When a bubble is poked, a hole forms and surface tension causes the molecules to shrink so quickly that the bubble flattens or bursts and the water escapes as tiny droplets. While some organisms need less than others — the cyanobacteria Chroococcidiopsis, for instance, needs so little water that biologists think it may be able to survive on the arid surface of Mars — every organism we know of needs water to survive. Terrycloth, the fabric in towels, has lots of loops on its surface. The AAF administered all parts of military aviation formerly distributed among the Air Corps, General Headquarters Air Force, and the ground forces’ corps area commanders and thus became the first air organization of the U.S. A major step toward a separate air force came in March 1935, when the command of all combat air units within the Continental United States (CONUS) was centralized under a single organization called the “General Headquarters Air Force”. Arnold’s proposal was immediately opposed by the General Staff in all respects, rehashing its traditional doctrinal argument that, in the event of war, the Air Corps would have no mission independent of support of the ground forces. A struggle with the General Staff over control of air defense of the United States had been won by airmen and vested in four command units called “numbered air forces”, but the bureaucratic conflict threatened to renew the dormant struggle for an independent United States Air Force.

Army as a whole, caused by the activation of Army GHQ a year before, had led to a “battle of memos” between it and the WDGS over administering the AAF, prompting Marshall to state that he had “the poorest command post in the Army” when defense commands showed a “disturbing failure to follow through on orders”. The Army Air Forces was created in June 1941 to provide the air arm greater autonomy in which to expand more efficiently, to provide a structure for the additional command echelons required by a vastly increased force, and to end an increasingly divisive administrative battle within the Army over control of aviation doctrine and organization that had been ongoing since the creation of an aviation section within the U.S. By the end of World War II, the Army Air Forces had become virtually an independent service. Wrap the end in waterproof tape. After war began, Congress enacted the First War Powers Act on 18 December 1941 endowing President Franklin D. Roosevelt with virtual carte blanche to reorganize the executive branch as he found necessary. Arnold assumed the title of Chief of the Army Air Forces, creating an echelon of command over all military aviation components for the first time and ending the dual status of the Air Corps and GHQ Air Force, which was renamed Air Force Combat Command (AFCC) in the new organization.

The EO changed Arnold’s title to Commanding General, Army Air Forces effective 9 March 1942, making him co-equal with the commanding generals of the new Army Ground Forces and Services of Supply, the other two components of the Army of the United States. Between March 1935 and September 1938, the commanders of GHQ Air Force and the Air Corps, Major Generals Frank M. Andrews and Oscar Westover respectively, clashed philosophically over the direction in which the air arm was moving, exacerbating the difficulties. Since 1920, control of aviation units had resided with commanders of the corps areas (a peacetime ground forces administrative echelon), following the model established by commanding General John J. Pershing during World War I. In 1924, the General Staff planned for a wartime activation of an Army general headquarters (GHQ), similar to the American Expeditionary Forces model of World War I, with a GHQ Air Force as a subordinate component.

The activation of GHQ Air Force represented a compromise between strategic airpower advocates and ground force commanders who demanded that the Air Corps mission remain tied to that of the land forces. Marshall implemented a compromise that the Air Corps found entirely inadequate, naming Arnold as acting “Deputy Chief of Staff for Air” but rejecting all organizational points of his proposal. Each of these forces had a commanding general who reported directly to the Army Chief of Staff. Less than five months after the rejection of Arnold’s reorganization proposal, a joint U.S.-British strategic planning agreement (ABC-1) refuted the General Staff’s argument that the Air Corps had no wartime mission except to support ground forces. Despite a perception of resistance and even obstruction then by the bureaucracy in the War Department General Staff (WDGS), much of which was attributable to lack of funds, the Air Corps later made great strides in the 1930s, both organizationally and in doctrine.