One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

by Smith, Douglas V.

  No transfers would be made above the grade of Lieutenant. Aviation was assured of at least some new permanent officers. However, bringing into a corps of fewer than 3,000 officers—virtually all of whom were Naval Academy graduates—another 1,200 officers, none of whom were Academy graduates and many of whom were aviators (most of the Reserve aviators still on duty applied for and were accepted into the regular line), could not fail to cause heartburn among the former.22 Transferred officers took lineal precedence between the Naval Academy classes of 1919 and 1920, creating an enormous “hump” that blocked promotion for officers commissioned thereafter, and as we shall see, shortly precipitated extension of promotion by selection up.

  By early 1921, of the ships authorized by the Act of 1916, ten scout cruisers and more than sixty submarines were nearly complete and fifty destroyers had been commissioned, while ten battleships and six battle cruisers remained incomplete. Congressional wartime largess turned to peacetime unwillingness to spend on armaments. Faced with strong congressional sentiment, President Warren G. Harding organized the Washington Naval Conference, which resulted in drastic formal limitations on capital warships among the great naval powers. In the United States, this also translated into severe limits on enlisted personnel and commissioned officers. Although the Act of 1916 authorized 160,000 peacetime enlisted personnel, Congress ultimately only appropriated for 86,000 men and 4,500 line officers.

  In June 1921 there were 5,295 regulars and reserves on active duty. All temporary commissions terminated at the end of 1921, the remaining 1,011 temporary officers reverted to their permanent status, while 1,059 regular officers serving temporarily in higher ranks reverted to their permanent ranks. Through dismissal or resignation, 174 permanent officers had left the service.23

  These terminations left a regular line officer strength of 4,436 officers by June 1922. Congress refused to appropriate additional pay for reservists, and by mid-1923 the regulars and reserves combined totaled only 4,596 (of which 41 percent were Ensigns or junior Lieutenants). It became exceedingly difficult to officer ships in commission, let alone those still building. Fleet operations were continually short of officers. Ships operated with 85–90 percent of normal officer complements, while destroyers were rotated in and out of commission. Inexperienced Ensigns performed duties usually reserved for more experienced seniors. Although the Naval Academy classes were now the largest ever, and contributed to the “hump,” they remained insufficient to replenish the line and to bring it up to its authorized strength. The 1923–1924 appropriations act returned the number of Academy appointments to pre-war levels. Naval aviators occupied almost exclusively the three lowest officer grades. None of this was auspicious for naval aviation, which was bent on growing.

  At this time, attention again focused on an effective Naval Reserve, culminating in the Naval Reserve Act of 4 March 1925. At Rear Admiral William Moffett’s urging, the Chief of Naval Operations had published a Naval Aviation Reserve Policy in November 1923, providing for one aviation unit in each naval district, which mission was to enroll and train “new members who were suitable officer material in order to insure a supply of new blood, and to maintain the efficiency of members already qualified.”24 The practical challenge was to secure adequate funding from an increasingly penurious Congress. Even if appropriations were secured and more officers commissioned, these naval aviators still lacked the requisite education and experience to make them effective naval line officers. As such they would be relegated, if only informally, to second-tier status in the officer corps.25

  The 1925 law disestablished the Naval Reserve Force created by the Act 29 August 1916 and in its stead, using the Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps as a model, created a Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC), organized at six universities, at a maximum overall strength of 1,200 members.26 This would supplement the Naval Academy’s output of college graduate officers. The first 130 NROTC graduates were commissioned in spring 1930. They would comprise an elite cadre of Reserve officers.27 Naval aviation would gain a portion of those newly commissioned officers.

  Problems of stagnation in promotion resulted in officers old for their grades and the inevitable discouragement this engendered. In response, the Act of 3 March 1931 permanently established length of service as the mechanism for retirement of officers, irrespective of commissioning source, which was directed principally toward expediting promotion, evening chances for promotion, and regularizing the promotion process. It also laid the foundation for retirement of non-Academy officers, mostly naval aviators, not promoted.28

  Naval Reserve Freshmen, class of 1930, University of California.

