War Machines

During the interwar years, from 1920 to 1940, leaders from the US Army Air Corps and Marine Corps recreated their agencies based on visions of new military technologies. In this survey, Timothy Moy examines these recreations and explores how factors such as bureaucratic pressure, institutional culture, and America's technological enthusiasm shaped these leaders' choices. The very existence of the Army Air Corps was based on a new technology, the aeroplane. As the Air Corps was forced to compete for money and other resources during the years after World War I, Air Corps leaders carved out a military niche based on high-tech precision bombing. The Marine Corps focused on amphibious, first-wave assault using sturdy, graceless and easy-to-produce landing craft. Moy's analysis emphasizes that studying the processes that shaped the Army Air Corps and Marine Corps is fundamental to our understanding of technology and the military at the beginning of the 21st century.