Disincentives have their place. His boss’ court-martial for insubordination taught Gladwyne’s Henry “Hap” Arnold the value of discretion. Specifically, it taught him to keep his mouth shut, salute and work within the system to achieve a goal.
Arnold’s boss was Gen. Billy Mitchell, who was thrown out of the U.S. Army in 1926 for too vigorously advocating for an air force as the third branch of the military. At the time, both the Army and Navy brass saw aviation as just another tool.
Mitchell’s departure left Arnold the leading uniformed advocate for expanded air power in the United States between the world wars. As chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps during WWII, he oversaw development of the intercontinental bomber, the jet fighter and atomic warfare. Equally important, he developed and executed a strategy for U.S. air superiority in WWII and the postwar era.
The third of five children and the son of a physician, Arnold was part of a family whose immigrant ancestors had been Mennonites. During the Revolution, the family dropped their pacifist beliefs to join the more militant Baptists. “Hap”—short for happy, since he always seemed to be smiling—was a mischievous boy and an indifferent student. He merely followed along with his father’s plan that he would attend Bucknell University and become a Baptist minister. Hap’s older brother, Tom, was destined for West Point. On the eve of his examination, however, Tom announced that he wanted to remain at Penn State University. “Humiliated by the first defeat he had ever experienced within his own family, Dr. Arnold turned to Henry,” wrote historian Thomas M. Coffey. “One of his sons, he announced, was going to take that examination.”
Hap took the test and was admitted. He stepped up his academic game, though only just enough. He placed in the middle of his 1907 graduating class—not good enough for the cavalry he’d set his heart on. Desperate to get out of the infantry, he applied for transfer to the Signal Corps, which then included the Army’s limited aviation operation. In 1911, he was assigned to Dayton, Ohio, where he took flight lessons from Orville Wright. A year later, as one of two of the Army’s first officially trained military pilots, he helped establish the corps’ first flight school, serving as a test pilot, mechanic and instructor.
Arnold met Mitchell in 1912. The youngest officer ever assigned to the general staff, Mitchell was even more gung-ho about military aviation than Arnold, who became executive officer of the corps’ aviation service in 1916. During World War I, Arnold was among the best-known American flyers. Mitchell won the Distinguished Service Cross and high praise for leading nearly 1,500 Allied aircraft in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.
After the war, Mitchell was named assistant chief of the aviation service, with Arnold as his assistant. They pursued an aggressive public education campaign to convince the nation of the importance of military aviation. Stationed on the West Coast, Arnold established an aerial forest-fire patrol, organized a series of aerial stunt shows and demonstrated the first successful in-flight refueling. Mitchell, meanwhile, conducted bombing trials.
Even so, Congress provided few resources for aircraft research and design, and no incentives for aircraft manufacturers. The country believed itself safe behind its oceans. “Airpower doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere at all,” Mitchell lamented to Arnold.
When a dirigible crashed in 1925, killing 14, Mitchell harshly criticized the Navy and War departments, leading to his trial and conviction for insubordination the following year. Arnold’s reputation and rank, meanwhile, continued to rise. In 1935, he was a brigadier general in command of three fighter and three bomber squadrons. His experience with the B-10s convinced him that a better plane was needed for long-range missions. During World War II, the B-17 would be used for daylight precision-bombing missions over Europe. But what finally convinced the ground generals was the need to defend Alaska and Hawaii.
By the start of World War II, Arnold had been promoted to major general and appointed chief of the Army Air Corps. He oversaw the corps’ expansion to 60,000 aircraft and 2.1 million men. He was the chief architect of the air wars against Germany and Japan. His B-17s decimated German manufacturing. His B-29s fire-bombed Japan and dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Arnold retired in 1947, the year the Army Air Corps became the U.S. Air Force. Events might’ve unfolded quite differently if he hadn’t learned early when to zip his lip.
Taken from the archives of Mark E. Dixon’s Retrospect column, a fixture in Main Line Today for 16 years.
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