on its Executive Committee. It appeared that they just did not like each other.

For the most part, the problems discussed here have been related to the immediate needs of the AAF. The Whittle jet engine problem was, perhaps, the only exception. Arnold likely justified the project based on his acquisition of British plans and hardware, which essentially brought the Army Air Forces up to speed with the rest of the world. While dealing with these “short-term” research problems, which always involved available technologies, Arnold had formed strong opinions about the major participants in the American scientific and research communities. Lack of faith in NACA, exasperation with Wright Field, and the incompatibility of OSRD/NDRC philosophy with Arnold’s convictions convinced him that, if he were to have an effective long-term plan for the AAF, an independent expert panel of free-thinking civilian scientists, given initial direction by the AAF, was the only answer. As he had said in different ways on several occasions, the future of American supremacy in the air depended on the brains and efforts of engineers and scientists. Now that the European war was winding down and the air war was definitely won, Arnold turned his thoughts to the distant future of the Army Air Forces. His call to action came in the form of a memo from an old friend and supporter of airpower, Gen George C. Marshall. On 26 July 1944, Marshall wrote: “The AAF should now assume responsibility for research, development, and development procurement.”⁵⁶ The impatient Arnold saw an immediate opportunity to act. Arnold had already decided that America’s leading aeronautical scientist, Theodore von Kármán, whom he had known and trusted since the early 1930s, was the man he needed at the head of the Army Air Force Long Range Development Program.⁵⁷ In November 1944, the Kármán Committee became the AAF Scientific Advisory Group (SAG). In December 1945, SAG published Toward New Horizons, a report that served as Arnold’s tool for linking technological advancement to the development of the US Air Force.

In summarizing Arnold’s stance on technological advancement and R&D within the Air Corps, three distinct time periods are revealed. Prior to the fall of 1939, Arnold supported long-term research that held promise for the entire aviation community over the coming decades. Immediately after the German invasion of Poland, Arnold shifted the posture of research and development in the Air Corps away from long-term projects toward short-term, quick-impact, operational-oriented R&D.⁵⁸ With few exceptions, Arnold’s efforts in production and production R&D through 1944 provided massive fleets of technically advanced aircraft and weapons that were used by Americans and the Allies. The jet airplane—a bending of his “production R&D only” rule during the war years—held so much potential that Arnold felt obligated to take the risk involved in research and development in that area. Arnold himself saw jet aircraft as a “signpost to the future” rather than a tool for the present.⁵⁹

Arnold’s personal contacts within the scientific/industrial sector, his World War I experience, as well as his tour at the Industrial College of the Army, were vital to the eventual success of American industrial mobilization efforts. He believed that it was more important to fight the war with the best weapons at hand, which included technological refinement for those existing systems, than to hang hopes on futuristic weapons that might not make it into the combat zone in time to make an impact on the outcome of the war. Arnold’s pragmatism during the war (fall 1939 to late spring 1944) reflected the American tradition of empiricism, nicely explained by Tom Hughes in American Genesis. When Arnold felt that the inevitable victory was assured (late spring—early summer 1944), he once again turned his efforts to long-term planning for the Army Air Forces. His decisions—which shifted the basic direction of the Army Air Forces during the war years toward, then away, then back toward long-term R&D—established the scientific and technological foundation of today’s modern Air Force.

Maj Dik Daso

 

Notes

1. H. H. Arnold to Mrs. S. H. Pool (Bee’s mother), 22 February 1926, Robert Arnold Collection, Sonoma, California; and Herman S. Wolk, Planning and Organizing the Postwar Air Force, 1943–1947 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1984), 20–31.

2. “Report of Special Board Appointed to Make up a Balanced Air Program,” 5 August 1936. US Air Force Historical Research Agency (hereafter USAFHRA), 145.93–96; also see Wolk, 12–20.

3. Address of Brig Gen H. H. Arnold, assistant chief of the Air Corps, at the Western Aviation Planning Conference, 23 September 1937, USAFHRA, 168.3952-119. This belief in research may have been the result of earlier association with Dr. Robert Millikan. In 1934, Millikan had warned military officials through the executive Scientific Advisory Board, established in the summer of 1933, that “research is a peace-time thing and . . . moves too slowly to be done after you get into trouble.” Quoted in Michael S. Sherry, Planning for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941–45 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 123.

4. Richard P. Hallion, Legacy of Flight: The Guggenheim Contribution to American Aviation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977). This book summarizes the entire story of the Guggenheim influence on the early years of American aviation.

5. In another speech, “Air Lessons from Current Wars,” before the Bond Club, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 25 March 1938, Arnold emphasized the foundations of airpower as not just planes but also “the number of flyers, mechanics, and skilled artisans available . . . and the size and character of the ground establishments we lump under the general name air bases.” Ira C. Eaker Papers, Library of Congress (LOC), Washington, D.C., box 58, Arnold speeches (hereafter Eaker Papers).

6. Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 200–201. Also see Stuart L. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military–Industrial–Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

7. Arnold to Oscar Westover, 18 May 1937. Murray Green Collection (hereafter MGC), LOC, box 55. JATO is pronounced jay’toe; for a list of NACA projects, see the NACA Executive Meeting minutes, National Archives Annex, College Park, Md.

8. Michael H. Gorn, The Universal Man: Theodore von Kármán’s Life in Aeronautics (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 84; Ira C. Eaker, oral interview, 19 October 1978, USAF Academy Oral Interview series, USAFA. Eaker verified that Arnold and his staff reviewed intelligence reports on the air battles of the Spanish Civil War. One of Arnold’s 1938 speeches covered the war in great detail and concentrated on the uses of airpower.

9. Maj Gen Henry H. Arnold, chief of the Air Corps, a message from the chief to the corps, 30 September 1938. National Air and Space Museum Archives, Arnold folder, Washington, D.C. (Hereafter NASM Archives). This message was Arnold’s first as chief following Westover’s death. Early influences on his quick action came from individuals like Lindbergh, Kármán, and even an informant who met with Arnold in Alaska during the 1934 B-10 flight.

10. Theodore von Kármán and Lee Edson, The Wind and Beyond (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1967), 243; also Kármán, oral interview by D. Shaughnessy, 27 January 1960, USAFA Special Collections, 2.

11. There are detailed accounts of this meeting in the Robert Millikan Collection, LOC, 9.15, roll 10. In a letter from Mason to Arnold, 5 January 1939, Mason summed up the results of the NAS meeting of the “long hairs.”

12. Henry H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), 65–166; see Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, 186–88.

13. Charles Lindbergh to Arnold, letter, subject: US Airplane Development, 29 November 1938, USAFHRA, 168.65-40.

14. Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 6, Men and Planes (1949; new imprint, Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 178–80.

