National Affairs: Aerial Coast Defense

President Hoover last week had back on his hands one of the oldest and thorniest disputes between the Army and Navy. The question: where, in coast defense, does naval aviation stop and military aviation begin? It was the kind of controversy that President Hoover, as commander-in-chief of both services, could not refer to an expert commission for settlement because all the experts— officers of the Army and Navy—were already professionally prejudiced.

Money and service jealousy were at the root of the dispute. The Army, charging encroachment on its aerial sphere of coast defense, objected to the Navy’s use of Federal funds to build land planes and operate them from land bases. The Navy insisted that, for tactical reasons, it needed a land-based force for sea patrol. The rivalry reached a climax in the Canal Zone and at Hawaii where each service maintains a large air fleet almost identical in character if not in purpose.

The trouble started with the Army Appropriation Bill of 1920, into which Brig.-General William Mitchell, then assistant Army air chief, caused to be inserted this language:

“. . . hereafter the Army air service shall control all aerial operations from land bases and Navy aviation shall have control of all aerial operations attached to a fleet, including shore stations whose maintenance is necessary for operations connected with the fleet. . . .”

For eight years the Army &Navy joint board kept a sort of armed peace between the two flying services by a declaration that there was no substantial duplication between them. In 1929, however, the Army, jealous of the Navy’s growing aerial land strength began agitating for a change. The Army’s patent purpose was to get for itself the money the Navy was spending on land planes and land bases at Hampton Roads, San Diego, Pearl Harbor and Panama Canal Zone by showing that their operation was not necessary to the fleet.

Secretary of the Navy Adams asked Attorney General Mitchell to give a legal opinion on the disputed clause in the Army appropriation bill. Attorney General Mitchell refused. Futile conferences between the Army and the Navy followed. Secretary Hurley broke off negotiations, carried the dispute directly to President Hoover with a request that he issue orders to the Navy to abandon its land stations as contrary to law. Secretary Hurley’s argument was that the Naval air force should “go back to sea” and leave the defense of the coast to the Army.

The Navy, its five-year aircraft program threatened, rushed in protest to President Hoover with overwhelming arguments why no change should be made.

To the President it was elaborately explained that the Navy’s land-based planes serve two good naval purposes: 1) Protection of the fleet’s communication lines; 2) Aerial patrol duty for surface craft involvedin a primary defense of the coast. The Navy contends that the objective of an aerial attack determines whether a plane is doing duty proper to the Army or the Navy. The Army insists that the attack’s starting point is the definite thing. The Navy maintains that the only real defense against an aerial bombing attack from the sea is destruction of the hostile aircraft carrier before its planes can be launched, and that this can be accomplished only by Navy planes regularly flying out from land bases. The Navy wants the Army to stick to the shore line and leave the sea to sailors.

Baffled, President Hoover turned the controversy over to the Bureau of Efficiency.