Although the American military establishment is intimately tied to its technology, the nature of those ties has varied enormously from service to service. The Air Force, for example, evokes images of pilots operating high-tech weapons systems, striking precisely from out of the blue to lay waste to enemy installations. The fundamental icon for the Marine Corps, on the other hand, is a wave of riflemen hitting the beaches from rugged landing craft and slogging their way ashore under enemy fire. How did these very different relationships with technology develop? During the interwar years, from 1920 to 1940, leaders from the Army Air Corps and the Marine Corps recreated their agencies based on visions of new military technologies. In "War Machines," Timothy Moy examines these technological decisions made by these two services during these crucial years. He explores how factors such as bureaucratic pressure, institutional culture, and America's technological enthusiasm shaped the choices made by leaders of these armed forces. The very existence of the Army Air Corps was based on a new technology, the airplane. As the Air Corps was forced to compete for money and other resources during the years after World War I, when the United States was retrenching behind isolationist politics, Air Corps leaders carved out a military niche based on high-tech precision bombing, which also conformed to the airmen's institutional self-image. The Marine Corps, building on its own self-image as a simple, rugged cadre of American warriors who were always the "first to fights," opted to focus on amphibious, first-wave assault using sturdy, graceless, and easy-to-produce landing craft. Moy's astute analysis makes it clear that studying the processes that shaped the Army Air Corps and Marine Corps is fundamental to our understanding of technology and the military at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Culture, Technology, and Institutions / Part I. Precision Bombing. The Bombers' Vision -- The Bombers' Technology -- Political Opportunities and Daylight Precision -- A High-Tech Delivery System / Part II. Amphibious Landing. Political Pressure on a Warrior Elite -- Technology and Training -- Doctrine and Fishing Boats -- "Eureka" -- Victory: Military, Bureaucratic, and Cultural.