15. Leonard S. Reich, “From the Spirit of St. Louis to the SST: Charles Lindbergh, Technology, and Environment,” Technology and Culture 36 (April 1995): 365–67; also see Robert E. Herstein, Roosevelt and Hitler: Prelude to War (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 226–31; and Jeffery S. Underwood, The Wings of Democracy: The Influence of Air Power on the Roosevelt Administration, 1933–1941 (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1991), 111.

16. Charles A. Lindbergh, Autobiography of Values (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1976), 190–92.

17. “Performance and Development Trends in Military Aircraft and Accessories,” speech given by Maj Gen H. H. Arnold before the Society of Automotive Engineers, Detroit, Michigan, 11 January 1939, 15–16, USAFHRA, 168.3952-119.

18. H.H. Arnold to the assistant secretary of war, memorandum, subject: Funding for Research and Development, 2 March 1939, USAFHRA, 167.8-33.

19. Arnold to Maj Carl F. Greene, letter (under NACA letterhead), subject: Assignment as Liaison Official,1938, Kármán Collection; and NACA Executive Committee Meeting minutes, National Archives, College Park Annex, College Park, Maryland. Arnold served on the Executive (Main) Committee from October 1938 to April 1946.

20. Arnold to Gen Carl A. Spaatz, letter, subject: American Production Efforts in World War II, 9 November 1946, in Spaatz Papers, box 256. Arnold’s detailed comments are in response to a news article critical of Air Force leadership during the war. Arnold feared that the hostile tone might influence funding in the Congress and warned Spaatz to read it carefully.

21. Maj Gen H. H. Arnold and Col Ira C. Eaker, Winged Warfare (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), 239. Arnold summed up what would become his wartime R&D philosophy: “Sacrifice some quality to get sufficient quantity to supply all fighting units. Never follow the mirage, looking for the perfect airplane, to a point where fighting squadrons are deficient in numbers of fighting planes.”

22. Arnold to Lt Gen Frank Andrews, 29 March 1943, Andrews Papers , box 1, Library of Congress.

23. Arnold to Ira C. Eaker, 8 August 1943, Eaker Papers, box 50. “The more I think of our recent interchange of messages regarding German countermeasures against your bomber formations, the more I am convinced that you should have on your staff a free thinking technical man who is not tied down with current logistics, current modifications, and current procedure in any way. This man’s main mission in life should be to sit there and weigh the information received . . . then advise you what action should be taken by you to outsmart the Germans. . . . This technician should also have a staff of two or three more scientists who would help him diagnose German moves and the motives behind them. At this writing, I have nobody in mind at all for this long-haired technical job, but if you think well of the plan I will rake up somebody and send him over to you, and I will also send the assistant scientists to sit there and help him.” This philosophy carried over into his directions to Kármán’s mission in the fall of 1944.

24. C. B. Millikan and H. J. Stewart, “Aerodynamic Analysis of Take-Off and Initial Climb as Affected by Auxiliary Jet Propulsion,” 14 January 1941, original report in the custody of Dr. Homer Joe Stewart, Altadena, California.

25. Dr. Homer Joe Stewart, interviewed by author, 21 July 1995, Altadena, California.

26. Dr. Durand had been named chairman of the Jet Propulsion Committee on 24 March 1941. This committee, instigated by Arnold and created by Vannevar Bush, the NACA Main Committee chairman, became known as the Durand Board. See Alex Roland’s Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915–1958 (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Agency, 1985), 189.

27. Stewart interview. Dr. Stewart confirmed the JATO story told in Kármán’s autobiography, except he corrected the fact that Boushey was a captain, not a lieutenant; Kármán and Edson, 249–51; photos from the Jet Propulsion Lab Archives in Pasadena revealed the safety poster sayings.

28. The story of why America did not develop the jet engine earlier may be traced to its tendency toward utilitarian uses for “science.” The story, a fascinating study in the evolution of American science, is expertly covered by Edward Constant’s The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).

29. Charles Lindbergh to Arnold, letter, subject: JATO Test, 29 November 1938, USAFHRA, 168.65-40.

30. John F. Victory, oral interview, no. 210A, USAF Academy Oral Interviews, USAFA, Colorado. Victory was the first employee of NACA in 1915 and served as secretary throughout the period of this study.

31. Ibid. The story is too long to reproduce, but essentially Lewis sat at his desk in Washington and strictly adhered to the “advisory mission” of NACA. It was rare that NACA offered to expedite research or offer data without being asked by the Army Air Corps first. Arnold certainly saw this attitude as an obstacle to rapidly expanding the size and capability of the air arm; Hugh L. Dryden, Columbia University Oral History Report (CUOHR), 23. Dr. Dryden substantiates the basis of the 500 MPH story.

32. Vannevar Bush to Jerome Hunsaker, letter, subject: Jet Engine Development, 10 March 1941, Bush Papers, box 53, Hunsaker Folder, LOC; and Global Mission, 242.

33. Maj Gen Frank Carroll, interview with Murray Green, 1 September 1971, Boulder, Colorado, transcript in MGC, roll 12; also James O. Young, “Riding England’s Coattails: The U.S. Army Air Forces and the Turbojet Revolution,” manuscript (photocopy), Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) History Office, Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., 1995.

34. Maj Gen Donald J. Keirn, interview with Murray Green, 25 September 1970, Delaplane, Va., transcript in MGC, roll l2. Keirn proves that there were two separate engine projects at GE at the same time; also see Roland, Model Research, for Durand Committee discussion.

35. Gen Benjamin Chidlaw, interview with Murray Green, 12 December 1969, Colorado Springs, Colo., transcript in MGC, roll 12. The question of why the United States was so late entering the jet age is expertly examined in Constant, 150–75 in particular. He cites the American tradition of empiricism as the reason that “radical” technologies were not produced ahead of more theoretically oriented countries like Germany and England.

36. Lt Gen Laurence Craigie, interview with Murray Green, 19 August 1970, Burbank, Calif., transcript in MGC, roll 12. Additional information on the Whittle engine can be found in the Arnold Collection, box 47. Walt Bonney, representing Bell Aircraft Corporation, was tasked to answer a flood of calls that resulted after the Washington Post story was released on 7 January 1944. In his press release, he emphasized the total secrecy of the project beginning in September 1941. Bonney did write a brief history of jet propulsion to placate the mass inquiries, but the secret nature of jet propulsion was protected. Walt Bonney, Bell Aircraft Corporation, 11 January 1944, NASM Archives, Jet Propulsion folder. Arnold’s, “Second Report of the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces to the Secretary of War,” 27 February 1945, USAFHRA, 168.03, tells the story from his perspective. “Never has a plane been built in this country under greater secrecy,” 76; also Young, “Riding England’s Coattails,” and Ezra Kotcher, “Our Jet Propelled Fighter,” Air Force (March 1944), 6–8, 64.

