Since the industry had always refrained from participation in the old feud, this mission posed a problem. To me, the arguments against the organization of a separate air force had always outweighed those for it, but I now realized that I had been influenced against the project by the Army’s insistence on trying to grab off naval aviation. The record of what had happened in England under the Air Ministry had always stood out in my mind. But now, with commercial air transport coming of age, and with the brilliant record of military and naval air transport in the war, I began to see the problem in a different light. Air transport had opened up a new frontier. If the mission of the ground forces was the defense of the land frontier, and the mission of the seaborne forces was the defense of the sea frontier, then, logically, the mission of the air force must be the defense of the air frontier. The key to the problem was the advent of commercial air transport. Pursuing this idea further, I came to the conclusion that our thinking had been confused by two unsound concepts. First, we had tended to organize the military on the basis of types of weapons or vehicles, and second, we had looked at the airplane as a weapon instead of a vehicle. Clearly, if the ground, sea, and air forces were to be held responsible for the defense of their frontiers, then each must have the implements essential to the discharge of that responsibility, and must have full authority over their design, development, and use. The ground, sea, and air forces must each have the aircraft necessary to the discharge of their responsibilities. The air is an ocean that gives uninterrupted access to every corner of the land and every reach of the sea. The air force is charged with responsibility for keeping the airlanes open to aerial commerce and should be provided with the ground or sea transport necessary to that job, but by the same token the ground and sea forces must develop and control all the instruments they require to perform their functions. And aside from the sound basis for this concept that lies in logic, the record is clear that it is equally sound in practice.