The Interwar Period

The Interwar Period. During the interwar period, Army Airmen flew as forest rangers, border patrol agents, and mail deliverymen, garnering public support for airpower by demonstrating its peacetime usefulness. Airpower theorists also contributed to the development of airpower by further defining its role in war. The primary American theorist was General William "Billy" Mitchell, who argued that airpower would be more decisive and humane than land and naval forces because of its ability to directly affect the enemy's centers of gravity, such as industrial production and transportation systems. Mitchell, drawing on leadership experience in World War I, conducted a demonstration of air power's capabilities in 1921, executing attacks against the captured German battleship Ostfriesland, sinking the anchored warship. Frustrated with the slow pace of development of U.S. air capabilities, Mitchell harshly criticized the War and Navy Department in 1925, triggering a court martial later that year. Mitchell was convicted of violating the 96th article of war by having made "insubordinate" statements, which included taking his case to the Press and bypassing the Army chain of command to make his statements to the President., The U.S. Army Air Service became the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1926 and established the Air Corps Tactical School to develop and teach the theory and practice of aerial warfare. During this period, the ACTS developed the doctrine of high-altitude, long-range daylight precision bombing that would shape the strategy employed by Army Air Forces in World War II., As war clouds appeared both in Europe and in Asia, President Franklin D. Roosevelt directed a massive mobilization of U.S. industrial capacity, modernizing and vastly strengthening U.S. air capabilities. This mobilization would become critical in the global war that was soon to follow. The Boeing B-17 represented a major advance in technology when it first flew in 1935, and would develop into a major and iconic part of the U.S. bomber armada in the coming conflict.