What was the purpose in giving independence to the US Army Air

Decentralization of power. Same reason there are 3 branches of government. Just general checks and balances to prevent tyranny.

>>34624185

If that's so, why are the Marines still under the Navy?

>>34624147
Getting an Air Force that was ultimately free to conduct it's own strategic operations without being forced to do tremendously ineffective stupid shit like use strategic bombers to bomb the Normandy beaches and Operation Cobra.

>>34624211

So a gain in strategic ability for a loss in tactical ability?

>>34624147
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPoBEM-Xhms

>>34624147
Why not? The navy and the army always were separate branches, why not the airforce? Their needs, organization and missions are too different to keep them under a single command.

>>34624147
It was merely to stroke the egos of senior officers in the army air corps, nothing more.

>>34624147

The Soviet Union took it a step further and divided up their air force into three separate branches, the Air Defense Force, the Air Force, and the Strategic Missile Troops. Of the three, the "Air Force" was considered the least important and the Strategic Missile Troops were the most important.

>>34624196
Marines are a subhuman race that needs guidance before they can join the evolved branches

>>34624147
During WWII airborne troops were part of the Luftwaffe not the Heer.

>>34624147
Seperate funding

>>34624185
>>34624211
>>34625313
>>34625415
"I don't know what I am talking about and migrated here from sites and boards like Reddit and /pol/"
summerkids need to fuck off

>>34625415
Where did the Jarhead touch you?

>>34624196
because they're too retarded to take care of themselves

File: Convair_B-36_Peacemaker.jpg (43KB, 640x373px) Image search: [Google]

43KB, 640x373px

>>34627300
Enlighten me then, oh smart one?

>>34624225

Aircraft are better employed in a strategic campaign then they are tactical. If used correctly they can cause tremendous irreparable damage to an enemy's economic and infrastructure. Plinking tanks is very useful for the particular fight, but why plink the one tank when you can cut his fuel supply and render his whole division into nothing more than black uniformed infantry.

Nowadays, you see a lot of people complaining about the expenditure of the Air Force and how it should never have been made independent, but no one ever seems to be able to justify why. The benefits have significantly outweighed the bad.

>>34627624

I thought it was agreed Strategic Bombing in WWII didn't actually help?

https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21586520-damning-verdict-bombing-campaign-europe-during-second-world-war-costly

>>34625683

Just in Germany. In every other country, they belonged to the Army, except Japan, where the Army and Navy had their separate Airborne divisions.

>>34627425
Everywhere. It was wonderful.

>>34628682
That's because it doesn't work, you're right, it's just the excuse used to grant the Air Force it's independence.
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/failurestratbombing.aspx

>>34628682
>>34628881
And guess who won WWII?

Oh right, the side with the strategic bombers

>>34629000
We had BAR's instead of 42s, so I guess that was a good choice too because we won.

>>34624147

1. Aircraft were still a fairly new thing at the time (less than 40 years old) and had only come into their own discrete thing during WW2. Many people believed they would make much of the existing Army and Navy obsolete (for example, the AF was the first branch to be nuclear armed).

2. Many people expected that, as aircraft naturally evolved spacecraft capabilities, they would need their own school of thought and their own operations command to take full advantage of the platform.

3. A separate AF branch means pilots get their own procurements. This means aircraft don't have to compete alongside frigates for funding, at least within the DoD itself. As a result, internal politics and interagency rivalry wouldn't be capable of fucking up the implementation of new aerial combat platforms.

Whether or not it makes sense now is another question. But much of the above also applies to Congress's recent attempt to create a dedicated "space warfare" branch. Yes it'd add another agency to the mix, but it'd also give "space warfare" officers and pilots their own procurement stream independent of the AF or Navy.

If the Air Force gets to be a separate branch, then I think Armor should get their own too.