| giantsfan: I swear this conversation has already been had on this quiz, but since I don't see the comments here, here it goes again. The Dept of War was not renamed to the Dept of Defense in 1947; it was renamed to the Dept of the Army. The Dept of Defense was a wholly new department that Congress created in order to unify the military branches under one civilian commander below the level of President. It combined the Dept of the Army, the Dept of the Navy, and the newly created Dept of the Air Force into a, in theory, unified military service; whereas the previous military command structure had the Army and Navy operating as independent fighting services. The intent of the new structure was that the Army, Navy, and Air Force would jointly plan and execute as one fighting force. |