Air Force Academy celebrates 57th year

News > Air Force Academy celebrates 57th year

Air Force Academy celebrates 57th year

Posted 4/1/2011 Updated 4/1/2011

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by Steve Simon
Academy Development and Alumni Programs

4/1/2011 - U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. -- April 1, 1954: On that momentous date 57 years ago today, with distinguished Congressional and Air Force leaders looking on, President Dwight Eisenhower signed Public Law 325, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session, formally authorizing the establishment of the United States Air Force Academy.

The official birthday of the Academy is now reverently known as "Founders Day" and is celebrated annually by graduates worldwide. Here at the Academy, Founders Day 2011 will be commemorated with the presentation of the Distinguished Graduate Award to two renowned grads (see sidebar) at the Noon Meal in Mitchell Hall today, the Founders Day Dinner at the Falcon Club this evening, and the Founders Day Parade at Stillman Field at 10 a.m. Saturday.

While the history of the Academy ostensibly began at the brief 1954 White House ceremony, the original Founders Day might be more appropriately deemed the mid-point of the Academy's story. The years before the Academy's official establishment contain nearly as much history and lore as the half-century-plus of its official existence.

The notion of an American air academy is almost as old as aviation itself. Within 15 years of the Wright Brothers' historic December 17, 1903, flight, forward thinking Army officers were musing aloud about the need for an air academy.

On July 28, 1919, California Congressman Charles Curry introduced legislation providing for an academy. Congressman Fiorello La Guardia of New York, an enthusiastic supporter, conducted hearings, but Curry's legislation failed amid disputes about cost, operation, curriculum (to include the amount of flying training), and location (a sticking point throughout the decades, as virtually every Member of Congress thought his or her district would be the perfect setting). Post World War I isolationism helped ensure that dreams of an air academy would not be realized soon.

Advocates such as Brig. Gen. "Billy" Mitchell, however, never stopped trying to convince the Army and Congress of the need for an academy. He testified on Capitol Hill on January 31, 1925 that it was "most essential . . . to have an air academy to form a basis for the permanent backbone of your air service and to attend to the . . . organizational part of it, very much in the same way that West Point does for the Army, or the Naval Academy for the Navy."

Meanwhile, the value of military aviation was becoming more and more evident. The Army established flight training bases throughout the country, none more famous than Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, which soon after its 1930 dedication became known as the "West Point of the Air." Community leaders used this nickname repeatedly in their efforts to stake their claim as the most appropriate home for the Academy.

Air power's pivotal role in World War II rekindled support for an academy, though several of the issues raised in the period between the wars had yet to be satisfactorily resolved.
The fortunes of academy advocates received a huge momentum boost when the National Security Act of 1947 created an Air Force on equal footing with the Army and Navy. The idea was further delayed, however, as matters of higher priority were addressed.

With momentum building, in December 1949, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg recalled Lt. Gen. Hubert Harmon from retirement to head the newly established Office of Special Assistant for Air Force Academy Matters. What looked like quick and sure passage of Academy-establishing legislation was delayed each year in the early 1950s by, among other things, the Korean War, conflict within the Department of Defense and Congress, and some of the same issues that dogged the project since its inception. Frustration grew to the point that some Air Force leaders advocated the unilateral establishment of an "experimental" academy without the approval of Congress.

Finally, in May 1953, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Dewey Short of Missouri introduced House Resolution 5337, a bill "To Provide for the Establishment of a United States Air Force Academy." Hearings were postponed until early the following year, but the concept finally had the momentum necessary to carry it to passage on March 29, 1954. President Eisenhower signed it two days later.