37. Gen Laurence Craigie, USAF, Retired, and Gen Franklin Carroll, USAF, Retired, interviewed by Murray Green, in MGC, roll 12, US Air Force Academy Special Collections. Craven and Cate mistakenly state that Craigie was first to fly the jet; also see Daniel Ford, “Gentlemen, I Give You the Whittle Engine,” Air & Space, October/November 1992, 88–98.

38. Frank Walter Anderson, Orders of Magnitude: A History of NACA and NASA, 1915–1976 (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1976), 31–48; Roland, 191–92; also Hugh L. Dryden, CUOHR. The original XP-59A has recently been placed in the National Air and Space Museum entryway where it will permanently reside in the company of the Wright Flyer, Apollo 11’s command module, and the Bell X-1, to name a few.

39. Washington Post, 7 January 1944, 1.

40. Maj Gen H. H. Arnold, “Performance and Development Trends in Military Aircraft and Accessories,” address to the Society of Automotive Engineers, Detroit, Michigan, 14, USAFHRA, 3952.119.

41. Young, 12.

42. Laurence S. Kuter, “How Hap Arnold Built the AAF,” Air Force Magazine (September 1973), 185–89.

43. F. W. Conant, CUOHR, in MGC, roll 12. Conant worked for Donald Douglas during this period—not to be confused with James B. Conant of MIT.

44. Brig Gen Godfrey McHugh, interview with Murray Green, 21 April 1970, Washington, D.C., transcript in MGC, roll 12; Colonel Lyon to Arnold, letter, September 1941, in MGC (Arnold Papers, box 43); Maj Gen Frank Carroll, interview with Murray Green, 1 September 1971, Boulder, Colo., transcript in MGC, roll 12; Arnold interview with T. A. Boyd (range was a major factor in determining which weapons or aircraft to build. The problems for Germany, at least in home defense, did not involve worries about range); and Ford, 88–98.

45. Craven and Cate, vol. 1, Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942, 550.

46. Arnold to Spaatz, letter, 9 November 1946; excerpt from Stimson Diaries, 1 April 1942, in MGC, roll 12, documents Bowles’s assignment as special consultant; Spaatz to Arnold, letter, 1 September 1944; Arnold to Spaatz, letter, 12 September 1944, in MGC, roll 12; Arnold to Oscar F. Westover, letter, 18 May 1937, in MGC.

47. Arnold to Charles Kettering, letter, subject: [GB-1], 3 November 1939, reprinted in MGC 6.38. This letter marked the beginning of controllable missile development, which included powered and nonpowered bombs and missiles of all kinds; Arnold to Spaatz, letter, n.d., in MGC (Spaatz Papers, LOC, box 8, record MM). “Obviously, this is an area weapon,” Arnold wrote; Brig Gen Oscar Anderson to George Stratemeyer, memo, 2 April 1943, in MGC (Arnold Papers, box 137); and Craven and Cate, vol. 6, Men and Planes, 253–62.

48. Lt Gen Henry Viccellio, interview with Murray Green, 13 May 1970, San Antonio, Tex.; Arnold to George C. Kenney, letter, subject: Surplus B-17s, 25 October 1944; Arnold’s War Diary, October 1944–December 1945, LOC. For a summary of Crossbow and Allied countermeasures, see Craven and Cate, vol. 3, Europe: Argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945, 525–46. Jacob Neufeld, in Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, 1945–1960), points out that Lt Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., US Navy, was killed while flying a Weary Willie mission (page 10).

49. Lt Gen Fred Dean, interview with Murray Green, 20 February 1973, Hilton Head, S.C., transcript in MGC, roll 12; Arnold to Spaatz, letter, 22 November 1944, reprinted in MGC, roll 12.

50. Arnold staff memo, 2 November 1944, Arnold Papers, box 44; Arnold to Spaatz, letter, 22 November 1944, in MGC, roll 12. The different Willie projects should be clarified at this point. Weary Willie aircraft were flown to the enemy battle lines, then the pilot set the automatic pilot and bailed out in friendly territory. A Willie orphan was totally radio controlled and was remotely launched and guided into enemy territory sometimes from a mother ship that followed it to enemy territory. Aphrodite was also totally radio controlled, normally from the ground.

51. H. H. Arnold, E. L. Bowles, Louis Ridenour, phone transcript, 9 August 1944, in MGC, roll 12.

52. The circular error probable (CEP) for bombs dropped during World War II during American daylight missions was 3,200 feet for a 2,000-pound bomb. During Desert Storm, CEP for the same size bomb using precision guidance was three meters for over 80 percent of the bombs dropped. Dr. Richard P. Hallion, chief Air Force historian, interview with author, 28 August 1995. For an excellent discussion of the meaning of precision, see Stephen L. McFarland, America’s Pursuit of Precision Bombing, 1910-1945 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995).

53. Roland, 192. Arnold did not give up on NACA altogether. In 1944 he pressured Donald Marr Nelson to push the construction of the Jet Engine Facility in Cleveland, Ohio. This facility became the test center for the engines that Arnold had kept secret from them in earlier years. Ironically, the facility was named after George Lewis, the research director most directly responsible for Arnold and Kármán’s distrust.

54. Grandison Gardner, CUOHR, 11-13, 33. Gardner refers to Arnold’s hesitation to use Wright Field engineers for important projects. Tactical research was even taken away from Wright Field and moved to Eglin AFB, Fla., under command of Gardner for this very reason; also see Lt Gen Donald L. Putt, interview by J. C. Hasdorff, 1–3 April 1974, Atherton, Calif., USAFHRA, Oral History K239.0512-724, 24.

55. Maj Gen Donald J. Keirn, interview with Murray Green, 25 September 1970, Delaplane, Va., transcript in MGC, roll 12.

56. Marshall to Arnold and Gen Brehon B. Somervell, 26 July 1944, in MGC, roll 12.

57. Dr. I. A. Getting, interview by author, 9 November 1994. Dr. Getting believed that Arnold had consulted Dr. Edward Bowles before deciding upon Kármán to head the SAG. Arnold respected Bowles’s opinion and had been impressed by his work on the SADU. He trusted his views on the direction for science and technology for the Air Force.

