Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917–1945 (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) 1st Edition

by David E. Johnson (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0801488474

ISBN-10: 0801488478

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The U.S. Army entered World War II unprepared. In addition, lacking Germany's blitzkrieg approach of coordinated armor and air power, the army was organized to fight two wars: one on the ground and one in the air. Previous commentators have blamed Congressional funding and public apathy for the army's unprepared state. David E. Johnson believes instead that the principal causes were internal: army culture and bureaucracy, and their combined impact on the development of weapons and doctrine.

Johnson examines the U.S. Army's innovations for both armor and aviation between the world wars, arguing that the tank became a captive of the conservative infantry and cavalry branches, while the airplane's development was channeled by air power insurgents bent on creating an independent air force. He maintains that as a consequence, the tank's potential was hindered by the traditional arms, while air power advocates focused mainly on proving the decisiveness of strategic bombing, neglecting the mission of tactical support for ground troops. Minimal interaction between ground and air officers resulted in insufficient cooperation between armored forces and air forces.

Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers makes a major contribution to a new understanding of both the creation of the modern U.S. Army and the Army's performance in World War II. The book also provides important insights for future military innovation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Johnson's nicely researched and well written study is much more than an interesting account of tank and airplane development during the interwar years. Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers is a fascinating intellectual and cultural history of the interwar Army with intriguing implications for our own day.."

(Parameters)

"The subject of Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers is familiar―an interwar army, crippled by austerity and public apathy―fails to modernize and enters the next war unprepared for the challenges it faces. But David E. Johnson departs from traditional interpretations of this scenario.... Johnson paints a bleak picture of an Army designed to preserve itself rather than prepare for the next war."

(Military Review)

"This book gives great insights into our military's (not just the U.S. Army's) innovative process during the interwar years. As we now find ourselves in a similar interwar period, with similar interwar opportunities for either stagnation or innovation, the book is extremely relevant to today's national defense establishment. There is great insight to be derived from these pages.... Johnson has done a superb job of researching his subject. He has written an interesting book based on mountains of documentation.... There is much more to Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers than documented history. To the educated reader, this book is a warning for today."

(Marine Corps Gazette)

"This well documented and convincingly argued book... speaks to the follies of extremists in today's airpower versus land power debates."

(Naval War College Review)

"A powerful book.... Johnson convincingly takes aim at the current wishful thinking that a sound defense depends merely on money spent, and that only politicians, not soldiers, are responsible for their lack of preparedness. His powerful and convincing historical analysis offers profound implications for today."

(Foreign Affairs)

"A fine place to get a feel for the enormous task of military transformation―and also get a gritty appreciation of the risks involved―is David Johnson's Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers. The War on Terror and accelerating demands for change in the Pentagon... make this book extremely relevant. Every military transformer should read it―and reckon with it."

(Houston Chronicle)

"Johnson's book should be read and his conclusions debated. His work is timely and relevant to the Army and Air Force today."

(Army Magazine)

"In Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers, David Johnson does an excellent job of taking in the big picture, breaking it down into its parts and then tieing it back together to form a cohesive whole of U.S.Army policy during the interwar period."

(Air Power History)

"Johnson's densely factual volume is elegantly written.... He successfully demonstrates that the United States Army that entered World War II reflected the biases and resistance to innovation that existed throughout the interwar years."

(Journal of American History)

Review

"Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers is a superbly researched and tightly argued work that chronicles the period of transformation of the United States Army from a constabulary force to the military instrument of a major world power. It forces the objective reader to reconsider the notion that America's interwar Army was purely the product of social, political, and fiscal indifference. Perhaps most importantly, it provides a poignant reminder that the destiny of the Republic in the twenty-first century will be inextricably bound up with the vision, wisdom, and professional acumen of its military leaders."

(Harold R. Winton, author of To Change an Army: General Sir John Burnett-Stuart and British Armored Doctrine, 1927–1938)

"David Johnson has written a must-read for anyone following today's Pentagon debates concerning the culture and budgets of the United States military. He has provided one of the most insightful analyses of the development of the U.S. Army and Air Force between the World Wars with a special set of lessons to be learned about how a bureaucratic military system precludes the best decisions for the good of the nation's overall national security missions."

(William A. Owens, Vice Chairman of the Board of Teledesic and CEO of Teledesic Holdings, Ltd.)

