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(More customer reviews)William F. Trimble's Smithsonian History of Aviation Series biography "Admiral William A. Moffett: Architect of Naval Aviation" is an outstanding work about the father of American Naval Aviation.
Trimble paints a clear picture of Moffett as a dynamic man of distinct vision, great patience, and remarkable talent who clearly discerned the basic philosophical and organizational ideas necessary to make aviation a part of the fleet. He may have been less clear on some details of the technology, but his broad-ranging vision of the future impact of aviation on navies was completely correct.
Trimble treats the dispute between Billy Mitchell and William Moffett as diplomatically as Moffett did, but no less finally. Nor does Trimble shirk from cataloging Moffett's numerous political battles within and without the Navy to establish Naval Aviation. He also clearly details the admiral's dealings with the many and sundry personalities that impacted his quest to establish aviation in the Navy.
One remarkable fact that comes out is that Moffett was a battleship captain before he became a champion of aviation. Also conspicuously absent in this work is any real finger-pointing at a supposed cabal of "battleship admirals" reputed by legend to have stymied the growth of Naval Aviation. Instead one finds a trail of Congressional penury, and bureaucratic in-fighting, almost none of which spoke to or even disputed the military value of Naval Aviation, much less cast it in opposition to the battleship.
What Trimble brings out is that the early "opposition" to Naval Aviation had almost everything to do with a bureaucratic "turf war" between Moffett's new Bureau of Aviation and the Bureau of Navigation (later called the Bureau of Personnel). The other--"material"--Bureaus bowed out with relative good grace once the technical necessity of BuAer became clear and they grudgingly surrendered control of their shares of the budgetary pie and personnel necessary to develop aviation as a weapon for the fleet. However, BuNav launched a bitter campaign to retain its prerogatives respecting its ability to control personnel assignments and pay.
That battle was still underway when Moffett was killed in the crash of the airship USS Akron, and it was left up to others such as Ernest King and John Towers to continue the fight.
That Moffett was lost in an airship accident is viewed by many as poetic, given his championing of the technology of rigid airships. Ironically, Moffett was not so uniquely or rosily linked to this nascent aviation technology as legend would have it. He pressed every aspect of aviation technology in the Navy, including float planes, sea planes, catapults, and carrier aircraft as well as rigid and non-rigid airships. At the time of his loss aboard Akron, Moffett had been entertaining serious doubts about the effectiveness of airships and pressing the Akron's commanders hard to demonstrate the worth of such expensive vehicles. Clearly, Moffett's support of airships was neither unthinking nor unwavering. His devotion to evaluating any promising technology was, however, total, so he wasn't going to axe rigid airships without good cause.
Beyond his foresight of what aviation could bring to the Navy, and his superb political and organizational skills, Moffett was most importantly a leader. His ability to quiet radical air power advocates in the Navy's own ranks and persuade non-aviators in the fleet of aviation's future importance were instrumental in winning the battle against Billy Mitchell's idea of a unified Air Force controlling all military aircraft ashore and at sea. Had Navy non-aviators been unconvinced of aviation's future utility, they might happily have given up such an expensive burden; had Congress perceived great dissention and support of a unified Air Force in Naval Aviation ranks, it might have mandated Mitchell's approach.
The true measure of Moffett's skill with people was the adroit high-wire act he managed, suspended between traditional naval officers who abhored political activity by officers on one side and the highly charged Mitchell-led air power lobbyists on the other. Despite muttering and outrage on his obviously political activity from within the Navy, and often intemperate attacks by the air power lobby from without, Moffett befriended, wrote to and influenced numerous politicians, industrialists and socialites. On many occasions the intervention of Moffett's bevy of friends proved crucial in the political battles raging around Naval Aviation.
The man who became this leader is also revealed by Trimble's writing, but what becomes apparent is that first, foremost and always, William Moffett was a naval officer. That was the consuming task of his life, and when he discovered aviation it too became central to who he was and what he did.
It is abundantly clear from Trimble's writing the magnitude of the loss the Navy and the nation suffered 20 minutes into 4 April 1933.
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