58. Arnold and Eaker, Winged Warfare, 238–39.

59. H. H. Arnold, “Air Forces in the Atomic Age,” in Dexter Masters and Katharine Way, eds., One World or None (New York: McGraw–Hill, Co., 1946), 30; and Young. The debate over whether or not Arnold’s staff had kept him as well informed concerning jet development in the United States as they could have is a complicated one. His actions in 1940, such as funding the high-speed tunnel at Wright Field, seem to indicate that he was aware of the Kotcher Report of 1939. Remember, too, that these developments would have taken place during what I call Arnold’s early “Technology Phase II, September 1939—Spring 1944,” when production and production R&D projects took precedence over all other projects. The turbojet engine, in the early days, did not show the potential for completion within the two-year restriction that Arnold imposed on R&D projects. Once the Whittle information became available in April 1941, the American timetable moved dramatically forward, hence Arnold’s apparent late push into jet propulsion. Actually, this fit well with his wartime R&D restrictions.

---

Contributor

Maj Dik Daso (USAFA; MA, PhD, University of South Carolina) is currently the A. Verville Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Previous assignments include a staff tour at Headquarters USAF as chief, Doctrine Branch; flying tours in F-15, RF-4C, and T-38 aircraft; and a tour as a history professor at the US Air Force Academy. In 1995, he served as the historian for the Air Force study New World Vistas: Air & Space Power for the 21st Century.

Air & Space Power Chronicles

 

 

Henry "Hap" Arnold

 

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Henry H. (Hap) Arnold was commander of the Army Air Forces in World War II and the only air commander ever to attain the five-star rank of general of the armies. He was especially interested in the development of sophisticated aerospace technology to give the United States an edge in achieving air superiority. He fostered the development of such innovations as jet aircraft, rocketry, rocket-assisted takeoff, and supersonic flight.

Lt. Henry H. Arnold in a Wright B airplane, College Park, Md. 1911.

Hap Arnold.

Hap Arnold, on the left, and Thomas Dewitt Milling both served as flight instructors in the U.S. Signal Corps flight school in College Park, Maryland.

Route of the B-10s to Alaska and return.

When Hap Arnold became a military pilot in 1911, the U.S. military owned just two airplanes. By his retirement in 1946, he had built the U.S. Air Force into a separate service of the armed forces. Under Arnold’s guidance, the two planes and two pilots of 1911 had grown to a peak World War II size of 78,757 aircraft and 2,372,292 personnel. During his 35-year career, the versatile Arnold had combined his vision, political savvy, piloting skills, and engineering knowledge to forge a mission and place for the U.S. Air Force better than anyone who had come before.

Henry Harold "Hap" Arnold was born in Philadelphia in 1886 and attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he was known as a prankster and troublemaker. His grades were mediocre, and when he graduated he was denied a commission with the cavalry, his dream position. Instead, he was assigned to the infantry and sent to the Philippines.

But he was lucky enough to befriend Captain Arthur Cowan, who had been charged with finding officers to join the Signal Corps flight training program. Knowing Arnold’s desire to leave the infantry, he chose Arnold. Arnold and another prospective pilot, Thomas DeWitt Milling, were sent to the Wright brothers’ flying school in Ohio to begin training on the newly purchased Wright Flyers.

Ground school lasted less than a week, and Arnold made his first flight on May 3 in a Wright Model B flyer. On July 6, he earned his civilian pilot certificate and on July 22, he was given military aviator rating.

When their training was completed, Arnold and Milling became flight instructors at the Signal Corps flight school in College Park, Maryland. They also worked on finding military uses for airplanes, which at the time, few people had considered. Arnold was a top-notch pilot and established a world altitude record and in October 1912, became the first Mackay Trophy winner by successfully using aerial reconnaissance to locate a cavalry troop. The next month, while participating in an artillery fire directing experiment, Arnold’s plane suddenly dropped into a downward spin. Arnold survived, performing the first successful spin recovery. When he landed, he asked for a leave of absence from flying and was transferred back to the infantry.

When Congress increased aviation appropriations at the beginning of war in Europe, Arnold was recalled to the Signal Corps. With a temporary wartime rank of colonel, Arnold spent the war in Washington overseeing aircraft production and mobilization. As one of the few officers with flying experience, Arnold brought a valuable practical viewpoint to his job, and although not happy about being away from the battlefront, he gained valuable administrative experience.

After the war ended, Arnold served at several air bases and attended courses at the Army Industrial College. The new chief of the air service Mason Patrick called Arnold back to Washington in 1924 to serve as chief of information for the air service, charged with keeping abreast of developments in aviation. He was also given the impossible task of trying to subdue the outspoken Billy Mitchell, his old friend and mentor. During Mitchell’s 1926 court-martial, Arnold testified on his behalf. When Mitchell was found guilty and retired from the military, Arnold considered retiring as well, but feeling there was more to accomplish, chose to stay with the air service. Patrick sent him to Fort Riley, Kansas.

Despite its reputation as the worst post in the army, Arnold enjoyed Fort Riley. He taught airpower to the infantry soldiers and could interact with them. He could finally spend time with his family, and he wrote children’s stories about a pilot named Bill Bruce.

Leaving Fort Riley and after several reassignments, he was stationed at March Field in California. There, he made valuable contacts in the world of academia, particularly with members of the aeronautics program at Caltech and Theodore von Kármán, the noted aerodynamicist. Arnold became convinced that the only way the U.S. military aviation would be the best would be if industry, military, and academic research institutions all cooperated.

In 1934, Arnold earned his second Mackay Trophy, commanding a fleet of ten B-10 bombers on a roundtrip flight between Washington, D.C., and Fairbanks, Alaska. As a result of careful planning, the 8,290-mile (4,974-kilometer) roundtrip was accomplished with no aircraft losses. And it demonstrated to the American public that the geographical isolation the country had always relied on for protection was no longer a factor.

In 1936, Arnold became the assistant chief of the Air Corps, and when the chief of the Air Corps Oscar Westover died in a plane crash in September 1938, Major General Arnold became chief. Arnold inherited a force of fewer than 2,000 airplanes and 21,000 men at the same time that Europe was gearing up for another major war. Arnold had seen the problems stemming from a lack of preparedness during World War I and was determined that the Air Corps not be in the same position again. Using his administrative, political, and industrial experience, he mobilized both the military and industry. He knew that for the air corps to be useful, it had to have an equal balance of airplanes, pilots, support personnel, and air bases. While he pushed for an increased industrial infrastructure and research to improve his planes, he also developed training programs and built air bases. As much as he wanted the best bombers and fighters, he knew that trainer aircraft were equally important.