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Product details

Series: Cornell Studies in Security Affairs
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1 edition (April 15, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0801488478
ISBN-13: 978-0801488474
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 10 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #806,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #913 in History of Engineering & Technology
- #463 in Canadian Politics
- #1204 in Conventional Weapons & Warfare History (Books)

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Bayard B.

Great discussion of the issues in the US Army that led to failure and disaster at the beginning of WW II,

January 24, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A fascinating discussion of the issues that led to so much failure and so many disasters at the beginning of and during World War II. American unpreparedness wasn't just due to penury on the part of the US Congress or inept presidents during the 1920s and 1930s. Much of it was a direct result of the rigid bureaucracies and of the lack of critical thinking on the part of various organizations and departments in the US Army. As late as 1942, the chief of the Cavalry Corp pleaded with General George C. Marshal to increase the number of horses in the cavalry! It proved impossible to get the various army branches such as the Infantry, the Cavalry, and the Ordnance Department in 1941 and 1942 to establish an army that was capable of fighting a mechanized war on a world scale. General Marshal had to abolish the various Branches and establish an entirely new organization in 1942 in order to get the Army in a position such that it could fight and win a war.

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Retired Reader

Failed Transformation

January 3, 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book provides a compelling and well researched account of how the U.S. Army interpreted its experiences in WWI and how it attempted to transform itself from an internal security force into a modern army ready for an other world war. The author does so by reviewing how the Army reacted to the new weapons systems that emerged from World War I (WWI) and were to dominate military operations for the rest of in the 20th Century. He wisely concentrates on two specific weapons systems: armored fighting vehicles (tanks and armored cars), and by extension mechanization in general; and military aircraft (bombers, fighters and reconnaissance aircraft). The author discusses how U.S. Army attempted to further develop these systems and integrate them into its force structure and force planning. It quickly becomes clear that the unprepared state of the U.S. Army at the start of World War II was the direct result of misunderstanding the implications of these weapon systems for modern warfare and the faulty tactical doctrines that resulted form this misunderstanding. The author demonstrates that the extreme austerity imposed on the Army between the wars exacerbated this unprepared condition, but it was not the sole cause of it. In the end, lack of well thought out doctrines impeded not only the Army's efforts to prepare for modern war, but the development of the weapon systems with which to fight it.

This reviewer would suggest that anyone interested in this book would be well advised to also read a second book, "Beyond the Trenches" by General William E. Odom (ret). In it Odom traces the development of U.S. Army doctrine between the wars and the factors preventing the emergence of a really sound set of doctrines and plans.

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T. Graczewski

Careful what you wish for

October 2, 2006

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

When this book first came out in 1998 it addressed arguably the top priority in national defense planning - how can we ensure that this "peace dividend" is used to develop truly innovative military technology and doctrine? With the events of September 11th and the ushering in of the War on Terror the issue of technology innovation - often covered by the umbrella term "Revolution in Military Affairs" - has certainly slipped down the priority scale, but it would be unwise to suggest that it has lost any of its core relevance.

RAND analyst David Johnson hammers home on a few themes in "Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers." First, he stresses that the primary lesson learned coming out of WWI, at least from the perspective of the top Army brass, was the central importance of mass mobilization of personnel and efficient, large-scale production of supplies and machinery, which to, among other things, the establishment of the Army Industrial College in 1924. Technology was viewed as important, but clearly auxiliary to men and manpower. In the 1920s a deep sense of isolationism and then in the 1930s the economic impact of the Depression kept Army budgets low. The Army chose to allocate its limited resources to maintaining their manpower, which was less than 50% of the limits set by the 1920 National Defense Act. As Army budgets dropped 20%, personnel never slipped more than 5%. Johnson's central argument is that the Army slipped behind in tank technology and doctrine primarily because the Army leadership made a conscious decision to not invest resources in those areas. In the end, it was wrong of them to point a finger at a stingy Congress or an ungrateful American public. They could have invested more in technology and experimentation; they just chose not to.

