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ABSTRACT
A military cannot hope to improve in wartime if it cannot learn. Ideally, in wartime, formal learning ceases and the application of knowledge begins. But this is optimistic. In 1942, USAAF Eighth Air Force assumed it had the means necessary for victory. In reality, its technique and technology were only potentially – rather than actually – effective. What remained was to create the practice of daylight bombing – to learn. This article (1) recovers a wartime learning process that created new knowledge, (2) tests existing tacit hypotheses in military adaptation research, and (3) offers additional theoretical foundation to explain how knowledge is created in wartime
Acknowledgements
The authors owe a debt of gratitude to the reviewers and editors of the Journal of Strategic Studies. Their insights and encouragement were central to the evolution of this work. Franklin & Marshall College and the United States Air Force (USAF) provided research and travel support. Maranda Gilmore of the USAF Historical Research Agency was exceptionally helpful in locating original documents. In addition, special thanks to Messieurs David Martin and Zach Colton for their tireless work helping to edit and work out the logic. We could not have done it without you. The views expressed in this publication are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of the United States Government, Department of Defense, or any affiliated United States military entities.
Notes
1 VIII Fighter Command, Skywash, 28 August 1943, United States Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, AL (USAFHRA) 524.549A.
2 VIII Fighter Command, Skywash, 2 June 1943, USAFHRA 524.549A.
3 Helmuth von Moltke, “On Strategy,” in Daniel J. Hughes and Harry Bell (trans), Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings (New York: Ballantine Citation1993), 45.
4 Nina Kollars, “Military Innovation’s Dialectic,” Security Studies 23/4 (Citation2014), 787–813; Theo Farrell, Frans P.B. Osinga, and James A. Russell, Military Adaptation in Afghanistan (Redwoood CA: Stanford UP Citation2013); Frank Hoffman, Learning while under Fire: Military Change in Wartime (London: King’s College London Citation2015).
5 Many publications produced in the Second World War claim to be “by airmen for airmen,” but further evaluation reveals that this wasn’t the case.
6 J.S. Brown and P. Duguid, ‘Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and, Innovation’, Organization Science 2/1 (Citation1991), 40–57.
7 For a discussion on the distinction between knowledge production and organizations that manage knowledge, see Chris Argyris and Donald A. Schön, Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method, and Practice (Reading MA: Addison-Wesley Citation1996).
8 Paul Attewell, “Technology Diffusion and Organizational Learning: The Case of Business Computing,” Organization Science 3/1 (Citation1992), 1–19; Erik Von Hippel, “Sticky Information and the Locus of Problem-Solving: Implications for Innovation,” Management Science 40/4 (Citation1994), 429–39.
9 This is consistent with James B. Thomas, Stephanie Watts Sussman and John C. Henderson, “Understanding ‘Strategic Learning’: Linking Organizational Learning, Knowledge Management, and Sensemaking,” Organization Science 12/3 (2001), 331–45.
10 For the beginning of the surge in bottom-up theorizing, see Adam Grissom, “The Future of Military Innovation Studies,” Journal of Strategic Studies 29/5 (Citation2006), 905–34.
11 Theo Farrell, “Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2006,” Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (Citation2010).
12 Theo Farrell, “Figuring out Fighting Organisations: The New Organisational Analysis in Strategic Studies,“ Journal of Strategic Studies 19/1 (Citation1996), 122–35.
13 Kollars, “Military Innovation’s Dialectic,” 796
14 Ibid., 787–813.
15 J.A. Russell, “Innovation in War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005–2007,” Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (Citation2010), 191.
16 Hoffman, Learning while under Fire.
17 Chad C. Serena, A Revolution in Military Adaptation: The U.S. Army in the Iraq War (Washington: Georgetown University Press Citation2011), 118.
18 Robert T. Foley, “A Case Study in Horizontal Military Innovation: The German Army, 1916–1918,” Journal of Strategic Studies 35/6 (Citation2013), 812–15.
19 Bente Elkjaer, “Organizational Learning: The ‘Third Way,’” Management Learning 35/4 (Citation2004), 419–34.
20 Paddy Talbot Steven O’Toole, “Fighting for Knowledge: Developing Learning Systems in the Australian Army,“ Armed Forces & Society 37/1 (Citation2011), 46.
21 Sergio Catignani, “Coping with Knowledge: Organizational Learning in the British Army?” Journal of Strategic Studies 37/1 (Citation2013), 38.
22 Etienne Wenger, “Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction,” Citation2006, <Ewenger.com>.
23 Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Citation1966).
24 Ikujiro Nonaka, “A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation,” Organization Science 5/1 (Citation1994), 14–37.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., 25.
27 Peter R. Faber, “Interwar US Army Aviation and the Air Corps Tactical School: Incubators of American Airpower,” in P. S. Meilinger (ed.), The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell AFB AL: School of Advanced Airpower Studies Citation1997), 183–238; Robert T. Finney, History of the Air Corps Tactical School, 1920–1940 (Maxwell AFB AL: USAF Historical Division, Research Studies Institute, Air University Citation1955); Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton NJ: Princeton UP Citation2002), esp. Chapter 3.
28 Bernard Lawrence Boylan, Development of the Long Range Escort Fighter (USAF Historical Study No. 136 (Maxwell AFB AL: USAF Historical Division, Research Studies Institute, Air University Citation1955), 12–15.
29 Stephen L. McFarland and Wesley Phillips Newton, To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942–1944 (Washington: Smithsonian, Citation1991), 84–85.
30 Ibid., 91.
31 Garry L. Fry and Jeffrey L. Ethell, Escort to Berlin: The 4th Fighter Group in World War II (New York: Arco Citation1980), 1–15.
