Successive technological innovations—jet power, nuclear-powered carriers, rockets and missiles, sophisticated avionics, stunningly precise navigational and targeting capabilities, precision-guided munitions—have all made Navy aviation more effective than even its most visionary early proponents imagined. But these are the shiny baubles. As Representative Fred Britten wisely observed more than eighty years ago, in the end what renders militaries (and all other organizations, for that matter) effective are their personnel. The problem of aviation personnel, however, has scarcely enjoyed among naval historians the attention it warrants.3 Here, I refer not to individuals, but the organization’s system of personnel. Military personnel systems address, broadly speaking, specialization, numbers required, a system of grades and distribution into them, acquisition, education and training, career path, incentives (including pay and other emoluments), promotion, assignment to duty, and retirement.
This chapter provides in broad brushstrokes the essential structure and components of the officer personnel problem as they were understood by the principal actors in the first three decades of Navy aviation, and sketches the solutions to that problem—solutions that shaped Navy aviation then and continue to shape it today. Specifically, addressed here are the interrelated matters of specialization, numbers, and promotion. The Navy’s endeavors to address its officer personnel issues more generally provide the background for the issues considered here.4 Such endeavors formed a virtually unbroken chain punctuated by episodic enactment of law and issuance of administrative direction and policy. This chapter concentrates on those outcomes, leaving discussion of the processes for consideration elsewhere.
TIMING
The particular historical moment of aviation’s arrival significantly affected its reception by the Navy’s officers, the resources made available to it, how it would be organized, and the status of its personnel within the Navy. The principal factors affecting aviation personnel during its first thirty years included: (1) an established Navy officer personnel system; (2) emphasis on the all-big-gun battleship and gunnery as the Navy’s main source of strength; (3) World War I; (4) the Washington Naval Treaty; (5) the Great Depression; and (6) the darkening clouds leading to World War II—in particular the Navy’s decades-old focus on Japan as its next main opponent, manifested in its development of War Plan Orange.
Aviation’s formal arrival in 1911 inserted it into an ongoing stream of personnel transactions. From aviation’s beginning as a “temporary naval armament” in 1893 the Navy had, through a long series of incremental steps, developed an officer personnel system reasonably well adapted to its purposes. The modern Navy officer grades and their duties had all been established, career paths had been devised, the line and engineers had been amalgamated in 1899, a retirement system was in place, and shortly in 1916 promotion by selection up to Commander, Captain, and Rear Admiral would be made into law.
As is often the case with the arrival of new technologies into organizations, the Navy’s initial responses to aviation were relatively informal and ad hoc. U.S. entry into World War I only six years after Navy aviation began required rapid expansion for the duration, including acquisition and training, organization into operational units, deployment, and the execution of operations. Consolidating and formalizing aviation’s status, organization, and procedures would have to wait until after the war.
SPECIALIZATION
The place of the naval aviator in the officer corps was the central question of the time. Some aviators greatly favored a separate aviation corps, asserting that such a high degree of specialized knowledge was required that only those who spent their entire careers in it could hope to master it; others, including most non-aviators, strongly preferred that aviators remain integrated within the line officer corps.5 This, in turn, required readdressing the question of what it meant to be a Navy officer. Central to the problem were the criteria for promotion by selection up (which hinged on what it meant to be a Navy officer), reconciliation of the trade-off between proficiency in aviation and expertise in general line duties, and control of aviation by non-aviators.6
In testimony before the Morrow Board in autumn 1925, some aviators asserted that most (70 percent) of their brothers favored a separate naval aviation corps because of the “unsympathetic attitude of other branches, flight pay, control and command by non-flying Officers, assignment to aviation of Officers without regard to rank, uniforms.” However, to other aviators, because the “introduction of a corps aboard ship has always caused jealousy and heartburnings [sic],” a separate corps was to be avoided.
Indeed the Navy had only recently resolved a six-decade conflict between the line and the engineers by merging the two and redefining what it meant to be a Navy officer.7 Navy engineers had been civilian contractors from 1836 to 1842. Thereafter, until 1899 they constituted a separate corps, with its own set of grades, each ranking with but behind its equivalent in the line. This allowed the line to gain access to engineering expertise without redefining what it meant to be an officer (navigator, handler of a ship under sail, accurate gunner, maintainer of the ship, and manager of her crew) and without ceding much power to the engineers. The staff corps had been the time-honored method (following the model of the Royal Navy) of absorbing any newly required expertise while retaining the purity and power of the line. However well this solution had worked for surgeons, paymasters, and naval constructors, their expertise was not integral to actually fighting the ship, while engineers were very necessary.
Aboard ship, engineers could command only their own personnel within their own spaces. Ambiguity about their status with regard to the Executive Officer and the Officer of the Deck led to more than one court-martial. By the 1890s, however, it had become clear that no Commanding Officer could fight his ship without a keen knowledge of its engineering. From 1899, to adapt to the changed requirements of modern warships, the two officer corps were amalgamated and the line officer, in addition to his earlier duties, was now expected to perform as an engineer. Additionally, following the British model, enlisted ratings were assigned a range of duties that were formerly the province of engineers.
