Timothy Moy

The subtitle to this volume is "Transforming Technologies in the U.S. Military 1920-1940", words that seem to imply (at least to me) that the book would be an analysis across a range of technologies during a period that saw great technological advances in many areas. The author's premise is showing how technology and doctrine evolved in two military organizations--a kind of chicken-and-egg question.

Published in 2001 by Texas A&M University Press, author Timothy Moy provides his reader with a rather slim 218-page book, including endnotes, bibliography, and index. There are a few images to supplement the text. There are ten chapters divided into two parts, with Chapter 1 acting as an introduction to the author's process of analysis. Part 1 (Chapters 2-5) delves into the concept of precision daylight bombardment and its advocacy in the interwar Army Air Corps. The author tracks the development of the bombing doctrine through identifying key personalities such as Arnold, Spaatz, and Eaker and through the Air Corps schoolhouses, primarily the Air Corps Tactical School. Moy shows how the bomber boys won out over pursuit aviation advocates like Chennault, who ended up leaving the Air Corps. Moy also follows the development of the technology that made daylight precision bombing possible: the gyrostabilized bombsight.

Part 2 (Chapters 6-9) makes the same case for the development of amphibious warfare doctrine in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps. Unlike the Army Air Corps, where different schools of thought (bombing versus pursuit) vied for adoption, there was little disagreement about the importance of amphibious warfare to the sea services. Moy's technology counterpart for the Marines is the development of proper landing craft. Chapter 10, "Victory: Military, Bureaucratic, and Cultural", takes the arguments made in Parts 1 and 2 to their logical and historical conclusions in World War II.

While Moy makes interesting points in his analysis of both the Army Air Corps and the Marine Corps, I think it is incomplete. For example, when the bomber advocates seemingly won their bureaucratic battle prior to Pearl Harbor, that outcome was not clear, at least in terms of Air Corps procurement actions. There was War Department insistence on buying larger numbers of bombers, which meant relatively large contracts for the inferior Douglas B-18 series as opposed to the small buys of the heavier Boeing B-17, the aircraft advocated by the bomber boys. Also, the same technology that drove the development of bombers such as the B-17 aided pursuit advocates. Stressed-skin construction and 1,000 horsepower engines brought the Curtiss P-36 and P-40, the Lockheed P-38, and the Bell P-39. While the bomber boys certainly had a place at the table of Allied victory in World War II, strategic bombing success would not have been possible without pursuit aviation, which by the author's inference "lost" the interwar bureaucratic battle.

Moy's analysis of the USMC/amphibious doctrine issue faces similar problems. I think the author should have added that other key technology that solved the Navy and Marine Corps ship-to-shore problem--the Roebling amphibious tractor. HQMC was examining the tractor as early as 1938, so its development fits Moy's timeline for this book. Although initially seen as a logistics vehicle, armored versions of the amtrac served as the Marines' primary beach assault vehicle during opposed landings beginning in November 1943, and, in different forms, does so to this day.

For both USAAC and USMC cases, Moy exaggerates the interwar threat to these institutions. For the Army Air Corps, it was never an existential problem--just a problem in determining the form the institution would take. Similarly, for the Marines, their "banana wars" involvement was simply too valuable to the nation for "engineer" Hoover to really threaten the Marines' existence as had the Roosevelt administration 15 years before.

Moy certainly brings up some interesting points (such as the naval origins of the Norden bombsight); however, the book simply doesn't have the meat on its bones to make a convincing case. Perhaps he had to deal with a page limitation. But this reader comes away less fulfilled in this study of a topic that needs more attention.… (más)