Shane Reilly
In April 1966, one year after US conventional forces’ entry into Vietnam, the Army chief of staff, General Harold K. Johnson, and the Air Force chief of staff, General John P. McConnell, signed a capabilities memo that influenced battlefield transportation into the twenty-first century. General Johnson agreed “to relinquish all claims for CV-2 and CV-7 aircraft and for future fixed-wing aircraft designed for tactical airlift” (exceptions were made for “administrative mission support fixed wing aircraft”). In return, General McConnell relinquished “all [Air Force] claims for helicopters and follow-on rotary wing aircraft which are designed and operated for intratheater movement, fire support, supply, and resupply of Army Forces.”
This agreement was one of several that shaped aviation operations within the Department of Defense. The 1948 Key West Agreement separated the carrier-borne mission from that of the Air Force, for instance, and a 1952 memorandum signed by Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, Jr. and Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K. Finletter also specified rotary- and fixed-wing roles for each service. Coming after those, the 1966 agreement signaled that the Army was out of the fixed-wing business, and in the decades since an idea has taken root that it should be.
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