  The simultaneous continued differentiation of the fleet into different types of ships and the continued commissioning of new ships occasioned a requirement for more-junior officers, but Congress would not fund the authorized five appointment regimen for the Naval Academy, nor would it authorize an increase in the total number of officers. This meant no accommodation for the long-term growth of naval aviation, especially given the policy that 75 percent of pilots would be officers.

  In 1933 the authorized strength of the line remained below that required for the peacetime treaty-strength Navy (let alone wartime), especially given vessels then under construction and the continued expansion of Navy aviation. Graduating Naval Academy classes exceeded annual attrition of officers, leaving the problem of what to do with the surplus. The “hump” created by the accession of officers under the Act of 4 June 1920 had not gone away and stagnation in promotion was intensifying: Academy graduates would have to retire for service in grade before being promoted because non-Academy officers were ahead of and blocking them.

  The immediate solution for Navy aviation was another new mechanism for accession. The Act of 27 March 1934 authorized a 1,910-aircraft program for Navy aviation, but there were only 806 naval aviators. The Act of 15 April 1935 redressed some of this shortfall, and in a novel manner. Based on an analysis of officer personnel problems prepared by Commander John S. “Slew” McCain and drafted in the Bureau of Aeronautics, it authorized the Secretary to appoint an unspecified number of aviation cadets to the Naval Reserve (Swanson intended to train 498 cadets in fiscal 1935 and 1936). The cadets were intended both as a temporary palliative to quickly bring active duty naval aviation personnel up to peacetime requirements until the grades could be filled with regular officers and to create an experienced cadre of aviators in the Naval Reserve.

  Cadets were obligated to four years of active service, the first in pilot training, the next three in active flying duty. They were then to be commissioned as Reserve Ensigns (or Reserve Marine second Lieutenants), and subject to recall to active duty as skilled aviators in a national emergency. Naval aviation cadets were neither commissioned nor warranted officers nor enlisted personnel; they ranked immediately below Ensigns and above warrant officers. From the aviators’ perspective, this mechanism provided for the numbers required for the treaty-strength Navy. From the non-aviators’ point of view, this was attractive: it reduced the strain on future Naval Academy classes, did not increase aviation officers in the regular line (hence, did not intensify competition for and speed of promotion), and cadets would be in and out of active duty in four years.

  A frugal Congress found the Act appealing as it required no increase in authorized officer strength and cadets were paid less than Ensigns: $75 per month when training or not flying, and $150 monthly when on flying duty. Cadets completing their four-year obligation received a $1,500 lump-sum bonus, and, notably, they were afforded $10,000 in life insurance. Congress also liked that applicants for aviation cadet would apply at the thirteen naval air stations “from the east coast to the west coast and from the north to the south and adjacent to our populous cities.”29 What member of Congress could oppose a bill to provide jobs, especially when his constituents would have a shot at them?

  The Bureau of Aeronautics wasted no time:

  The first class of fifty-five cadets reported to
Pensacola on July 20, 1935, and by September, there were 192 aviation cadets undergoing training, with an additional 201 potential cadets undergoing elimination training to determine their adaptability to flight before going to Pensacola.

  By September 1936, the first cadets were at sea, and, two years later, 614 aviation cadets were on active Naval Aviator duty.30

  Notwithstanding initial ambivalence about the aviation cadets, they soon became integral to fleet operations, and by 1939, when the first cadets were due to leave active duty for commissions as Ensigns in the Naval Reserve, at least some senior officers recognized that their release would seriously hamper fleet operations.31