Among Arnold’s successful mobilization projects was the development of the B-17 and B-29, heavy long-range bombers for large-scale strategic bombing campaigns. Other research programs Arnold pushed were radar, bombsights, windshield de-icing, and jet assisted take-off. But as the country moved closer to war, Arnold changed his views on long-range research. Rather than spend his resources on research projects to develop advanced capabilities that would not be completed until after the war, he preferred to concentrate on projects that would expand the combat range, effectiveness, and safety of the current planes. The only exception to this rule was the development of the XP-59A Airacomet, America’s first jet-engine aircraft. Arnold funded the XP-59A project because he felt that jets were the future of aviation. Although its first official flight was October 2, 1942, the plane never performed to a satisfactory level and did not reach high production levels.

On June 20, 1941, the air service was renamed the United States Army Air Force. Six months later, the United States was at war. Arnold organized the USAAF into smaller air forces, each with a specific task and war theater. He oversaw an enormous growth of people, airplanes, and support systems. He also supported initiatives that helped win the war and establish the U.S. Air Force: strategic bombings campaigns, Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo, firebombing in Japan, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), and the development and fostering of promising officers who would lead the service in the decades to come. Arnold was devoted to his troops and spent much of the war touring overseas operations. He worked extremely hard and his health suffered for it. He had his first of several heart attacks on January 19, 1945, less than a month after his promotion to five-star General of the Army. His doctors and family encouraged him to retire, but he felt duty-bound to finish the war and bring his flyers home. He finally retired in June 1946, and one year later the U.S. Air Force was founded as a separate service. In 1949, President Truman signed a bill making Arnold a permanent (and in 2001, the only) General of the Air Force. He died the following January in his sleep.

Arnold’s pioneering flights, devotion to the concept of air power, promotion of technological development, and leadership during World War II have inspired generations of air force personnel, scientists, engineers, and dreamers. To honor him, the air force named an air force base in Tennessee after him in 1951. Arnold Air Force Base is the only base without a flying unit assigned to it; instead it houses the Arnold Engineering Development Center, the world’s largest collection of flight simulators to aid in advanced aeronautical research. For a man who spent his career promoting technology and research, this is a most fitting honor.

--Pamela Feltus

Sources:

Copp, DeWitt S. A Few Great Captains: The Men and Events That Shaped the Development of U.S. Air Power. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980.

Daso, Dik Alan. Hap Arnold and the Evolution of American Airpower. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.

 

 

Henry H. Arnold

 

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Henry "Hap" Arnold

Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold (June 25, 1886 – January 15, 1950) was an aviation pioneer and commander of the United States Army Air Corps (from 1938), commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces (from 1941 until 1945) and the first and only General of the Air Force (in 1949.)

 

Early Life And Career

Born June 25, 1886, in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, Arnold was the son of a strong-willed physician also serving in the Pennsylvania National Guard. The family was Baptist in religious belief but had strong Mennonite ties. Arnold took the competitive examination for entrance into West Point after his brother Thomas (already a student at Penn State University) refused to do so, but placed second on the list. He received a delayed appointment when the nominated cadet confessed to being married, which was against academy regulations.

Arnold entered the United States Military Academy in the summer of 1903 at age 17. At the academy he helped found the "Black Hand", a cadet group of pranksters. He wanted to join the cavalry but an inconsistent demerit record and an academic class standing of 66th out of 111 cadets resulted in his being commissioned on June 14, 1907 as a Second Lieutenant, Infantry, an assignment he initially protested but was persuaded to accept (there was no commissioning requirement for USMA graduates in 1907). His first posting was to the 29th Infantry in the Philippines.

There, disliking the infantry, Arnold volunteered to assist Captain Arthur S. Cowan of the Signal Corps in a military cartography detail, mapping the entire island of Luzon. Cowan returned to the United States in January, 1909, to become chief of the newly-created Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps and to recruit two lieutenants to become pilots. Cowan contacted Arnold, who cabled his interest in a transfer to the Signal Corps.

In June, 1909, the 29th Infantry relocated to Fort Jay, New York. In 1911 Arnold, having heard nothing more from Cowan, had applied for transfer to the Ordnance Department because it offered an immediate promotion to 1st Lieutenant. He was awaiting the results of the competitive examination he had taken for the position when he learned that his interest in aeronautics had not been forgotten. He immediately sent a letter requesting a transfer to the Signal Corps, and on April 21, 1911, received Special Order 95, detailing him and 2nd Lt. Thomas D. Milling of the 15th Cavalry, to Dayton, Ohio, for a course in flight instruction at the Wright brothers' aviation school at Simms Station, Ohio. Beginning instruction on May 3, Arnold made his first solo flight May 13 after three hours and forty-eight minutes of flying lessons (Milling had already soloed on May 8 with just two hours of flight time). In June he and Milling completed their instruction. Arnold received Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) pilot certificate No. 29 on July 6, 1911, and Military Aviator Certificate No. 2 a year later.

Assigned with Milling to the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps at College Park, Maryland as the Army's first flight instructors on June 14, Arnold set an altitude record of 3,260 feet on July 7 and twice broke it (August 18, 1911 to 4,167 feet; and June 1, 1912, 6,540 feet). In August, 1911, he experienced his first crash, trying to take off from a farm field after getting lost. In September Arnold became the first U.S. pilot to carry mail, flying a bundle of letters five miles on Long Island, New York.

The flight school moved by train to Augusta, Georgia, in November, 1911, hoping to continue flying there during the winter, but their flying was limited by rain and flooding, and they returned to Maryland in April, 1912. Arnold accepted delivery of the Army's first plane with a propeller and engine mounted on the front on June 26, but crashed into the bay at Plymouth, Massachusetts, trying to take off. Arnold began to develop a phobia about flying, intensified by the earlier fatal crash of the Wright Company instructor who had taught him to fly, Allan L. Welch, at College Park on June 12. Another fatal crash occurred at College Park on September 18, involving an academy classmate of Arnold's, 2d Lt. Lewis Rockwell.

In October, Arnold and Milling were ordered to enter the competition for the first MacKay Trophy for "the most outstanding military flight of the year." Arnold won when he located a company of cavalry from the air and returned safely, despite high turbulence. As a result he and Milling were sent to Ft. Riley, Kansas, to experiment with spotting for the field artillery. On November 5 his plane stalled, went into a spin, and he narrowly avoided a fatal crash. He immediately grounded himself voluntarily and applied for a leave of absence. Flying was considered so dangerous that no stigma was attached for refusing to fly and his request was granted (five of the Army's 14 aviators transferred out during 1913). During his leave of absence he renewed an acquaintance with Eleanor "Bee" Pool, the daughter of a banker and one of his father's patients.

