ABSTRACT
Arnold, ever an astute politician, had established a close friendship with Harry Hopkins in the White House and with Marshall. A powerful new player at the policy level appeared on the scene late in 1940 in the person of Robert A. Lovett in the reconstituted position of Assistant Secretary of War for Air. A brilliant Wall Street investment banker, Lovett had been a Navy flier in World War I and was a logistics expert who greatly reinforced President Roosevelt's and Secretary of War Stimson's growing stress on a huge build-up of American air strength. Out of this small group a tacit arrangement evolved as America entered World War II. Though the Air Corps was structurally a part of the Army, Marshall gave Arnold and the Air Corps equal status with the Army and Navy at the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In return Arnold agreed that he and the Air Corps would desist from pushing for an independent air force until the war was over. The politic, lucid rationale for this marriage of expedience was well expressed in Arnold's and Eaker's second book, Winged Warfare, published in 1941
Many feel that eventually the defensive air components of the nation will be given a status coordinate and commensurate with that of the Army and Navy.... We shall be fortunate if our time for that reorganization comes in the relative time of peace or at the worst in the preparatory and not in the fighting stage....