  Throughout the mid-1930s the problem of numbers was accompanied by the persistent difficulty of maintaining sufficient training time for Reserve aviators. As part of broader cost-cutting policies, all Reserve training was reduced. For the 1934 fiscal year, annual flying hours for the reservists were reduced from forty-five to thirty and drills from forty-eight to twenty-four, while flying hours for the Volunteer Reserve were entirely eliminated.32 The Bureau of Aeronautics contended that fewer than forty-eight flying hours per aviator annually raised the probability of accidents due to poor flying proficiency to an unacceptable level. It pointed out that if aviators in the Volunteer Reserve were “not provided with flight training from time to time, they would soon cease to be Naval Aviators.”33 The problem of training time also affected surface and submarine Reserve officers, but the relatively greater combined complexity and perishability of flying skills rendered the problem more acute for naval aviation.34

  The Act of 22 July 1935 partially redressed the problem of numbers by increasing the number of officers as a percentage of enlisted personnel from 4 percent to 4.75 percent. This translated to increasing the authorized strength to 6,531 officers, well short of the 7,102 officers required to maintain the fleet in readiness for war, and the 7,941 officers required for the treaty-strength Navy that was authorized and building. It capped the numbers of Rear Admirals, Captains, and Commanders, except in wartime, and specified that the Lieutenant Commanders could be increased up to 15 percent when required. Lengths of service for Lieutenants and junior Lieutenants were extended, while lifting restrictions on involuntary retirements of officers in those grades. These provisions aimed to supply the minimum officer needs while eliminating overage officers who clearly were not going to be promoted. Meanwhile, Naval Academy appointments had been reduced to three per member of Congress annually, which would not even cover normal attrition let alone any increase in strength.

  Three years later, the Act of 22 June 1938 increased authorized strength of the line to 5.5 percent of enlisted strength along with reorganizing the system of promotion more extensively than any time since the Act of 29 August 1916 (discussed below). But authorized and actual strength remained two different numbers. With the graduation of the Naval Academy class of 1938, the actual strength increased to 6,565 officers, still well short of the 7,211 (excluding 730 naval aviation cadets) required for the treaty Navy and short of the additional 1,200 officers necessary for the expansion Congress had just provided. At about the same time, Congress was working through what would become the Act of 22 June 1938, which fundamentally reorganized the Naval Reserve as it had been established by the Act of 1925.

  With the clouds of war gathering, President Roosevelt signed the Naval Aviation Reserve Act on 13 June 1939. This law amended the Act of 15 April 1935 that had created naval aviation cadets. They were no longer to dwell in the nether world between enlisted and commissioned status, and the Navy would gain their services for longer periods, relieving pressure on the line from fleet expansion and aviation’s growth. Once graduated from Pensacola, they would immediately be commissioned Reserve Ensigns, and after three years’ active service become eligible for promotion to Reserve junior Lieutenants. They might be required to perform active duty for up to four years; they were allowed to serve up to seven years. Meanwhile Congress again increased the authorized strength of the line to 7,562 officers, but this remained short of the 8,671 needed to man the fleet to peacetime complements, and in any case the actual number of active list officers amounted to only 6,877 on 30 June 1939. The September 1939 German invasion of Poland had a positive effect on the Navy—President Franklin D. Roosevelt immediately issued an executive order increasing the actual enlisted strength and authorizing active duty for retired and Reserve officers. By June 1940, 539 retired and 1,806 Reserve officers were on active duty.

  In August, September, and October 1940, three more laws aimed to increase the numbers of officers in order to accommodate the vastly increased requirements created by laws signed in June and July (following the fall of France to the Nazis). These acts expanded the fleet by 1,325,000 tons of combatants and boosted naval aviation to an unbelievable 15,000 aircraft. They alone augmented ships and aircraft by more than 80 percent; the fleet expansion acts called for 2,200 additional short-term naval aviators. That magnitude of increase rendered previous mechanisms for accessing officers, especially aviators, inadequate and incomplete.

  To quickly address these vast new requirements, the Act of 27 August 1940 “Naval Aviation Personnel Act,” based largely on the recommendations of the Horne Board, whose establishment had been mandated by the Act of 13 June 1939, authorized appointment of as many Naval Reserve aviators (essentially, those officers commissioned from the naval aviation cadet program) to the regular line as necessary.35 Authorized officers would be increased automatically.36 Almost incidentally, one week later, the Act of 4 September 1940 authorized the president to commission Naval Academy graduates who were qualified but had not been previously commissioned (due to earlier limits on authorized strengths).

