Page 339 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

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u.s. air forCe doCtrine:. tHe searCH for deCisive effeCt

In the 1920s in the Air Corps Tactical School, first located in Virginia and then
moved to Maxwell Field in Alabama in 1931, U.S. Army aviators began to develop a
uniquely American view of air warfare. One of the most notable of the early airpower
theorists was Major William Sherman of the Air Corps. His 1926 book, Air Warfare,
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provided a comprehensive view of aviation, its roles and its likely development.
The use of airpower in ground forces support and in strategic bombing missions,
as well as the future importance of air transport, were all discussed in his book.
Sherman provided a far more coherent and balanced view of airpower than Mitchell,
and his extensive discussion of strategic bombing, which he saw as the main role of
the air arm, discussed the moral as well as tactical issues involved in bombing enemy
cities and industries. Sherman’s thinking was as sophisticated as anything written in
Europe at the time, and showed how much American airpower thinking had matured
since 1918. Tragically, Sherman, one of America’s most capable airpower thinkers,
died of an infection in 1927.
Yet others carried on the intellectual work at the Air Corps Tactical School. While
the official army doctrine still saw the chief Air Corps role as that of a support arm
for ground units, the Air Corps began to develop its own doctrine of air power, a
largely unofficial doctrine that was very different from that of the mainstream army.
In 1926 a new manual for the Air corps emphasized the employment of combined
air forces against the enemy. In the 1926 doctrine the enemy population and the vital
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points of the enemy homeland were listed as primary targets for air operations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s a small cadre of Air Corps instructors at the Air
Corps Tactical School (ACTS) began an intense study of the economics of warfare.
An understanding of how economies and production affected warfare had first been
pioneered in the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington and this also
became part of Air Corps’ approach to studying airpower and war. For example,
instructors at the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) noted how the destruction of a
few specific bridges could disrupt a national transportation network for weeks. The
loss of one factory making a single essential engine part could stop production of a
major aircraft plant. The loss of a few electric generating stations could shut down
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the electric net for an entire region.
The conclusion was drawn that for airpower to decisively affect an enemy’s
ability to wage war, one did not need to carry out mass bombardment attacks against
an entire industry, or devastate an entire region. The desired effects -- the shutdown
of production or transportation-- could be accomplished by attacking only a few

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William Sherman, Air Warfare (New York: Ronald Press, 1926) reprint, (Maxwell Air Force Base:
Air University Press, 2002). For Sherman’s discussion of strategic bombing see pp. 190-208.
15
Crane, p. 21.
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Peter Faber, “Interwar U.S. Army Aviation and the Air Corps Tactical School: Incubators of Ameri-
can Airpower,” in Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory, ed. Phillip Meilinger (Max-
well AFB: Air University Press, 1997) pp. 183-238.