George Kenney
George Churchill Kenney was a United States Army general during World War II. He is best known as the commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, a position he held between August 1942 and 1945.
Kenney enlisted as a flying cadet in the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps in 1917, and served on the Western Front with the 91st Aero Squadron. He was awarded a Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross for actions in which he fought off German fighters and shot two down. After hostilities ended he participated in the Occupation of the Rhineland. Returning to the United States, he flew reconnaissance missions along the border between the US and Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. Commissioned into the Regular Army in 1920, he attended the Air Corps Tactical School, and later became an instructor there. He was responsible for the acceptance of Martin NBS-1 bombers built by Curtis, and test flew them. He also developed techniques for mounting.30 caliber machine guns on the wings of an Airco DH.4 aircraft.
In early 1940, Kenney became Assistant Military Attaché for Air in France. As a result of his observations of German and Allied air operations during the early stages of World War II, he recommended significant changes to Air Corps equipment and tactics. In July 1942, he assumed command of the Allied Air Forces and Fifth Air Force in General Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area. Under Kenney's command, the Allied Air Forces developed innovative command structures, weapons, and tactics that reflected Kenney's orientation towards attack aviation. The new weapons and tactics won perhaps his greatest victory, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, in March 1943. Two other significant bombing raids that ultimately led to complete air supremacy in the New Guinea campaign, at Wewak in August 1943 and at Hollandia in March to April 1944, also were due to Kenney and his command. In June 1944 he was appointed commander of the Far East Air Forces, which came to include the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Seventh Air Forces.
In April 1946, Kenney became the first commander of the newly formed Strategic Air Command, but his performance in the role was criticized, and he was shifted to become commander of the Air University, a position he held from October 1948 until his retirement from the Air Force in September 1951.
Early life
George Churchill Kenney was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, on 6 August 1889, during a summer vacation taken by his parents to avoid the humidity of the Boston area. The oldest of four children of carpenter Joseph Atwood Kenney and his wife Anne Louise Kenney, née Churchill, Kenney grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brookline High School in 1907 and later that year he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he pursued a course in civil engineering. After his father left his family, Kenney quit MIT and took various jobs before becoming a surveyor for the Quebec Saguenay Railroad.His mother died in 1913 and Kenney returned to Boston, where he took a job with Stone & Webster. In 1914, he joined the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad as a civil engineer, building a bridge in New London, Connecticut. After this was completed, he formed a partnership, the Beaver Contracting and Engineering Corporation, with a high school classmate, Gordon Glazier. The firm became involved in a number of projects, including the construction of a seawall at Winthrop, Massachusetts, and a bridge over the Squannacook River.
World War I
The United States entered World War I in April 1917, and Kenney enlisted as a flying cadet in the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps on 2 June 1917. He attended ground school at MIT in June and July, and received primary flight training at Hazelhurst Field in Mineola, New York, from Bert Acosta. He was commissioned as a first lieutenant on 5 November 1917, and departed for France soon after. There, he received further flight training at Issoudun. This ended in February 1918, when he was assigned to the 91st Aero Squadron.The 91st Aero Squadron flew the Salmson 2A2, a reconnaissance biplane. Kenney crashed one on takeoff on 22 March 1918. He broke an ankle and a hand, and earned himself the nickname "Bust 'em up George". His injuries soon healed, and he recorded his first mission on 3 June. Kenney flew one of four aircraft on a mission near Gorze on 15 September 1918, that was attacked by six German Pfalz D.III scouts. His observer William T. Badham shot one of them down, and Kenney was credited with his first aerial victory. For this he was awarded a Silver Star. A second victory followed in similar circumstances on 9 October while he was flying near Jametz in support of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Once again, the formation he was flying with was attacked by German fighters. This time he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, which was presented by Brigadier General Billy Mitchell on 10 January 1919.
Kenney's citation read:
Kenney remained for a time with the Allied occupation forces in Germany, and was promoted to captain on 18 March 1919. He returned to the United States in June 1919. He was the co-author in 1919 of "History of the 91st Aero Squadron" He was sent to Kelly Field, near San Antonio, Texas, and then to McAllen, Texas. As commander of the 8th Aero Squadron, he flew reconnaissance missions along the border with Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. Poor aircraft maintenance, rough landing strips and bad weather led to the squadron losing 22 of its 24 Airco DH.4 aircraft in just one year.
