Navy Combat Branches: Naval Air Forces

This entry is a subentry of Navy Combat Branches.

Naval aviation has been an integral component of the U.S. Navy's administrative and operational structure because the fleet's aircraft have been long‐range extensions of the traditional naval gun and scouting ship. Eventually, the navy's air forces dominated policy, strategy, and force structures as they extended their direct influence throughout the service—personnel, training, ordnance, logistics, shipbuilding and maintenance, medicine, navigation, submarine warfare, and the Marine Corps. This ascendancy generated stresses within the U.S. Navy—and controversy with the army's air forces and later the U.S. Air Force—over strategic roles and missions and the competition for funding.

Initially, in 1910–16, a director of aviation activities, a captain, supervised the few dozen navy planes and pilots until America's entry into World War I. The need to patrol the coastal waters of Europe and North America against Germany's U‐boats and to bomb their bases led to a strengthened directorship in 1917. The director wielded immense authority over naval aviation's wartime expansion to 2,107 aircraft; 15 dirigibles; 205 kite and free balloons; 6,998 officers, mostly pilots; 32,882 enlisted men, some pilots; 31 air stations in Europe and 24 in the United States. The navy's aviation proved so essential to victory that postwar personnel strength was set at 500 officers and 5,000 enlisted men. Patrol seaplanes and dirigibles were employed in reconnaissance roles; land‐based planes assigned to battleships to scout and spot gunfire; and an experimental aircraft carrier commissioned. Major recognition came with the creation of the Bureau of Aeronautics, headed by a rear admiral, in 1921.

Under the inspired leadership of the first chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, Adm. William A. Moffett (1921–33), the navy's air forces were integrated into fleet operations in anticipation of war with Japan. The two major aviation components became the carriers and land‐based and amphibian patrol‐bombers. Depression‐era budgetary constraints did not deter Moffett and his successors from forging a qualitatively advanced naval air force centered on seven aircraft carriers and five patrol wings during the interwar period. A civilian assistant secretary of the navy for aeronautics facilitated progress in 1926–32, and again after 1941.

The immense expansion of fleet aviation for World War II was brilliantly managed by Adm. John H. Towers (chief of bureau, 1939–42). It attained an eventual strength of over 36 attack carriers, 84 escort carriers, dozens of seaplane tenders, numerous training bases and air stations; 40,912 aircraft, 139 blimps, and 27 helicopters; 60,095 pilots (navy and Marine), 33,044 nonflying officers, and 337,718 nonflying enlisted sailors. Such growth led in 1943 to the new post of deputy chief of naval operations (Air), held by a vice admiral. The primary role of naval aviation in the destruction of Japan's Imperial Fleet and Germany's U‐boats established it at the center of the postwar navy.

During and after the Cold War, aviators occupied the post of chief of naval operations (CNO) and were commanders or deputy commanders of the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. The deputy CNO (Air Warfare, after 1971) remained the highest aviation billet. At the technical and logistical level, the Bureau of Aeronautics merged with the Bureau of Ordnance to become the Bureau of Weapons in 1959; its chief was a naval aviator. Simultaneously, the office of assistant secretary (Air) was discontinued. In the Navy Department reorganization of 1966, the Naval Air Systems Command superseded the Bureau of Weapons. With the aircraft carrier as the focus of its strategy, the Cold War navy countered the Soviet navy and projected its power over land and sea during limited wars and confrontations in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Attack carrier strength varied between twelve and fifteen, augmented by land‐based patrol planes and antisubmarine and helicopter carriers. The 1980 overall naval‐Marine aviation personnel strength was typical for the post–Vietnam period: 160,675, of whom 12,774 were pilots. The navy's air forces have remained a major component of the nation's global peacekeeping forces since the end of the Cold War.

[See also Air Warfare; Tactics: Air Warfare Tactics.]

Bibliography

• Archibald D. Turnbull and Clifford L. Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, 1949.
• Robert Sherrod, U.S. Marine Corps Aviation in World War II, 1952.
• George van Deurs, Wings of the Fleet: A Narrative of Naval Aviation's Early Development, 1910–1916, 1966.
• Gordon Swanborough and Peter M. Bowers, United States Naval Aircraft Since 1911, 1968; 3rd ed. 1990.
• Clark G. Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy, 1991.
• E. T. Wooldridge, ed., Into the Jet Age: Conflict and Change in Naval Aviation, 1945–1975, 1995