General George C. Kenney - July. ‘96 World War II Feature

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General George C. Kenney pioneered aerial warfare strategy and tactics in the Pacific theater.

By Sam McGowan

Every major war produces leaders whose influence is long felt by succeeding military generations. General George Patton was such a man, General Douglas MacArthur another. One airman of World War II whose influence is still felt more than 50 years later was General George Churchill Kenney, Allied air commander in the Southwest Pacific.

George Kenney was a New Englander, though he was born in Nova Scotia on August 6, 1889, while his family was on vacation there. The future airman grew up in Brookline, Mass., then entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After three years at MIT, Kenney left to take a job as an instrument technician with Quebec Saguenay Railroad. When World War I broke out, the 5-foot-6-inch Kenney left his career as a civil engineer and contractor to enlist as a private in the Signal Corps. He was accepted for training as a pilot and learned to fly under the tutelage of the legendary aviator Bert Acosta.

Kenney remained in the Army after the war, serving in a number of capacities, often in roles that enabled him to put his engineering talents to good use. His penchant for improvement–he was, for example, the first man to install machine guns in the wings of an airplane–earned him a reputation as an innovator.

Kenney was also a critic, as he proved in 1940 when he went to France as an observer. When he came back, he recommended that the United States throw its entire military aviation program into the ashcan and start over.

In March 1942, Major General Kenney took command of the Fourth Air Force, the air arm of the Fourth Army, which was based at the Presidio in San Francisco. He later began his biography with a Fourth Army story that has been often repeated. He was sitting in his office when word came that a brash young Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter pilot had been observed performing loop the loops around the Golden Gate Bridge and buzzing Market Street so low that he was seen waving to secretaries on the second floor of buildings. Kenney called that bad boy into his office and gave him a mild chewing out, then sent him to Oakland to do some work for a woman who reported the low-flying fighter had blown her clothes off the line.

No sooner had the young lieutenant left Kenney’s office than Kenney’s direct line from General Henry H. Arnold’s office began blinking. “Hap” Arnold wanted Kenney to come to Washington to be briefed for a new job. When he arrived in the capital, Kenney was told that he was going to the Pacific to work for a man who had a reputation for cutting no slack for his air commanders–General Douglas MacArthur. Kenney would command the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific and the Fifth Air Force.

Before departing for the Pacific, Kenney hung around Washington for three days, trying to gather as much data as he could. He also got Arnold to assign 50 P-38s with 50 pilots from the Fourth Air Force to his new command in the Pacific. And Kenney made sure that Richard Ira Bong, the aggressive young lieutenant who had looped the Golden Gate, would be one of those pilots. Today, Bong is remembered as the leading U.S. fighter ace of WWII.

Another of Kenney’s requests was for 3,000 parafrag bombs to be sent to Australia, where he thought they might come in handy against the Japanese. While en route to Australia with his aide, Major William Benn, in July 1942, the two discussed low-altitude bombing. During a layover at Nandi in the Fijis, Kenney and Benn requisitioned a Martin B-26 Marauder bomber and went out to test a theory–that a bomb could be made to skip along the water like a stone. Their theory proved to be correct and the technique of skip bombing was born.

In the Pacific, Kenney found himself in a forgotten theater of war. Europe had priority for new aircraft and personnel. MacArthur’s forces were expected to fight a holding action to protect Australia from the advancing Japanese. Kenney quickly organized his new command so that every available asset could be put to good use. He went through his command with a fine-tooth comb, weeding out officers who were not “operators” and sending them home to be replaced by men who were. He reassigned Benn to work as a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress squadron commander, and Benn began teaching his pilots the new skip-bombing techniques he and Kenney had worked out during the trip over from the States. While visiting the newly arrived 3rd Attack Group, General Kenney discovered a former Navy enlisted pilot by the name of Paul I. Gunn–”Pappy” to the younger men around him.

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