Getting the United States military to purchase the first airplane (1909 for the Army, 1911 in the Navy) required “technology champions” to convince their organizations that it would be money well spent. But that is only half the problem in introducing a new technology. The military officers who had championed the purchase of the airplane now had to figure out how to manage the new technology so that it could be used effectively and prove to their parent organizations that the airplane really was a worthwhile purchase.

My paper will examine both the men who championed the airplane in each service as well as the organizations they were able to create to manage this new technology. The need to fit into the established military bureaucracy in each service meant that a variety of factors also influenced how those nascent aviation organizations developed in the Army and Navy. How the airplane was managed influenced how the airplane was used (or not used, as the case may be). Factors such as the personalities of senior officers (for whom supervision of aviation was only a small part of their job), service culture, and even basic service missions all influenced how aviation was managed in each service. By comparing and contrasting these elements in the US Army and Navy between 1909 and 1916, I hope to re-open the historical dialogue: Some decisions about the airplane’s employment in military service that were taken for granted in one service but were the topic of great discussion in the other service. In this way, I hope my paper will get historians to re-think how all of these factors shaped the development of the airplane in the Army and Navy prior to the First World War, and in turn, reexamine issues that might be taken for granted in the development of new or “best” uses of other new technologies.