On December 1, Arnold took a staff assignment as assistant in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer in Washington, D.C. and was given the task of closing down the flying school at College Park. Although promoted to 1st lieutenant on April 10, 1913, Arnold was unhappy and requested a transfer to the Philippines. In August, after his first request had been denied for lack of a vacancy, he returned to the infantry.

On September 10, 1913, he married Eleanor Pool, with Lt. Milling acting as his best man. Reassigned to the Philippines in January, 1914, he was quartered next door to 1st Lt. George Catlett Marshall, who became his mentor, friend and long-time supporter. Soon after their arrival Bee miscarried, but on January 17, 1915, their first child, Lois Elizabeth Arnold, was born at Fort McKinley, Manila. In January, 1916, completing a two-year tour with the 13th Infantry, Arnold was reassigned to the 3rd Infantry and returned to the United States. En route, he received a telegram in Hawaii from Major William L. Mitchell, whom he had met in 1912 at College Park and who was now executive officer of the Air Service, offering him the rank of captain if he volunteered for a return to aviation. On May 20, 1916, Arnold was promoted to Captain (temporary) and reported to Rockwell Field (named for his academy classmate, Lewis Rockwell) for duty as a supply officer with the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps.

Between October 18 and December 16, 1916, Arnold, encouraged by former associates, worked to overcome his fear of flying with voluntary extra duty flying fifteen to twenty minutes a day. On November 26 he flew solo for the first time in four years, and on December 16 he performed aerobatics. Before he could be reassigned to flying duties, however, he was involved as a witness in an incident in which a senior officer had authorized an unofficial excursion flight for a non-aviator, resulting in the loss of the plane. After testifying to army investigators, Arnold was transferred to Panama by the officer he testified against, one day after the birth of his second child, Henry H. Arnold, Jr., on January 29, 1917.

Arnold was assigned to find a suitable location for an airfield in the Panama Canal Zone, build it and command the aero squadron to be assigned there. When the military services could not agree on a site, Arnold was ordered to Washington D.C. to resolve the dispute, and was en route by ship when the United States declared war on Germany. Arnold requested to be sent to France, but his presence in Washington worked against him, since the Aviation Section now needed qualified officers for headquarters duty. He was immediately given temporary duty as chief of the Information division with a temporary promotion to Major on June 27 until permanent orders could be cut.

On August 5, 1917, he was again promoted and became the youngest full colonel in the Army (Arnold was a Colonel, Signal Corps--for a period of time he also held the concurrent brevet rank of Major, Infantry), in preparation for being named executive officer of the Aviation Section ten days later. He spent the next year trying to implement a large aviation appropriations bill over the resistance of the Army General Staff. Although he largely failed, Arnold gained significant experience in aircraft production and procurement, the construction of air schools and airfields, and the recruitment and training of large numbers of personnel, as well as learning political in-fighting in the Washington environment.

Arnold's third child, William Bruce Arnold, was born July 17, 1918. Shortly after Arnold arranged to go to France to brief the commander of the American Expeditionary Force, General John Pershing, on new developments. Aboard a ship to France in late October he developed influenza and was hospitalized on his arrival in England. He managed to reach France but the Armistice ended the war on November 11.

 

Post World War I

The improvements in aircraft during the war and the creation of organizations such as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics improved the potential for U.S. Army airpower, and it had been made a branch separate from the Signal Corps on May 14, 1918. However to keep control of aviation in the Army ground forces, the first post-war Chief of the reorganized Air Service, Maj. Gen. Charles Menoher, was an infantry general who had commanded the 42nd "Rainbow" Infantry Division in France. He was succeeded by another non-aviator, Maj.Gen. Mason Patrick from the Corps of Engineers, who General John Pershing had used to head the Air Service of the AEF.

Arnold was ordered back to Rockwell Field on December 21, 1918, to supervise the demobilization of 8,000 airmen and surplus aircraft. He worked hard to preserve and promote aviation with shows and publicity stunts. At Rockwell Field Arnold first established relationships with the men that would become his main aides, his executive officer, Captain Carl Spaatz and his adjutant, 1st Lt. Ira Eaker, while supporting the highly visible efforts of Brig. Gen. William L. Mitchell. He was promoted to the permanent rank of Captain on June 30, 1920, and the permanent rank of Major the next day, July 1st.

However after demobilization Rockwell became a remote outpost of the service and Arnold experienced several serious illnesses and accidents requiring hospitalization. His fourth child, John, was born in the summer of 1921 but died on June 30, 1923, of acute appendicitis.

In August, 1924, Arnold was unexpectedly assigned to attend the Army Industrial College. After completing the course in December he was reassigned to duty as chief of Air Service information in January, 1925, working closely with Brig. Gen. Mitchell. When Mitchell was court-martialed, Arnold, Spaatz, and Eaker were all warned that they were jeopardizing their careers by vocally supporting Mitchell, but they testified on his behalf anyway. After Mitchell was convicted on December 17, 1925, Arnold continued to use his position in the Information Office to provide propaganda to airpower-friendly journalists in defiance of orders from the General Staff and with the knowledge of General Patrick. In February, 1926, Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis ordered Patrick to discipline the leakers, and Patrick chose Arnold, with whom he shared a mutual dislike. Arnold was given the choice of resignation from the Army or a general court-martial, but when Arnold chose the latter, the Army apparently decided it did not want another public fiasco, and instead transferred Major Arnold to command the 16th Observation Squadron at Fort Riley, Kansas -- a cavalry post far from any aviation advances.

Arnold accepted his exile and in May, 1927, participated in war games at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. There he met Maj. Gen. James E. Fechet, who had succeeded Patrick as head of the service, now the U.S. Army Air Corps, and successfully completed a difficult assignment for him.

General Fechet intervened with Army Chief of Staff Charles P. Summerall to have Arnold's exile ended by assigning him to the Army's Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth. The year-long course was highly unpleasant for Arnold because of doctrinal differences with the school's commandant, but Arnold graduated with high marks in June, 1929. His next assignment was commander of Fairfield Air Service Depot, Ohio. In 1930 he also became executive officer of the Air Materiel Division, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel on February 1, 1931.

On November 27, 1931, he took command of March Field, California, an assignment which included the refurbishing of the base into one of the showcase installations of the Air Corps and one that required that he resolve strained relations with the citizens of Riverside, California, which he accomplished by having his officers join at least one of the local social service organizations. While base commander at March Field, personnel under Arnold's command flew food-drops during blizzards in the winter of 1932-33, assisted in relief work during the Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933, and established a camp for 3,000 boys of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

In 1934 he commanded one of the three military zones during the Air Mail Scandal, but his pilots performed well and his own reputation was relatively untouched by the fiasco. Later that same year he won his second Mackay Trophy, when he led ten of the new B-10 bombers 18,000 miles from Washington to Fairbanks, Alaska. Although he lobbied for recognition of the other airmen involved in the Alaska flight, the Army Chief of Staff ignored Arnold's recommendations, with the result that his reputation among some of his peers was tarnished by resentment.

