<text id=00he0303><title>The First Victories</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>The First Victories</hdr><body>
<p>They climbed fast, intercepted the Germans and shot them down, Winslow scoring first and Campbell moments later. The wreckage landed almost on their aerodrome at Gengault, and the Americans had their first aerial victories.
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<p>The two landed to be greeted by an enthusiastic group of mechanics. One sergeant in Campbell's ground crew, oblivious to the military niceties, slapped Campbell on the back and said, "That's the stuff, Lieutenant, old kid!"
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<p>It had been a very long road to those two victories. The country had started from such an inferior position that any progress toward forging a combat arm would have been remarkable. Major, massive problems had stood between plans and accomplishments, and they would not be solved in the short time America spent in the war.
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<p>There were fundamental differences in the proposed use of American forces. The British and French, exhausted by the years of war, wanted them as a manpower pool to replace their own losses and reinforce their divisions. The US would have none of that, and insisted that American troops would be commanded by American officers and serve in American armies.
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<p>There was also a basic difference of belief in the proper role of air power between General John J. Pershing, who commanded the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, and Colonel (later Brigadier General) William Mitchell, the AEF's top air commander. Pershing was wedded to the concept of air in support of ground armies, who would naturally do the fighting, defeat the enemy and seize the objectives. Mitchell saw the air force as a strategic one, hammering the enemy sources of production and supplies, and eliminating his ability to win battles and the war.
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<p>Pershing wanted to see friendly planes above his lines, keeping enemy aircraft away and furnishing top cover for his advancing armies. Mitchell wanted to destroy enemy air on the ground, or keep it there by cutting off its supply lines.
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<p>It was a difference that extended throughout the military, and which found proponents of both concepts in both the ground and the air services. It is a difference that still exists, half a century and several wars later, between a mechanized, mobile Army and an independent, strategically minded Air Force.