Between the wars
Kenney applied for one of a number of Regular Army commissions offered to reservists after the war, and was commissioned as a captain in the Air Service on 1 July 1920. While he was in hospital in Texas recovering from an aviation accident, he met a nurse, Helen "Hazel" Dell Richardson, the daughter of a Mobile, Alabama, contractor, George W. Richardson. They were married in Mobile on 6 October 1920. Hazel miscarried twins, and was warned by her doctor of the danger of another pregnancy, but she strongly wished to have a child. In 1922, while the couple was living on Long Island, New York, a son, William Richardson Kenney, was born to them, but Hazel died soon afterward from complications. Kenney arranged to have the infant cared for by his neighbor, Alice Steward Maxey, another nurse. On 5 June 1923, Kenney married Maxey in her home town of Gardiner, Maine.From July to November 1920, Kenney was air detachment commander at Camp Knox, Kentucky. He then became a student at the Air Service Engineering School at McCook Field, near Dayton Ohio. He was the Air Service Inspector at the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company in Garden City, New York, where he was responsible for the acceptance of the fifty Martin NBS-1 bombers that the Air Service had ordered from Curtis between 1921 and 1923. Kenney inspected the aircraft, and test flew them. While there, he was reduced in rank from captain to first lieutenant on 18 November 1922, a common occurrence in the aftermath of World War I when the wartime army was demobilized. He returned to McCook in 1923, and developed techniques for mounting.30 caliber machine guns on the wings of a DH.4. He was promoted to captain again on 3 November 1923. His daughter, Julia Churchill Kenney, was born in Dayton in June 1926.
In 1926, Kenney became a student at the Air Corps Tactical School, at Langley Field, Virginia, the Air Corps' advanced training school. He then attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the Army's advanced school where officers were taught how to handle large formations as commanders or staff officers. Most Air Corps officers, including Kenney, considered the course largely irrelevant to them, and therefore a waste of time, but nonetheless a prerequisite for promotion in a ground-oriented Army. Afterwards, he returned to the Air Corps Tactical School as an instructor. He taught classes of attack aviation. He was particularly interested in low-level attacks, as a means of improving accuracy. There were tactical problems with this, as low-flying aircraft were vulnerable to ground fire. There were also technical problems to be solved, as an aircraft could be struck by its own bomb fragments. His interest in attack aviation would ultimately set him apart in an Air Corps where strategic bombardment came to dominate thinking.
Kenney reached the pinnacle of his professional education in September 1932, when he entered the Army War College in Washington, D.C. At the war college, committees of students studied a number of World War I battles; Kenney's committee examined the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes. They updated actual war plans, Kenney's study group working on War Plan Orange. They also had to write an individual paper; Kenney wrote his on "The Proper Composition of the Air Force". One benefit of the Army War College was that it brought Air Corps officers into contact with ground officers that they would later have to work closely with. Members of Kenney's class included Richard Sutherland and Stephen Chamberlain, both of whom worked with him on committees.
File:Boeing B-17Es 1941-42.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.3|Kenney was a proponent of close air support, and did not want the US to focus so strongly on strategic bombing, as represented by the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress
Graduation from the Army War College was normally followed by a staff posting, and on graduation in June 1933 Kenney became an assistant to Major James E. Chaney in the Plans Division of the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps, Major General Benjamin Foulois. He performed various duties, including translating an article by the Italian air power theorist Giulio Douhet into English. In 1934, he was involved with drafting legislation that granted the Air Corps a greater degree of independence. This legislation prompted the Army to create GHQ Air Force, a centralized, air force-level command headed by an aviator answering directly to the Army Chief of Staff. Lieutenant Colonel Frank M. Andrews was chosen to command it, and selected Kenney as his Assistant Chief of Staff for Plans and Training.
In this role, Kenney was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel on 2 March 1935, skipping that of major. He became involved in an acrimonious debate with the Army General Staff over the Air Corps' desire to purchase more Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers. He also became caught up in a bureaucratic battle between Andrews and Major General Oscar Westover over whether the Chief of the Air Corps should control GHQ Air Force. As a result, Kenney was transferred to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, on 16 June 1936, with the temporary rank of major, to teach tactics to young infantry officers. He was promoted to the substantive rank of major on 1 October 1937, but the assignment was hardly a choice one for an Air Corps officer. In September 1938 he accepted an offer to command the 97th Observation Squadron at Mitchell Field, New York.