  The Act of 8 October 1940 provided still more officers for the regular line by mechanisms that would admit NROTC commissioned Reserve officers. Since the first NROTC class in 1930, 2,154 students had graduated and been commissioned, making a large pool of college-educated officers deemed the next best source after Naval Academy graduates for regular officers. The numbers to be so transferred were left to presidential discretion. The law did not increase authorized officers because the actual number remained so far below existing authorized strength.

  Rapidly changing conditions soon made it obvious that even these novel methods for increasing the line were inadequate. The earlier Horne Board was reprised, and it recommended reducing the Naval Academy course to three years (the Navy had already graduated the 1940 and 1941 classes after completing three and one-half years—by interpreting the law to mean four academic years) on the five-appointment regimen. This was the same mechanism employed during World War I. The recommendation became law on 3 June 1941. This avenue was soon supplemented on 11 July 1941 by a law providing for the appointment of temporary officers and for the temporary promotion of officers as required, but not more than six months after the termination of war.

  Thus, by the time of U.S. entry into the war, the Navy had adopted a solution to securing officers, one that institutionalized a two-tier personnel system in which there were, first, officers of the regular line, and, second, everyone else. Expansion of the officer corps had been transformed from gaining approval for an increase in the regular line to devising methods to enlarge it temporarily, and to populate it, even during peacetime, with second-class citizens in the form of Reserve officers, reactivated retired officers, and retained fitted officers no longer in the running for promotion.37 The problem of distribution was addressed by temporary promotions of both regular and Reserve officers. These personnel policies especially helped to supply the vast number of junior officers necessary to fly the Navy’s burgeoning fleet of aircraft. Of course, the realities of the war’s requirements soon also outstripped these several devices for expanding the line. However, these mechanisms had established a solid institutional foundation for growing the line, and the subsequent wartime commissioning programs were extensions of and variants upon them. Naval aviation would have its own versions of wart
ime Reserve commissioning programs.

  PROMOTION

  Although necessary, an adequate number of aviator officers was not in itself sufficient to put naval aviation on the right track: such required the proper distribution of officers into the several grades. In all organizations, but especially the military, rank is the currency of the realm. With it, all things are possible, without, very little. This was another principal lesson of the conflict between the engineers and the line. Unlike most large organizations, in closed institutions such as the military, entry into executive positions is secured only through advancement from one grade to another, after having been commissioned at the lowest grade. There are, with few exceptions, no lateral entries into the higher grades from without. This renders technological innovation, such as the introduction of aviation into the Navy, profoundly difficult.

  Closely tied to promotion is the matter of specialization and defining what it means to be an officer. This is of lesser moment in a Service in which promotion is decided strictly through seniority. Promotion by seniority had been virtually sacrosanct in the Navy until 1899.38 Promotion by selection up, based on comparative fitness of an officer for the duties of the next higher grade—to Rear Admiral, Captain, and Commander—was established by the Act of 29 August 1916. Thus it was that aviation arrived just as the Navy shifted to a promotion mechanism that (1) did not assume that competence in the junior grades necessarily meant competence in the duties of the senior grades and (2) required a formal complex representation of each grade’s duties and the skills required to perform them.

  Because its officers would not be organized into a separate corps, but remain within the line, the practical challenge for Navy aviation was to obtain the inclusion of promotion criteria that managed to balance the competing demands of the specialized duties of aviation with the duties of a general line officer. Having redefined line officer to include engineering expertise only a short while before, line officers (read: “battleship sailors”) were loath to alter it again so soon. Moreover, maintaining the existing definition of officer served the purposes of non-aviators in fending off what they perceived as the threat of aviation to the battle line’s dominance. However, selection boards were unlikely to entertain multiple concepts of career paths as legitimate for promotion.39