On March 9, 1935, General Headquarters Air Force (GHQ) was created to take control of all flying units of the Army Air Corps. Its first commander, Major General Frank Andrews, tapped Arnold to command its First Wing, headquartered at March Field, and he was promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general on March 2, 1935.

On December 28, 1935, Arnold was summoned to Washington by the Army Chief of Staff and over his protests, made Assistant Chief of the Air Corps under its new Chief, Major General Oscar Westover. Instead of commanding operational units, Arnold was now in charge of procurement and supply. Westover was killed in an air crash in September, 1938, however, and Arnold then became Chief of the Air Corps, with an immediate promotion to Major General September 22. This move did not return Arnold to the operational Air Force, but it did empower him to plan for expansion of the Air Corps into a branch of the Army co-equal with the ground forces.

His first move was to encourage research and development efforts, particularly the B-17 and the concept of Jet-assisted takeoff. To encourage the use of civilian expertise, the California Institute of Technology became a beneficiary of Air Corps funding and Theodore von Kármán of its Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory developed a good working relationship with Arnold. Charles Lindbergh was also briefly co-opted by the Air Corps as a spokesman for aviation. Arnold concentrated on rapid returns from R&D, exploiting proven technologies to provide operational solutions to counter the rising threat of the Axis Powers. From 1940 onward, Arnold also pushed for jet propulsion, especially after the British shared plans of the Whittle Turbojet in 1941.

 

World War II

 

Click on Picture to enlarge

Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall (center) and General Arnold confer with Gen. Omar Bradley on the beach at Normandy, France in 1944.

Henry H. Arnold At College Park Maryland, 1916

Henry H. Arnold aboard a Wright Flyer, 1911

Henry H. Arnold in training at Dayton, Ohio, 1911

With U.S. participation in the Second World War inevitable, the separation between the Air Corps and the Air Forces Combat Command (the successor to GHQAF) was removed with a revision of Army Regulation 95-5 and the two merged as the United States Army Air Forces on June 20, 1941. Arnold was made Chief of the Army Air Forces and Army deputy chief of staff for air. This provided the Air Force with a staff of its own, brought the entire organization under the command of one general (Arnold), and gave it near autonomy. It also ended debate on separation of the Air Force into a service co-equal with the Army and Navy until after the war.

Arnold gave his new air staff as its first assignment the development of a war plan for fighting both Germany and Japan, and it produced AWPD-1, which became the basis for air strategy during the war. AWPD-1 defined four tasks for the USAAF: defense of the Western Hemisphere, an initial defensive strategy against Japan, a strategic air offensive against Germany, and a later strategic air offensive against Japan in prelude of invasion. It also planned for an expansion of the USAAF to 60,000 aircraft and 2.1 million men. AWPD-1 called for 24 groups (approximately 750 airplanes) of B-29 very heavy bombers to be based in Northern Ireland and Egypt for use against Nazi Germany.

Even before then he had pushed for aid to Great Britain; with U.S. entry into the war, Arnold, a strong supporter of strategic bombing, closely supervised the creation of the Eighth Air Force in England to limit the diversion of Army bombers to anti-submarine patrol and to the Pacific Theater, and thwart British lobbying to have U.S. bombers sent as individual replacements for the Royal Air Force.

In the wake of U.S. entry in the war, Arnold was promoted to lieutenant general on December 15, 1941. On March 9, 1942, with the issuance of War department Circular 59 the USAAF acquired full autonomy, equal to and entirely separate from the Army Ground Forces and Services of Supply. The office of the Chief of the Air Corps and the Air Forces Combat Command were eliminated entirely, with Arnold becoming Commanding General of the USAAF and a member of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined Chiefs of Staff. In response to an inquiry from President Franklin Roosevelt, Arnold directed the Air War Plans Division in August, 1942, to revise its estimates and AWPD-42 was issued, calling for 75,000 aircraft and 2.7 million men, but also adding a call for 8,000 gliders and the production of 8,000 aircraft for use by other allies. AWPD-42 reaffirmed earlier strategic priorities, but increased the list of industrial targets from 23 to 177, ranking the German Luftwaffe first and its submarine force second in importance of destruction. It also directed that the B-29 not be employed in Europe because of problems in development, but instead be concentrated in the Far East to destroy Japan.

Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor Arnold began to carry out AWPD-1. The primary strategic bombing force against Nazi Germany would be the Eighth Air Force, and he named General Spaatz to command it and General Eaker to head its Bomber Command. Other Arnold protegés eventually filled key positions in the strategic bombing forces, including Colonels Frank A. Armstrong and Newton Longfellow, and Generals Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., Lawrence Kuter, Laverne Saunders, Emmitt O'Donnell, and James H. Doolittle.

Despite protecting his strategic bombing force from demands of other services and allies, Arnold was forced to divert resources from the Eighth to support operations in North Africa, crippling the Eighth in its infancy and nearly killing it. Eaker (now Eighth Air Force commander) found that pre-war doctrine stating that heavily-armed bombers could penetrate defenses to reach any target without supporting escort fighters was wrong and early in 1943 began requesting more fighters and disposable fuel tanks to increase their range, in addition to repeated requests to increase the size of his small bombing force. Eaker was resisted not only by opponents of strategic daylight bombing but by his fighter commanders as well, who argued that the use of drop tanks would endanger their aircraft.

Heavy losses in the summer and fall of 1943 on deep penetration missions increased Eaker's requests, but Arnold, under pressure and impatient for results, ignored the findings and placed the blame on a lack of aggressiveness by bomber commanders. This came at a time when General Dwight Eisenhower was putting together his command group for the invasion of Europe, and Arnold approved Eisenhower's request to replace Eaker with his own commanders, Spaatz and Doolittle. Ironically, the very items Eaker requested--more airplanes, drop tanks, and P-51 fighters--accompanied the change of command and made the Eighth Air Force a success.

With the strategic bombing crisis resolved in Europe, Arnold placed full emphasis on completion of the development and deployment of the B-29 to attack Japan. The B-29 program had been plagued with a seemingly unending series of development problems, subjecting it and Arnold to much criticism in the press and from skeptical field commanders. The B-29 was the key component of the AAF's fourth strategic priority, since no other land-based bomber was capable of reaching the Japanese homeland, but by February 1944, the XX Bomber Command, slated to begin Operation Matterhorn on June 1, had virtually no flight time yet above an altitude of 20,000 feet.

