Military Air Transport Service
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Military Air Transport Service (MATS) was a command of the U.S. Air Force from 1948-65, which superseded the Army Air Force's Air Transport Command, its direct predecessor shortly after the Air Force became an independent service branch in 1947. MATS was succeeded by Military Airlift Command (MAC) in January 1966, and by Air Mobility Command (AMC) in June 1992, each of which broadened its mission.
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[edit] Broad overview
The Military Air Transport Service was activated in June 1948 under Major General Laurence S. Kuter, in order to harness interservice efforts more efficiently. It was an amalgamation of Navy and Army air transport commands, now placed under the control of the newly created U.S. Air Force (USAF). Previously, the Army Air Forces' needs were looked after by the Air Transport Command, the World War II-era United States Army Air Forces) command focused on transportation of troops and supplies.
MATS was deactivated on January 1, 1966. It was succeeded by the Military Airlift Command (MAC); the restructuring was triggered by the demands of the expanding Vietnam War.
[edit] History of the MATS
[edit] Record of the ATC
The Air Transport Command was established in June 1942 in response to a letter sent by the Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, Mr. Larry Pogue, to the White House advocating the establishment of a civilian air transportation service to operate airline contracts for the military. Pogue advocated a new organization answering directly to the White House, but General "Hap" Arnold of the Army Air Forces only went so far as to establish an Air Transport Command under the Army.
The new Air Transport Command was initially only a semi-military organization, with most of its leadership coming from the ranks of airline executives who accepted direct commissions, usually as colonels. Until 1944 ATC also drew heavily on the airlines for manpower, using contract pilots, radio operators, and other aircrew personnel from the airlines to crew transports that had been purchased by the Army. ATC's original mission was ferrying airplanes to overseas destinations, a mission that had been originally performed by the Army Ferry Command that preceded it and from which ATC headquarters military personnel were drawn. As the war progressed, ATC's air transport division became more and more involved in transporting military personnel and cargo overseas.
The primary transport used by ATC was the Consolidated C-87, a transport version of the B-24 Liberator bomber. Smaller Douglas C-47s were used on shorter routes and domestically. Routes were established from the East Coast to the UK, Africa and India; some routes had been set up before the war when Ferry Command used combat pilots and aircrews on temporary duty from the Combat Command. Due to bad weather over the North Atlantic in winter and the close proximity to hostile territory, the South Atlantic Route from Florida to Brazil then across to Africa was perhaps the most active. Transports bound for India also used the South Atlantic Route. A route across the Pacific to Hawaii then across the South Pacific to Australia provided access to US forces in the Southwest Pacific.
Even though it was a wartime organization, the ATC was not above practicing politics. The most glaring example of this was when senior ATC officers used a negative report from an airline executive regarding the India-China Ferry to "take over" the air transport effort that came to be known in the post-war world as the Hump Airlift. ATC's air transport division commander, Colonel C.R. Smith, who was president of American Airlines, proposed that ATC assume responsibility for the operation which was then under Tenth Air Force control - and awarded the first contract to his own airline! Smith promised that ATC would do a better job of transporting cargo to China but in fact, the total tonnage being carried actually decreased. It took almost six months for ATC to reach tonnage goals that had been set for February 1943. A misconception has been born that the operation immediately became more efficient when Brigadier General William H. Tunner went to India to assume command of ATC's India/China Division, but in reality it wasn't until a decline in combat operations released more pilots and aircrews for combat duty that Tunner was able to achieve the goals he crowed about in his glowing reports. For example, in the spring of 1945, Tunner convinced the senior US commander in the CBI that the B-24s being used on missions from forward bases in China would be put to better use if they were used as transports. He also engineered the transport of Tenth Air Force Troop Carrier Command to his command after their role in support of combat operations in Burma declined.
ATC's Ferrying Division was responsible for the movement of replacement of combat aircraft to overseas bases, and thousands of bombers, transports and fighters flown by combat crews on their way overseas were under ATC control during the movements. Ferrying of combat aircraft was a major ATC mission to the end of the war.
As the war progressed, ATC purchased new aircraft types for transport duty, particularly the Curtis C-46 and the Douglas C-54, which was a militarized version of the DC-4. General Tunner planned to replace all of the transports used on the India/China Ferry with C-54s but the war ended before his plans came to fruition. The C-46 promised huge payloads and increased efficiency over the C-47s but it was plagued with problems and failed to live up to expectations. The C-54 turned out to be an excellent airplane, but it was limited to low altitude operations and was unable to function on the India/China Ferry until Allied forces captured Myitkyina in Burma and gained complete control of the air over Burma.
ATC transports were used primarily to deliver high value cargo and important personnel to overseas destinations. For example, ATC C-87s delivered new engines to Libya to replace those worn out on the B-24s used on the famous low-level mission against Ploesti. A shipment of artillery fuzes helped win the battle of Tobruk. When the first B-29s were sent to China, advance party personnel and additional combat crew personnel proceeded the bombers aboard ATC C-87s. On return flights, C-87s and C-54s brought back combat crews who had finished their combat tours and were returning to the States. At the end of the war, ATC C-54s transported 11th Airborne Division personnel from Okinawa to Japan.
By the end of the war, Air Transport Command had developed into a huge military airline that literally encompassed the world. Routes had been established to places that had seen few white men before the war, and where airplanes had been unheard of. Airline personnel who had never left the United States before the war had become veterans of long over-water flights to the remotest regions of earth.
[edit] Record of Naval Air Transport Service
The Naval Air Transport Service (NATS) was conceived by Captain C.H. Schildhauer with the mission of rapidly transporting vital cargo, specialist personnel and mail to the Fleet and ground forces, especially in advanced areas of operation.
