Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation and the U.S. Army, 1917-1945 (review)

Since the end of the cold war, historians of technology and military innovation have looked to two historical periods to help inform our understanding of the present and future: the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s; and, especially since September 11, 2001, the early cold war period. Both possess useful similarities with, but also complex distinctions from, the recent environment for technology-based military innovation. David Johnson is a military historian and analyst at the RAND Corporation. Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers is an important study of doctrinal and technical innovation in the U.S. Army between the world wars. It is an insightful and readable examination of how advocates of armored warfare and strategic bombing worked within and against the institutional structure of the army to promote their new visions of warfare.

Johnson's central thesis is that "internal arrangements" in the army—its culture, organizational structure, paradigms, and bureaucratic politics—constrained developments in tank and air warfare during the 1920s and 1930s, and that these constraints, more than lackluster support from the president and Congress, hampered armored and air force effectiveness into World War II. In both cases, the starting point for the author's analysis is the dynamic by which institutional structure shaped evolving operational doctrine (what today would be called "concepts of operations"). He notes, for example, that authority for the development of tank warfare was divided during the 1920s and 1930s between the infantry and cavalry: armor doctrine under the infantry developed a tendency toward supporting traditional infantry operations, while doctrine under the cavalry tended to regard the tank as little more than a replacement for the horse in traditional cavalry duties. As a result, Johnson argues, tank development was crippled by competing demands.

In contrast, Johnson observes that air force advocates were given considerably greater autonomy within the army by the creation of the Air Service and then the Air Corps during the 1920s; this encouraged air-warfare theorists to develop operational doctrines that were largely indepen-dent of traditional army missions, and eventually led them to embrace the vision of unescorted, daylight-precision bombing.

Johnson further argues that these doctrinal concepts then shaped technological development. Infantry and cavalry visions of armored warfare converged to produce a tank force dominated by fast medium tanks that could support infantry movements and exploit breaches in enemy lines. The devotion of air-power advocates to strategic bombing resulted in an air force designed predominantly around heavy bombers that would strike targets deep within enemy territory without the aid of fighter escorts. In each case, this dynamic produced forces that were inadequately prepared for combat in World War II. The primary American tank, the M4 Sherman, suffered at the hands of German Panthers and Tigers, and emerged victorious only because of superior American production volume. When the heavy bombers of the army's air forces started bombing German targets, they were unable to defend themselves against improved German fighter tactics; and when the air force was called upon to support the breakout of American ground troops from the Normandy peninsula in 1944, General Omar Bradley was enraged to discover that it was unprepared to do so without causing large numbers of friendly fire casualties. For Johnson, the army's institutional culture and bureaucratic structure translated into suboptimal military technologies.

Johnson is to be commended for his lively narrative. He makes a particularly valiant effort to bring important individuals to life—a difficult task for this sort of story. Analytically, the book's greatest value is in its scrutiny of armored- and air-power doctrine as manifested in training regulations, field manuals, and texts of the army staff schools. These visions of warfare were translated into planning and operational procedures in army boards and at places like the Command and General Staff School and the Air Corps Tactical School. Johnson's close analysis provides a strong...