With a designated overseas deployment date of April 15, 1944, Arnold intervened in the situation personally by flying to Kansas on March 8. For three days he toured training bases involved in the modification program, distressed at his findings of shortages and work failures, and on the spot made a military procurement officer accompanying him, Maj.Gen. Bennett E. Meyers, coordinator of the program. Meyers (who would after the war be investigated by Congress in a procurement scandal in which Arnold was compelled to testify), despite labor problems and blizzard weather, succeeded in having a complete bomb group ready for deployment by April 9.

The mechanical problems of the B-29, however, had not been resolved, and combat operations identified many new ones. Arnold felt the pressure of not only achieving the goals of AWPD-1, but of justifying by results a very expensive technological project in the B-29, and also the highly-classified knowledge that the B-29 would be called upon to deliver the atomic bomb, if the Manhattan Project succeeded. Operations against Japanese targets in China and Southeast Asia began in June, 1944 and from the outset produced far less positive results than expected.

In many ways the difficulties of the Twentieth Air Force's campaign against Japan mirrored those of the Eighth Air Force's against Germany. With characteristic impatience, Arnold quickly relieved the B-29 commander in China and replaced him with Maj.Gen. Curtis LeMay. LeMay produced results despite a shortage of resources, and a second B-29 bomber command was moved to the Mariana Islands in November. One of the architects of AWPD-1 and AWPD-42 in command, General Hansell, commanded the bombers but after two months of poor results, which could no longer be blamed on defects in the bomber, Arnold decided he too needed replacing. He shut down operations from China, consolidated all the B-29s in the Marianas, and replaced Hansell with LeMay.

Arnold had at its creation made himself commanding general of the Twentieth Air Force, for which he is sometimes criticized for failure to delegate. This unique command arrangement may also have contributed to his health problems (see below), but after the negative experience of building an effective bombing force against Germany, and realizing the consequences of failure against Japan, Arnold may have considered that administrative decisions regarding command could best be handled personally. The Joint Chiefs also desired to place all military forces in the Central Pacific, where the Twentieth Air Force was to be based, under the operational control of Admiral Chester Nimitz, and Arnold was adamantly opposed to diversion of strategic bombers to support tactical operations.

 

Health Problems

 

Funeral Procession of General Arnold

Between 1943 and 1945 Arnold experienced four heart attacks severe enough to require hospitalization. In addition to being by nature intensely impatient, Arnold considered that his personal presence was required wherever a crisis might be, and as a result he traveled extensively and for long hours under great stress during the war, aggravating what may have been a pre-existing coronary condition. A lesser but more frequent factor may have been his difficulty in handling inter-service politics, particularly with the Navy, which steadfastly refused to recognize him as a Chief of Staff.

His first heart attack occurred February 28, 1943, just after his return from a lengthy and exhausting trip to the Casablanca Conference and to China. He was hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Hospital for several days, then took three weeks leave at the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel in Florida, which had been converted into a convalescent hospital. Army regulations required that he leave the service, but President Roosevelt waived the requirement in April after he demonstrated his recovery and on the condition that the president be provided with monthly updates on Arnold's health.

His second attack occurred just a month later, on May 10, 1943, and resulted in a 10-day stay in Walter Reed. His third, less severe than the first two, occurred exactly a year later, on May 10, 1944, under the strain of the B-29 problems. Arnold took a month's leave, returning to duty by flying to London for a conference on June 7, 1944.

His last wartime heart attack came on January 17, 1945, just days after he had changed Hansell for LeMay. Arnold had not gone into his office for three days and had refused to admit the Air Forces' chief flight surgeon to his quarters when checked up on. The doctor enlisted a general and personal friend of Arnold's to inquire, after which Arnold was again flown to Coral Gables and placed under 24-hour care for nine days.

Arnold again was allowed to remain in the service, but under conditions which amounted to light duty. With the war clearly in its final stages, Arnold agreed, although when he received word on May 6, 1945, of the surrender of Nazi Germany, he was at the base of the 456th Bomb Group in Italy, in the midst of a tour of Europe.

On March 19, 1943 he was promoted to full general and on December 21, 1944 he was made a General of the Army, ranking him fourth in the U.S. military structure.

In 1945, he founded Project RAND from $10,000,000 of funding leftover from World War II, which later became the RAND Corporation, a think-tank for military strategy.

After a trip to South America in January, 1946, in which he developed a heart arrhythmia severe enough to cancel the remainder of the trip, General Arnold left the Air Force on February 28, 1946 (his official date of retirement was June 30). He was succeeded by General Carl Spaatz, who also became first Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force when it became a separate service on September 18, 1947.

Arnold retired to a 40-acre ranch near Sonoma, California in the summer of 1946 and contracted with Harper & Brothers to write his memoirs, which became the book Global Mission. He was virtually penniless except for his pension and sought a source of income for his wife since his pension benefits would end with his death. He was in the midst of writing the book when he suffered his fifth serious heart attack in January, 1948, hospitalizing him for three months.

On May 7, 1949, Arnold was honored by being made the first (and to date, only) General of the Air Force. (He is also the only individual to serve as a five-star general in two services.) He died January 15, 1950, at his home in Sonoma, California and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The source of his nickname "Hap" is in dispute, but most likely was short for "Happy," a nickname his wife Bee habitually used for him. His West Point nickname was "Pewt", and possibly also "Benny", and he was known to his family as Harley during his youth. To his immediate subordinates and headquarters staff he was referred to as "The Chief."

The honorary organization in Air Force ROTC, the Arnold Air Society, is named in his honor, as is the cadet social center at the United States Air Force Academy, Arnold Hall. The Air Force Aid Society awards a scholarship in his name to dependents of Air Force members or retirees.

References

• Coffey, Thomas M., Hap: the Story of the U.S. Air Force and the Man Who Built It, General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Viking Press (1982)
• Daso, Dik A., Major USAF, "Hap Arnold's Early Career in Aviation Technology, 1903-1935," Aerospace Power Journal, (Fall, 1996), Air University Press, Maxwell AFB, Alabama
• Nalty, Bernard C., editor, Winged Shield, Winged Sword: A History of the United States Air Force (1997), ISBN 0-16-049009-X

 

He was promoted to five-star rank of General of the Army by President Roosevelt in 1944, joining Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar Nelson Bradley at that rank.

He retired to his home in Sonoma, California, in March 1946, but was honored in 1949 by the rank of General of the Air Force, the first (and only) officer to attain five-star rank in both the United States Army and the United States Air Force.

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