On December 12, 1941 NATS was established under the Chief of Naval Operations by the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Initially squadrons were established at Norfolk, Virginia, Olathe, Kansas and Oakland, California. By the end of the war 26,000 men and 540 aircraft provided services worldwide.
In June of 1948 the mission and operational control of NATS squadrons were consolidated into the Military Air Transport Service; NATS was disestablished on 1 July.
[edit] Record of MATS
With the end of the war, the Air Transport Command found itself in limbo. The military leadership considered it to have been a military necessity that was no longer needed, and expected the former airline personnel to return to their companies. Senior ATC officers, on the other hand, thought that ATC should be developed into a national government operated airline, an idea that was soundly opposed by the airline industry. While the war had firmly established the necessity of a troop carrier mission, most military officers believed the role performed by ATC should be provided by contract carriers.
When the U.S. Air Force was established as a separate service in 1947, the Air Transport Command was not established as one of its missions. The ATC commander and his staff took it upon themselves to convince the new civilian leadership of the newly created Department of Defense (DOD) (and Secretaries of the Army and Air Force) that ATC had a mission. They seized upon testimony by former Troop Carrier Command commander General Paul Williams that the Air Force should have a long-range troop deployment capability, and began advocating that ATC transports could be used to deploy troops. Williams had been pressing for the development of a long-range troop carrier airplane when he made his statement.
The DOD believed it should have its own air transport service and decided that ATC should become the Military Air Transport Service and that even though it was not a military mission as such, the USAF should support it. When the ATC commander wrote a mission statement for the proposed new command he inserted "deployment of troops" as a mission even though it had not been asked for and the Secretary of the Air Force either allowed it to remain or overlooked it when he signed it.
MATS was established on June 1, 1948, less than a month before the commencement of the Berlin Airlift -- "OPERATION VITTLES" where at peak operations, planes were landing and departing every ninety seconds or so shuttling in thousands of tons of supplies, food, and fuel each day - but they were not MATS airplanes. The Soviet Union had blocked all surface transportation in the western part of Berlin. Railroads tracks were destroyed, barges were stopped on the rivers, and highways and roads blocked. The only avenue left was through the air. On June 26, 1948, the airlift began. Troop carrier transports from around the globe began making their way to Germany, where they were assigned to United States Air Forces, Europe. Squadrons transferred from as far away as Hawaii and Japan, and included two of the U.S. Navy's air transport squadrons assigned to MATS. MATS itself was not "in charge" of the airlift, although several MATS staff officers were sent to Germany to serve in the Airlift Task Force in an administrative role. Lt. General William H. Tunner lobbied to be put in charge of the airlift and eventually convinced some of his World War II civilian friends who were in the new DOD to send him to Germany. He was placed in command of the Airlift Task Force, but reported to the commander of United States Air Forces, Europe. The airlift itself was a USAFE operation and all airplanes assigned to it were assigned to one of five troop carrier groups that were sent to Europe to operate the airlift. MATS played a supporting role, including ferrying C-54s to and from the airlift bases and maintenance depots in the United States and the MATS C-54 training school trained pilots for temporary duty in the airlift. MATS transports delivered crucial aircraft parts to the airlift bases in Europe. This operation would continue for some 15 months until the Soviets lifted the blockade. MATS would provide numerous humanitarian airlifts of global proportions. The U.S. Navy was an integral part of MATS, providing five transport squadrons to the joint service effort, but they operated under USAFE while they were part of the airlift.
The organization's next major test was the bootstrap supply operations supporting the United Nations troops under General Douglas MacArthur in the country of South Korea which was nearly overrun by the time UN forces were mobilized. The MATS role was purely logistical, and operated from the U.S. to Japan. Theater transport forces assigned to the Far East Air Forces Combat Cargo Command, which became 315th Air Division, operated supply routes into Japan and provided troop carrier services for UN forces.
Military Air Transport Service Within MATS there were other technical services such as:
- Air Rescue Service (ARS) (latter became Aerospace Rescue Recovery Service (ARRS))
- Air Weather Service (AWS)
- Special Airlift Mission (SAM)
- Air Photographic and Charting Service (APCS) - which became the 1370 PMG, then the 1370th Photo Mapping Wing in 1959
- Aeromedical Transport Wing (AMTW)
In the early days of MATS, there were three divisions, Atlantic, Pacific, and Continental. A later reoganization called for just 2 divisions -- Eastern Transport Air Force (EASTAF) and the Western Transport Air Force (WESTAF). To accomplish the global mission required, MATS has used many different aircraft. The C-47 "Gooney Bird", C-46 Curtis Commando, the principle big-cargo capable C-54 Skymasters, and later, C-135 Stratolifter, C-141 Starlifter, C-130 Hercules, C-133 Cargomaster, C-124 Globemaster II, C-118 Liftmaster, C-121 Constellation, C-74 Globemaster, C-97 Stratofreighter, and the C-131 Samaritan just to name a few. Each of the individual technical MATS services had its own specific aircraft to carry out their mission.
On January 1, 1966 MATS was deactivated and the Military Airlift Command (MAC) was activated as a new command with military missions that had previously been denied to MATS.
[edit] References
- Stanley M. Ulanoff, MATS: The Story of the Military Air Transport Service, 1964, The Moffa Press, Inc.
- Office of Air Force History, The United States Army Air Forces in World War II, edited by Craven and Cate
- James Lee, Operation Lifeline - History and Development of the Naval Air Transport Service, 1947, Ziff-Davis Publishing Company
