Joseph Carroll (DIA)
When the U.S. Air Force was established as a separate executive department under the National Security Act of 1947, Secretary of the Air Force W. Stuart Symington, requested FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to loan General Carroll to the services to organize a U.S. Air Force agency for investigative and counterintelligence functions. He organized and directed this new organization, the AFOSI, along the lines of the FBI rather than the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Command (USACIDC or CID). General Carroll was tendered a commission as a colonel, U.S. Air Force Reserve, January 12, 1948. He was ordered to active duty in the grade of brigadier general May 6, 1948, and promoted to major general August 11, 1950.
United States Army Air Forces
A major step toward a separate air force came in March 1935, when command of all combat air units within the Continental United States (CONUS) was centralized under a single organization called the ""General Headquarters Air Force"". Since 1920, control of aviation units had resided with commanders of the corps areas (a peacetime ground forces administrative echelon), following the model established by commanding General John J. Pershing during World War I. In 1924, the General Staff planned for a wartime activation of an Army general headquarters (GHQ), similar to the American Expeditionary Forces model of World War I, with a GHQ Air Force as a subordinate component. Both were created in 1933 when a small conflict with Cuba seemed possible following a coup d'état, but were not activated.