nance, radar, jets, rockets, and a variety of advanced aircraft that ensured success in combat.
Air Power in the Nuclear Age
After the war the U.S. Army Air Forces established a number of major commands―Strategic Air Command (SAC), Air Defense Command (ADC), Tactical Air Command (TAC), Air Materiel Command (AMC), and Air Transport Command (ATC, which later became Military Air Transport Service [MATS] and then Military Airlift Command [MAC]), among others. Before his retirement, Hap Arnold, working to insure that America's air force remained at the forefront of science and technology, established a civilian Scientific Advisory Group (now the Scientific Advisory Board), the RAND Corporation "think tank," and several flight testing and engineering centers. Arnold proclaimed "the first essential" of air power to be "preeminence in research." He and General Spaatz proclaimed the second to be education, establishing Air University as a major command.
If the USAAF remained subordinate to the Army, its wartime record and the atomic bomb guaranteed that its status would change. The atomic bomb had altered the nature of warfare. The organization that delivered it, the Twentieth Air Force, was the predecessor of SAC, soon to become the world's dominant military force and responsible for conducting long-range combat and reconnaissance operations anywhere in the world. The USSBS had concluded from World War II that "the best way to win a war is to prevent it from occurring." A Strategic Air Command, properly equipped and trained, also would help deter any adversary state from starting a global nuclear war and would thereby ensure international peace.
At war's end the USAAF continued its quest for an American military establishment composed of three coequal and separate military departments. The Navy Department opposed unification and the formation of a separate air force, but the War Department, led by General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower, supported the drive for a separate air component. The National Security Act of July 26, 1947, was a compromise, creating a National Military Establishment under a civilian Secretary of National Defense, with three coequal services that preserved the air arms for the Navy and Marines. President Truman's first choice for Secretary of National Defense, Robert Patterson, turned down the job and James Forrestal, then serving as Secretary of the Navy, was appointed. The U.S.
