War Machines: Transforming Technologies in the U.S. Military, 1920-1940The American military establishment is intimately tied to its technology, although the nature of those ties has varied enormously from service to service. The air force evokes images of pilots operating hightech weapons systems, striking precisely from out of the blue to lay waste to enemy installations. The fundamental icon for the Marine Corps is a wave of riflemen hitting the beaches from rugged landing craft and slogging their way ashore under enemy fire. How did these very different relationships with technology develop? During the interwar years, from 1920 to 1940, leaders from the Army Air Corps and the Marine Corps recreated their agencies based on visions of new military technologies. In War Machines, Timothy Moy examines these recreations and explores how factors such as bureaucratic pressure, institutional culture, and America's technological enthusiasm shaped these leaders' choices. The very existence of the Army Air Corps was based on a new technology, the airplane. As the Air Corps was forced to compete for money and other resources during the years after World War I, Air Corps leaders carved out a military niche based on hightech precision bombing. The Marine Corps focused on amphibious, firstwave assault using sturdy, graceless, and easytoproduce landing craft. Moy's astute analysis makes it clear that studying the processes that shaped the Army Air Corps and Marine Corps is fundamental to our understanding of technology and the military at the beginning of the twentyfirst century. |
Contents
xvii | |
17 | |
The Bombers Technology | 33 |
Political Opportunities and Daylight Precision | 53 |
A HighTech Delivery System | 68 |
Political Pressure on a Warrior Elite | 101 |
Technology and Training | 116 |
Other editions - View all
War Machines: Transforming Technologies in the U.S. Military, 1920-1940 Timothy Moy Limited preview - 2016 |
War Machines: Transforming Technologies in the U.S. Military, 1920-1940 Timothy Moy No preview available - 2001 |
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ACTS advance Air Corps Air Corps's Air Force Air Service aircraft airplane American amphibious Army Air Arnold attack aviation Base beach became become Billy Mitchell Board boat bomber bombsight BuCon Bureau bureaucratic carry Center chief coast commandant Company culture defense Department doctrine early enemy engines entire Entry equipment Eureka example feet File Fleet flight flying Foulois ground Heavy Bombers Higgins Higgins boat History hour Ibid idea increase industry institutional landing landing craft later Lejeune Manual Marine Corps Materiel Division miles military mission Mitchell naval Navy needed Norden officers operations performance period pilot plane political precision produce Report Research School secure served ships sight speed Sperry staff strategic bombing Tactical technical tests thousand tion turned United University vision warfare Washington World
Popular passages
Page 22 - The air force has ceased to remain a mere auxiliary service for the purpose of assisting an army or navy in the execution of its task. The air force rises into the air in great masses of airplanes. Future contests will see hundreds of them in one formation. They fight in line, they have their own weapons and their own way of using them, special means of communications, signalling, and of attacking. Armies on the ground or ships on the water have always fought on one surface because they could not...
Page 22 - A very significant thing to me was that we could cross the lines of these contending armies in a few minutes in our airplane, whereas the armies had been locked in the struggle, immovable, powerless to advance, for three years.