32 This is the standard interpretation, and while it has much to commend it, it is incomplete. See Roger A. Freeman, The Mighty Eighth: A History of the Units, Men and Machines of the US 8th Air Force (London: Orion Books Citation1989); Henry Harley Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper Citation1949); Alfred Price, Battle over the Reich (New York: Scribner’s Citation1973); Thames Television, Jeremy Isaacs, and Laurence Olivier, The World at War (London: Thames Television Citation1973). Boylan, Long-Range Escort Fighter is perhaps the most through discussion of the subject, but its focus (drop tank and aircraft development) is overwhelmingly technological as opposed to tactical.
33 VIII Fighter Command, Skywash, 31 May 1943, USAFHRA 524.549A.
34 VIII Fighter Command, The Long Reach, 24 May 1944, USAFHRA 524.502A, 60.
35 VIII Fighter Command, Skywash, 24 July 1943, USAFHRA 524.549A.
36 Paul F. Henry, From Airships to the Nuclear Age: A History of Lieutenant General William E. Kepner (Maxwell AFB AL: Air Command and Staff College, Air University Citation1981). This student thesis remains the best biographical study of Kepner. See also McFarland and Newton, To Command the Sky, 114.
37 Henry, From Airships to the Nuclear Age, 23.
38 VIII Fighter Command, The Long Reach, 2
39 VIII Fighter Command, Skywash, 5 November 1943, USAFHRA 524.549A, 3.
40 Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, Army Air Forces in World War II: Argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945. Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press Citation1951), 8.
41 VIII Fighter Command, Skywash, 5 November 1943.
42 VIII Fighter Command, “Tactics and Techniques of Long-Range Fighter Escort in VIII Fighter Command,” 25 July 1944, USAFHRA 524.522, 2
43 VIII Fighter Command, Skywash, 6 January 1944, USAFHRA 524.549A.
44 VIII Fighter Command, Skywash, 25 March 1944, USAFHRA 524.549A.
45 VIII. Fighter Command, The Long Reach, 1–4.
46 Ibid., 37.
47 Ibid., 24.
48 Ibid., 37.
49 VIII Fighter Command, Shot Patterns, 15 September to 31 December 1943, USAFHRA 524.716; VIII Fighter Command, Gun Chatter, March–June 1944, USAFHRA 524.310.
50 VIII Fighter Command, The Long Reach, 6
51 Ibid., 5.
52 Ibid., 10.
53 Third Bomb Division, “German Fighter Tactics against Flying Fortresses,” 11 November 1943, USAFHRA 527.641.
54 Ibid.
55 Third Bomb Division, “Lead Crew Manual,” 1944, USAFHRA 527.02.
56 Ibid.
57 Third Bomb Division, Chaff, June 1944, USAFHRA 527.02.
58 Second Bombardment Division, Target: Victory, 16–29 July 1944, USAFHRA 526.309. Target: Victory was published biweekly from late July 1944 through May 1945.
59 As an interesting case of organizational emulation in an attempt to learn, the US ORS was itself an emulation of the British system of analysis established only a few years earlier. Joseph F. McCloskey, “OR Forum: The Beginnings of Operations Research: 1934–1941,” Operations Research 35/1 (Citation1987), 143–52.
60 For more on the tension between ORS publications and for a history of ORS and the Eighth Air Force see Charles W. McArthur, Operations Analysis in the US Army Eighth Air Force in World War II, Vol. 4 (Providence RI: American Mathematical Society Citation1990).
61 Headquarters, Third Bombardment Division, “Minutes of the Combat Wing and Group Commanders’ Meeting,” March 1944, USAFHRA 527.151.
62 Author interview, Major David Rowland, former operations officer, 452nd Bomb Group, December 2012. His counterpart was famed actor James Stewart, operations officer of the 453rd Bomb Group.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Nina A. Kollars
Nina Kollars is Assistant Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall College and a graduate of Ohio State University’s Department of Political Science. Kollars’ most recently published research has featured in Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, and Survival. Central themes in her work are innovation, adaptation, and organizational design. She is currently working on a book manuscript that focuses on the efforts of war practitioners and organizational responses to their insights and creativity. She is a non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point Military Academy, a member of the Committee for the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy, an editorial board member of the Special Operations Journal, and a committed professor to her students. Before entering academia Kollars completed analyses for the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, and the World Bank. Email: [email protected]
Richard R. Muller
Richard R. Muller is Professor of Military History and Dean of Academics at the USAF School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He joined the SAASS faculty in June 2005. Prior to that, he spent 14 years on the faculty at the USAF Air Command and Staff College (ACSC). At ACSC, he served as course director, department chairman, and dean of education and curriculum. He is a military historian specializing in the history of air power and the Second World War. He is the author of The German Air War in Russia; The Luftwaffe’s Way of War 1911–1945 (with James S. Corum); and The Luftwaffe over Germany: Defense of the Reich (with Donald L. Caldwell) – which received the Air Force Historical Foundation’s “Best Air Power History Book of 2008” prize – as well as many articles, book chapters, and reviews. A native of New Jersey, Dr Muller received his BA in history (with honors) from Franklin & Marshall College, and his MA and PhD degrees in military history from Ohio State University. He has held fellowship appointments at Yale University and the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, and was named the Air Education and Training Command Civilian Educator of the Year for 2009. Email: [email protected]
Andrew Santora
Andrew Santora is a recent graduate of Franklin & Marshall College with a dual degree in government and history. His area of expertise and most recent work has been on German soldier development and tactics in the Second World War. He currently resides in Washington, DC. Email: [email protected]