Early naval aviators pose at the Naval Aeronautic Station, Pensacola, Florida, spring 1914.
Aviation posed a more extreme version of the specialization problem—where the engineers had been necessary to the fighting ship, aviation aspired to complement and ultimately supplant the centuries-old gunned ship, only recently incarnated as the all-big-gun battleship. Destroyers were deemed analogous to the capital ships, and even submarines, given their limited capabilities at the time, were not considered a threat to the battleship’s dominance.
The unpleasant experience of the line–engineer conflict thus rendered a separate aviation corps entirely improbable. As a 1925 Bureau of Navigation report commented,
Aviation is no more specialized as to knowledge required than is submarine or destroyers, and BuNav does not believe that aviation demands of an Officer more skill or technical knowledge than is required of a chief engineer or a gunnery Officer. . . . The manipulative skill required for flying is of no consequence in determining that the Officer is fit to hold a higher command in aviation or general line duties, nor does the possession of the naval aviator designation by a group of men carry the argument for its perpetuation by medium of a corps.8
Non-aviator officers saw no reason to populate aviation with a high proportion of officers. Chief of Naval Operations Edward Eberle believed that additional aviators could only be secured by a higher proportion of enlisted men. He proposed a fifty-fifty split between officers and enlisted personnel, depending on the task.9
In its final report, the Morrow Board noted the justifiable “unrest and dissatisfaction among the aviation personnel” and recommended sundry changes in personnel policies, including:
1.carrying as extra numbers aviators who had specialized in aviation so long as to jeopardize their chances for promotion by selection to Commander, Captain, or Rear Admiral;
2.granting temporary higher rank to junior Officers assigned to aviation duty whenever the higher rank was appropriate;
3.maintaining flight pay as then provided, while investigating a scheme of insurance;
4.confining selections for command of aviation activities to Officers who while otherwise qualified were also naval aviators;
5.dissociating from naval aviation aviators assigned to general line duty for purposes of qualification for command to the minimum extent;
6.ensuring that junior Officers who had not had the required sea duty have that duty before being examined for promotion; and
7.studying the desirability of increasing the number of enlisted pilots in naval aviation.10
But this was by no means the last word on the matter, for both legislation and administrative rules were necessary.
The House Naval Affairs Committee quickly responded to the board’s recommendations, notably proposing the first legal definition of “naval aviator”11:
Any commissioned Officer or Warrant line Officer in the Navy or Marine Corps who has successfully completed the course prescribed by competent authority for naval aviators and who has been or may hereafter be designated or appointed a naval aviator by competent authority and who has flown alone in a heavier-than-air craft not less than seventy-five hours and who has flown in heavier-than-air craft not less than 200 hours or who has been in the air, under training in rigid airships not less than 150 hours and successfully completed the course prescribed by competent authority.12
“Naval aviation pilot” would refer to any Navy or Marine enlisted man who completed the same course and met the same hours requirement. “Pilot” would be construed to encompass both naval aviator and naval aviation pilot. At the same time, the bill would create a cadre of “naval aviation observers,” those officers who completed a prescribed course and had not fewer than one hundred hours in the air. This last designation was intended to “grandfather” into aviation those senior officers who supported naval aviation but were not physically qualified (because of age) to fly as naval aviators.13
Of course, these criteria were supplied by the naval aviators, and like all such definitions, would serve both to maintain professional standards and exclude unwanted others. The criteria had no real teeth on their own, however. Complementary provisions in the bill established eligibility for aviation commands. Officers detailed to command aviation schools, air stations, or tactical air units would have to be naval aviators. This would ensure that immediate control of air operations would be in the hands of line officers who had qualified and spent time as naval aviators—which had not been the practice to date. While command of “aircraft vessels” (aircraft carriers and seaplane tenders) could be given to officers who were “skilled executives,” it was “also necessary that they have a dual capacity and be skilled in the operation of aircraft.”14 Thus, command of such vessels would be restricted to naval aviators and naval aviation observers. Both creating in law naval aviation observers and allowing them to command carriers and tenders would give the aviators breathing room to see sufficient aviators advanced to Commander and Captain, so that in time all such ships would be in charge of naval aviators. They much preferred this mechanism to temporarily advancing aviators to the grades appropriate for the command billet (which had been done) or worse, detailing non-aviators to such commands. Simultaneously, this provision would create a restricted list of sea commands that would ensure that aviators would achieve the requisites for promotion by selection. The Act of 3 July 1926 rendered these mechanisms into law.
Navy aviators would enjoy henceforth a special status within the Navy. They would remain an integral component of the unrestricted line, be expected to serve and command in ships, and be subject to the same requirements for promotion as other officers while retaining the power to define who qualified as a naval aviator and the criteria for eligibility to command aviation units.
