longer due to the rapidly changing technology.In this decade, tactics also developed. Dive-bombing was a common practice and the Marine Expeditionary Forces learned the values of air support. Torpedo attacks, scouting, and spotting for enemy gunfire were studied and practiced (Grossnick, 47). For history’s first time, 30 years after the Navy bought its first aircraft, naval engagements were fought entirely in the air without enemy surface forces ever sighting each other in pure carrier versus carrier battles during World War II. During this period, Aviation brought the fighting to the enemy while carrying out the missions. Therefore, Naval Aviation became the basis of the fleet’s striking power (Grossnick, 101). Finally, after World War II and years of experimentation and innovation, the development of carrier airpower in the Navy brought success to the war front (Wildenberg, 13). After World War II, the Navy, in whole, struggled with demobilization. The Navy suffered from this rapid demobilization as it watched most of their ships retire and their aircraft placed into storage. Naval Aviation fell to one quarter of its size of World War II.In the years of 1946 to 1949, during these years of demobilization and organizational readjustments, changes in Naval Aviation occurred very rapidly. Scientific and technological advances occurred and were eventually replaced by better technology before the latter could be studied and taken advantage of. The destructive power and possibilities that the United States possessed during this technological age were not carefully learned. The United States was merely focused on having the best weapons and most power in the world.Because of disputes of the services wanting larger shares of the decreasing budget, the Navy was faced with the possibility of becoming obsolete. With the introduction of the Air Force’s B-36 and the atomic bomb, critics of the Navy argued that the Nav...
