A Concise History of the US Air Force - Air Force Historical Studies ...

nance, radar, jets, rockets, and a variety of advanced aircraft that ensured
success in combat.
Air Power in the Nuclear Age
After the war the U.S. Army Air Forces established a number of
major Commands-Strategic Air Command (SAC), Air Defense Com-
mand (ADC), Tactical Air Command (TAC), Air Materiel Command
(AMC), and Air Transport Command (ATC, which later became Military
Air Transport Service [MATS] and then Military Airlift Command
[MAC]), among others. Before his retirement, Hap Arnold, working to
insure that America’s air force remained at the forefront of science and
technology, established a civilian Scientific Advisory Group (now the
Scientific Advisory Board), the RAND Corporation “think tank,” and
several flight testing and engineering centers. Arnold proclaimed “the
first essential” of air power to be “preeminence in research.” He and
General Spaatz proclaimed the second to be education, establishing Air
University as a major command.
If the USAAF remained subordinate to the Army, its wartime
record and the atomic bomb guaranteed that its status would change. The
atomic bomb had altered the nature of warfare. The organization that deli-
vered it, the Twentieth Air Force, was the predecessor of SAC, soon to
become the world’s dominant military force and responsible for conduct-
ing long-range combat and reconnaissance operations anywhere in the
world. The USSBS had concluded from World War I1 that “the best way
to win a war is to prevent it from occurring.” A Strategic Air Command,
properly equipped and trained, also would help deter any adversary state
from starting a global nuclear war and would thereby ensure internation-
al peace.
At war’s end the USAAF continued its quest for an American
military establishment composed of three coequal and separate military
departments. The Navy Department opposed unification and the forma-
tion of a separate air force, but the War Department, led by General of the
Army Dwight Eisenhower, supported the drive for a separate air compo-
nent. The National Security Act of July 26,1947, was a compromise, cre-
ating a National Military Establishment under a civilian Secretary of
National Defense, with three coequal services that preserved the air arms
for the Navy and Marines. President Truman’s first choice for Secretary
of National Defense, Robert Patterson, turned down the job and James
Forrestal, then serving as Secretary of the Navy, was appointed. The U.S.
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