Second, the tank and the bomber were developed under starkly different organizational and cultural conditions. The tank was developed in parallel in the 1930s by the infantry and cavalry. Each sub-service saw the tank as an instrument to aid in their strategic mission, not as a fundamentally new way to fight. The cavalry likely missed the greatest opportunity with the tank. It is shocking to read to what lengths many went to defend the horse cavalry, first holding up Poland as an example of a great modern cavalry force and then arguing that German armored success in Poland in 1939 and France in 1940 didn't prove anything. Johnson's book is populated with a number of well-meaning senior Army officers that come off as real boobs in hindsight, but none more so than Major General John Herr, the chief of cavalry in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The armor doctrine created in this environment, where radical ideas were shunned if not outright prohibited, thus reflected traditional missions and tactics. As last as 1938, Johnson notes, there were more hours in the Command and General Staff College curriculum dedicated to horseback riding than to either armor warfare or air power.

The bomber, on the other hand, developed under a much more permissive intellectual environment and one that put a premium on technology over manpower. The story of US airpower during the interwar period is one of a small, elite renegade cadre of officers fighting for independence. In many ways, it was the example of the air corps that prevented a separate armor force from emerging in the infantry. The end result was a dedicated and highly professional core of officers with top technology and a coherent strategy and doctrine for their service, albeit not without serious shortcomings.

Third, despite great differences in organization and culture, both the armor and air forces made similarly disastrous assumptions about how their weapons would be engaged in the next war. The US tanks - greatly inferior to the German tanks, which were designed to fight other tanks - were in fact precisely what the US military asked for. One of the crucial differences in US armor doctrine was the view that the Armor Force (only created in July 1940) was to exploit gaps in the enemies line, not create the gaps themselves. In this sense, US tanks were seen as rather akin to the traditional horse cavalry - a lightly armed and highly mobile force used to harass rear areas and reconnoiter the battle space. The US focused on tanks of high speed, relative light-weight (to allow the crossing of temporary pontoon bridges) and great reliability; firepower and armor were readily sacrificed to achieve these design objectives. The result when going head-to-head with the Panzer Corps - an eventuality the US Army did not see as the prime role for armor units - was slaughter. The key message is that the US Army was NOT supplied with inferior machines, but rather they did not appreciate the looming nature of modern armored warfare and thus entered the war with the "wrong weapons" but they were the weapons they asked for. Moreover, the US Army was convinced that the best way to fight an armored attack was with anti-tank guns. Tank-on-tank battles were seen as wasteful and never really wargamed.

For their part, the Air Corps doctrine and strategy rested on several key assumptions that turned out to be false in practice. First, it was believed that the B-17 and B-24 could defend themselves from fighter attacks because of their rich complement of .50 caliber machine guns. At first this proved to be the case. However, the German Luftwaffe quickly developed new standoff weapons, such as a .37mm cannon that could hit bomber formations outside the range of the bombers' .50 calibers, and the effective use of dive-bombing tactics on unescorted bombing formations. By late 1943, the odds of a US air corps bomber crewmember surviving a 25 run tour were about 35%. Second, it was presumed that the bombers would be able to accurately bomb their targets in daylight hours. By and large, that was not the case. Finally, the strategic air power theory posited that massive bomber formations could cripple a country's ability to make war by knocking out key industrial nodes, such as the production of ball bearings. Again, that thesis turned out to be far from accurate.

In the end, Johnson makes a convincing case that the failures of tank and bomber technology and doctrine in the Second World War were not a product of limited resources or support, but rather the unwillingness of the Army to invest scarce resources into those technologies and reluctance to engage in spirited and realistic experimentation. Thus Johnston concludes: "The Army, in short, was responsible for its own unprepared ness."

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JayArr

A good survey

April 9, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a good one-volume survey of the evolution of the armored force and the strategic bombing strategy developed in the interwar period, 1919-1941. There are other scholarly monographs on these topics that contain more detail, but this survey is excellent in that [1] it's more readable than a scholarly monograph, [2] it's in one volume, so you don't have to read three or more books to get a good picture, and [3] it covers the topics well. I enjoyed it.

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Amazon Customer

and he read it pretty much straight through while giving us little facts on ...

February 26, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I bought this for my dad, and he read it pretty much straight through while giving us little facts on his way. He enjoyed the book.

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Josh

Great book!

March 1, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I was required to read this book (among 2 others) for my U.S. Military History class. The book is outstanding. Anyone interested in history and military strategy would find this as an excellent read.

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Ryan N

Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers

February 10, 2010

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This was the first book that ever read about a war and military strategy. It was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. I figured that it would be excruciatingly boring, but it was actually entertaining (for me, which says a lot). I would recommend this product to others who are interested in military history, and very specifically, tanks and bombers.

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Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917–1945 (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) 1st Edition

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