United States Army Air Forces Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Circular No. 59 reorganization==== [[File:USAAF.jpg|thumb|right|USAAF [[Military recruitment|recruitment poster]] ]] Under the revision of AR 95–5, the Army Air Forces consisted of three major components: Headquarters AAF, Air Force Combat Command, and the Air Corps. Yet the reforms were incomplete, subject to reversal with a change of mood at the War Department, and of dubious legality.<ref group=n>Two changes were possibly in conflict with the [[National Defense Act of 1920|National Defense Act]]: the creation of an air staff as an "unnecessary duplication...in the work of" the WDGS, and the "superimposition of a level of authority above" that of the Chief of the Air Corps. (Mooney 1946, p. 43)</ref> By November 1941, on the eve of U.S. entry into the war, the division of authority within the Army as a whole, caused by the activation of Army GHQ a year before, had led to a "battle of memos" between it and the WDGS over administering the AAF, prompting Marshall to state that he had "the poorest command post in the Army" when defense commands showed a "disturbing failure to follow through on orders".<ref name="csm7"/> To streamline the AAF in preparation for war, with a goal of centralized planning and decentralized execution of operations, in October 1941 Arnold submitted to the WDGS essentially the same reorganization plan it had rejected a year before, this time crafted by Chief of Air Staff Brig. Gen. [[Carl Spaatz|Carl A. Spaatz]].<ref name="goss"/><ref name="Nalty, p.181"/><ref>Wolk (1996), p. 4</ref> When this plan was not given any consideration, Arnold reworded the proposal the following month which, in the face of Marshall's dissatisfaction with Army GHQ, the War Plans Division accepted. Just before Pearl Harbor, Marshall recalled an Air Corps officer, Brig. Gen. [[Joseph T. McNarney]], from an observer group in England and appointed him to chair a "War Department Reorganization Committee" within the War Plans Division, using Arnold's and Spaatz's plan as a blueprint.<ref name="hw6"/><ref>Mooney and Williamson (1956), p. 8</ref> After war began, Congress enacted the [[War Powers Act of 1941|First War Powers Act]] on 18 December 1941 endowing President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] with virtual ''carte blanche'' to reorganize the [[Executive (government)|executive branch]] as he found necessary.<ref>Mooney (1946), p. 47</ref> Under it, on 28 February 1942, Roosevelt issued [http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16227 Executive Order 9082], based on Marshall's recommendation and the work of McNarney's committee. The EO changed Arnold's title to ''Commanding General, Army Air Forces'' effective 9 March 1942, making him co-equal with the commanding generals of the new [[Army Ground Forces]] and [[United States Army Services of Supply|Services of Supply]], the other two components of the [[United States Army|Army of the United States]]. The War Department issued Circular No. 59 on 2 March that carried out the executive order,<ref name="mc3241">McClendon (1996), pp. 132–141. The three documents referenced, AR 95-5, EO 9082, and WD Circular 59, are reproduced in their entirety.</ref> intended (as with the creation of the [[United States Army Air Service|Air Service]] in World War I) as a wartime expedient to expire six months after the end of the war.<ref name="hw6">Wolk (1996), p. 6</ref><ref>Correll, "GHQ Air Force", p. 68.</ref> The three components replaced a multiplicity of branches and organizations, reduced the WDGS greatly in size, and proportionally increased the representation of the air forces members on it to 50%.<ref name="mc3241"/><ref>Mooney (1946), p. 49</ref> In addition to dissolving both Army General Headquarters and the chiefs of the [[combat arms]], and assigning their training functions to the Army Ground Forces, War Department Circular 59 reorganized the Army Air Forces, disbanding both Air Force Combat Command and the Office of Chief of the Air Corps (OCAC), eliminating all its training and organizational functions, which removed an entire layer of authority.<ref>Cline (1990), p. 92.</ref><ref group=n>The Air Corps itself was a statutory entity and could not be legally discontinued except by act of Congress, but executive abolition of the OCAC under authority of the First War Powers Act gave the AAF legal standing. The chiefs of the other combat arms, including Infantry, were also abolished.</ref> Taking their former functions were eleven numbered air forces (later raised to sixteen) and six support commands (which became eight in January 1943). The circular also restated the mission of the AAF, in theory removing from it responsibility for strategic planning and making it only a Zone of Interior "training and supply agency", but from the start AAF officers viewed this as a "paper" restriction negated by Arnold's place on both the Joint and Combined Chiefs, which gave him strategic planning authority for the AAF,<ref>Mooney (1946), pp. 49–50</ref><ref>Mooney and Williamson (1956), p. 10</ref><ref>McClendon (1996), p. 98</ref> a viewpoint that was formally sanctioned by the War Department in mid-1943 and endorsed by the president.<ref>Mooney (1946), pp. 57–58</ref><ref>McClendon (1996), pp. 99–100</ref><ref group=n>FM 100-20 ''Command and Employment of Air Power'' (Field Service Regulations), issued by the War Department on 21 July 1943, was viewed by the senior leadership of the Army Ground Forces as the Army Air Forces' "Declaration of Independence." (Greenfield 1948, p. 47)</ref> The Circular No. 59 reorganization directed the AAF to operate under a complex division of administrative control performed by a policy staff, an operating staff, and the support commands (formerly "field activities" of the OCAC). The former field activities operated under a "bureau" structure, with both policy and operating functions vested in staff-type officers who often exercised command and policy authority without responsibility for results, a system held over from the Air Corps years. The concept of an "operating staff", or directorates, was modeled on the RAF system that had been much admired by the observer groups sent over in 1941, and resulted from a desire to place experts in various aspects of military aviation into key positions of implementation. However functions often overlapped, communication and coordination between the divisions failed or was ignored, policy prerogatives were usurped by the directorates, and they became overburdened with detail, all contributing to the diversion of the directorates from their original purpose. The system of directorates in particular handicapped the developing operational training program (see [[United States Army Air Forces#Combat units|''Combat units'']] below), preventing establishment of an OTU command and having a tendency to micromanage because of the lack of centralized control.<ref name="mel223">Layman (1946), pp. 22–23</ref> Four main directorates—Military Requirements, Technical Services, Personnel, and Management Control—were created, each with multiple sub-directorates, and eventually more than thirty offices were authorized to issue orders in the name of the commanding general.<ref name="afhra10"/> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). 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