Airpower Dbq Essay

Industrialized nations, including the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan, innovated both rapidly and expansively following World War I. In some respects, the innovation of the interwar period of 1919-1939 was part of a larger, cyclical model of change in military organizations that has existed since the fourteenth century and continued to the present. In the twentieth century technology, scientific advancements and research, increased resources and funding, and expanded bureaucracy and specialization enabled an increase in both pace and complexity of such organizational change. Nowhere is this more true than the successful implementation of American airpower as an innovation.

However, one must recognize that enacting innovative

technologies and tactics involves more than science and funding. Fundamental to America’s embrace of airpower was the organizational change that occurred in its military. To that end, John P. Kotter’s “8-Step Change Model” provides the most appropriate framework for comprehending how and why American individual innovators succeeded in implementing airpower. Ultimately, America was effective in airpower innovation during the interwar period because its advocates, most notably Billy Mitchell, established a sense of urgency, formulated a vision for strategic bombing, communicated effectively, and institutionalized its gains through the formation of the Army Air Corps and United States Army Air Forces.
The catastrophic impact of World War I on Western civilization and the impending threat of Japan in the Pacific created an environment in which American airpower enthusiasts created a sense of urgency as an antecedent to innovation.

Despite the nation’s calls for isolationism and relatively secure geographic position, the bloodletting of the Western front remained fresh in Mitchell’s mind. He recognized that ground units were “locked in the struggle, immovable, powerless to advance, for three years… It was as though they kept knocking their heads against a stone wall.” Moreover, Mitchell comprehended the capability of Japanese airpower as a threat to both American Pacific territories and the Alaskan coastline. To that end, he authored a 323-page document on the problem of airpower in the Pacific, in which he correctly assessed Japan’s interest in and develop of their aviation capability. Therefore, Mitchell generated a sense of urgency, in America by not only emphasizing the restricted maneuverability of ground forces in World War I, but also accentuating the prowess of Japanese airpower in the Pacific when compared to the

Americans.
Consequently, Mitchell formulated a vision for strategic bombing that could provide both freedom from the gridlock experienced in World War I and protection from external aggression. To that end, he proposed that airpower could relegate trench warfare to the annals of history while providing a method to achieve victory more quickly, cheaply, and humanely than ground combat. Simply Mitchell recognized that technology could be both the cause of war’s slaughter, as evidenced through machine guns, chemical weapons, and artillery, as well as its salvation through air power. He also correctly recognized that his innovative concept, ran contrary to traditional army thinking on the role of airpower in war. Mitchell, therefore, envisioned a separate American military service: separate from the army in that it focused entirely on the air domain and its associated technological and theoretical issues, and different from the navy in perspective and potential employment.
Yet, it was in effectively communicating his vision where Billy Mitchell both made his greatest impact on American airpower and debilitated his career as an officer. Perhaps Mitchell’s most effective mechanism for communication was the 1921 test in which he and his wingmen sunk the German battleship Ostfriesland, indicating the stark reality and practicality of airpower in war. More than the Ostfriesland test, however, Mitchell vociferously advocated on behalf of his vision directly to the American people through a series of Saturday Evening Post articles and testimony before congress. His outspoken testimony would ultimately produce Mitchell’s demise following his criticism of naval aviation and subsequent court-martial. Although no longer in the military service, Mitchell continued to write and advocate on behalf of airpower until his death in 1936, but with less effectiveness. Nonetheless, Mitchell, in becoming a martyr on behalf of airpower, had both captivated public interest and established a foundation for the future employment of airpower in war.
Mitchell’s advocacy ultimately led to the institutionalization of airpower into the organizational culture of the American military.

The Air Corps Act of 1926 created the Army Air Corps, established an Assistant Secretary for War for Air, and provided representation on the War Department’s General Staff. Moreover, airpower enthusiasts created professional military education programs, such as the Air Corps Tactical School, that not only emphasized the importance of strategic bombing, but also facilitated debate on the role of fighter aircraft as well. Consequently, future advocates of airpower expanded their conception of theory and furthered their practical approach to implementation of aviation technology and air war tactics. This proliferation of airpower theory through education, perhaps, was the most significant element of institutionalization of airpower into the culture of the American military

system.
Mitchell’s foresight vis-à-vis the significance of airpower in the next war was almost entirely accurate. His underestimation of the role of the aircraft carrier and his overstatement of Alaska’s significance were his only incorrect ideas. However, Mitchell’s correctness would have been irrelevant without substantial organizational change. In this way, Mitchell, as well as his successors, recognized a changing environment, developed a vision in response, communicated this vision, and institutionalized the gains achieved.