NUMBERS
Direction and command of naval aviation, of necessity, devolved upon commissioned line officers. However, whether the bulk of the pilots should be commissioned or enlisted was a separate question. Greater numbers of enlisted pilots could more readily be accessed than commissioned officers, but that would attenuate the power of naval aviation within the Navy when it came to claims on scarce resources. Not surprisingly, non-aviator officers preferred that most pilots come from the enlisted ranks; aviators took the antipodal position. In practice, in its early decades naval aviation comprised about 75 percent officers and 25 percent enlisted men, a ratio of officers to enlisted effectively the opposite of that which obtained aboard ship.
Another approach was to rely on Naval Reserve officers to supply the bulk of commissioned pilots, with a small number of regular officers to fill the key command billets and to provide organizational continuity. This method carried risks similar to relying primarily on enlisted men for pilots—Reserve officers carried no weight on important issues facing the Navy. Yet another means would be to obtain regular commissions for officers accessed from sources other than the Naval Academy. Once again, this posed certain risks to aviation because at the time non-academy officers were informally accorded little more than second-class citizenship. Ultimately, pilots for Navy aviation would be drawn from a complex mix of these sources, an olio that changed over time to adapt to new circumstances.
Initially, officers for aviation were simply taken out of hide—volunteers from the regular line—for the numbers were very small. However, the dramatic Navy expansion occasioned by U.S. entry into World War I necessitated other measures. The Act of 29 August 1916 established the largest naval construction program for any nation to that date.15 The sole source of commissioned officers was still the Naval Academy, which even with an expanded brigade and a truncated curriculum could hardly supply enough officers in a timely manner to meet both fleet and aviation requirements for wartime.
During the four preceding decades, the Navy had worked out an algorithm for establishing the required number of enlisted personnel based on tonnage of capital ships in commission. The Act of 29 August 1916 established the number of officers in turn as a ratio (4 percent) of enlisted personnel. However, just as changes in the types of ships in the fleet affected the appropriate distribution into the several grades and specialties, so the arrival and expansion of aviation called into question the existing algorithm, by requiring a much higher proportion of officers.
The Act also contained personnel provisions to support the dramatic fleet expansion. It authorized increasing enlisted personnel and slightly increased annual appointments to the Naval Academy, provided for temporary officers (to be commissioned from senior enlisted and warranted personnel), and created a Naval Reserve Force with several classes of officers and men within. The Act specifically established a Naval Flying Corps in addition to those officers and men already provided for in law.
Complementary to the Naval Flying Corps was a Naval Reserve Flying Corps, part of the larger Naval Reserve Force, which would be developed through transfers of officers and enlisted men from the former, from “surplus” graduates of aeronautics schools, and from other Naval Reserve Force members who already had aviation experience.16 The reserves proved essential to the war effort: when the United States entered the war in April 1917, the sum of regular personnel assigned to naval aviation still totaled only 48 officers (including 6 Marines) and 239 enlisted men.
In practice, volunteer aviation units were initially formed at several universities (including Yale) from which came a core of Reserve aviator officers. The few regular aviators, such as Marc Mitscher, were detailed to command the training stations that in nineteen months produced about 2,000 aviators and 30,000 enlisted personnel, which then were deployed to twenty bases overseas, flying more than two million miles of coastal anti-submarine patrols, damaging or sinking twelve German submarines before the end of the war, bombing German submarine bases, and beginning to support the Allied strategic air attacks on German land targets.
By the Armistice, naval aviation had peaked at 37,407 officers and men, 82 percent of whom were reservists.17
With the 11 November 1918 Armistice, however, came the need simultaneously to reverse the temporary wartime expansion and to maintain a permanent increase of the regular officer corps—in good measure to support a larger naval aviation component. However, any additional officer aviators would come at the expense of filling shipboard billets. The increasing technological complexity of ships also demanded more officers.18 Unfortunately, although the fleet grew over the next decade, authorized officer strength remained essentially static. BuNav was compelled to strip shore installations of officers for the ships, especially the new destroyers. By the end of 1920, only a comparatively small number of Reserve officers remained on active duty. By 1922 the Naval Reserve Flying Corps was rendered inactive.19 Under these conditions it proved very difficult for Navy aviation to grow, absent new institutional mechanisms for providing officers.
The 4 June 1920 Naval Appropriations Act authorized 500 Reserve officers for active duty in naval aviation and extended temporary commissions—combined with regulars and reserves—not to exceed the total authorized officers, or 5,499 (4 percent of regular, authorized, enlisted personnel), until the end of 1921.20
More important to the aviators, this same act provided that Officers holding temporary commissions and Warrant ranks in the Navy and members of the Naval Reserve Force of commissioned and Warrant ranks shall be eligible for transfer to an appointment in the permanent grades or ranks in the Navy for which they may be found qualified not above that held by them on the date of transfer, but not exceed a total of one thousand two hundred commissioned Officers of the line, of which five hundred may be appointed from class five, Naval Reserve Flying Corps.21
One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power Page 9