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VIII THE MAKING OF AN AIR FORCE PERSONNEL MEN and machines have to be harnessed up and driven as a team to make up air power. The selection and training of the persons who are to fly the machines and those that are required to keep them up is the most important consideration. The next is to obtain and distribute the actual airplanes and the equipment that are necessary for use in the air. Without knowledge on the part of the personnel of their work, neither proper air units nor suitable material can be devised or created for the flyers. If persons are put in authority tllat are not trained air officers, with long service as pilots and observers, they cannot know the kinds of airplanes which should be given their men and the material which should accompany them to keep them up. All countries have attempted at first to put men in the control of aviation who knew little about it just because they had high military rank. These officers always attempted to conceal their ignorance of the subject from others, and have surrounded themselves with advisers that kne\v little more about aviation J59 160 Winged Defense than themselves so as to maintain greater control over their subordinates. The result of this procedure always comes quickly and is manifested in worthless and dangerous machines for the pilots, an inadequate system of training, no real air system for reserve officers, and no appreciation of what the conditions of a future war will be. Everything depends primarily on the creation and development of a specialized air personnel, capable of actually handling their duties in an efficient manner, making a class of real air men. An air force's duty is in the air and not on the ground. People who are unused to or unfamiliar with air work are incapable of visioning what air power should be, of training the men necessary for work in the air, or of devising the equipment that they should have. The greatest deterrent to development which air forces combat in every country is the fact that they have had to be tied up to armies and navies where senior officers, unused to air work, were placed in the superior positions at the beginning of the organization of the air forces. In practically all cases these affected to treat flying men as aerial chauffeurs, where as a matter of fact, they are the most highly organized individual fighting men that the world has ever seen. Airplanes are not merely a means of transportation, they are fighting units. Air forces fight in line against other air forces. They use their own tactics, and have a highly specialized method of maneuvering in three dimensions. The air man's psychology of war depends on the action of the individual, he has no man at his elbow to support him; no officers in front to Air Force Personnel 161 lead him, and no file closers behind him to shoot him if he runs away as is the case in a ground army. The whole system is entirely different from that of troops on the ground where mob psychology has to be used in directing the men in combat. To cover up their ignorance in these matters, these older ground officers have always hedged back to the fact that administration was the main thing in the conduct of air forces. Administration is merely the orderly conduct of correspondents in affairs. It has nothing to do with the actual handling or leading of fighting forces. It is merely a necessary nuisance. The best administrators usually are the old sergeants or clerks that have been long in the service. An excellent administrator could be obtained and hired for certain fixed wages in civil life. An airman cannot be. He must be of suitable personal characteristics, self reliant, bound to overcome any and all obstacles in front of him, and well versed in his profession from the ground up. Another thing that one frequently hears is that the air game is a young man's game. This is not the case when one considers that it is a life's work. Even in a ground army, a general would no longer be capable of carrying a musket and pack in the ranks nor n1aking the long marches on foot that he used to when twenty years of age. An officer has to come up through each grade to his position, and in addition...

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