Engineer Memoirs
I went home pretty upset. I complained to my wife that, for the first time in my
career, I was disappointed. The military was letting commercial and parochial
interests interfere with the conduct of the war. About six weeks later the atom
bomb was dropped. I heard for the first time that the Manhattan District Engineer
was the code word for the head of the atom bomb project. Just to show you how
well that secret was kept, not even the deputy Army planner knew about it. The
war came to a close soon after the two bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
Immediately after VJ Day, we shifted into a postwar mode. We began planning
for the future of the Army. General Norstad took over from General Hull as head
of OPD. This was a brilliant stratagem thought up by General Hap Arnold who
was chief of the Army Air Corps. The Air Corps wanted to be a separate service
The Army, and especially the Navy, were opposed. By placing a bright Air Corps
officer at the head of one of the most important staff sections in the Army, it
immediately solidified the Army and the Army Air Corps, banding them together
against the Navy.
Q ..
Was this General John Hull?
A ..
Yes. General John Hull was in charge of OPD toward the end of the war. I think
Norstad was Hull's deputy for a while.
The interesting thing to me was the elaborate plans OPD made for the postwar
Army. It made an even more ambitious plan for the new air force. Even before
there was a separate air force, the Air Corps made strong arguments for a 50-wing
air force. The Army and Navy could see a large segment of their budget being
diverted to accommodate this new air force. The Army believed a separate air
force was a good move, but had no idea that the air force was planning to be so
large. Having spawned the idea of a separate air force, the Army then ganged up
with the Navy to keep the air force from becoming too large.
Studies made by the proponents of a separate air force believed that future wars
would not need a large Navy or Army. The Douhet theory of winning wars by air
power was popularized. The theory held that we could bomb an enemy into
submission and needed only a few Army units to guard the airfields and occupy the
enemy after it had succumbed. While these studies helped create a new separate
air force, they alarmed the Army and Navy so much that they kept the size of the
new air force in check.
One of the things I remember about this time in the Pentagon was General
Norstad's so-called "dream sessions.
Norstad was a broad-gauge thinker,
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