National Guard aviation emerged early in the twentieth century during a period of enormous organizational and technological ferment within the American military establishment. Reformers were bent upon transforming it from what amounted to a small, constabulary focused on such tasks as policing the Indians and developing the nation’s infrastructure to a modern force whose primary role was to engage in combat against other major industrial powers.

The Air Force has long been recognized as a leader within the Defense Department in developing and creatively employing its reserve components. This history sheds a great deal of light on why and how that has happened. It also suggests how citizen-soldiers have adapted our nation’s venerable militia institutions to the demands of high technology air warfare in the late twentieth century.