Dodging Bullets

I'm working through some research from my London trip of two months ago, and still making some interesting finds. From an August 1917 British Cabinet meeting establishing the legal foundation for the Royal Air Force (most likely authored by Jan Smuts):

There remains the question of the new Air Service and the absorption of the R.N.A.S and R.F.C into it. Should the Navy and Army retain their own special Air Services in addition to the Air forces which will be controlled by the Air Ministry? This will make the confusion hopeless and render the solution of the Air problem impossible. The maintenance of three Air Services is out of the question, no indeed does the War Office make any claim to a separate Air Service of its own.

The more work I do on the question, the more I'm confident that the United States military dodged a truly nasty bullet when it kept aviation within the US Army at the end of World War I. By the time the USAF was established, Marine and Naval Aviation were too deeply embedded within their services to suffer directly from the tender mercies of the airpower evangelists...