AIR POWER FOR WORLD WAR II
In September, 1939, when the first Nazi Stukas screamed down on Poland, we produced only 117 military aircraft. Our Army Air Corps could muster only some 21,000 officers and men, and the Navy could not boast of even that many. Neither the Army nor Navy had more than a thousand planes each. That meant all types: trainers, transport planes, and fighters. The Nazi Luftwaffe at that time was composed of more than a million men and 15,000 warplanes, and the Japanese had many more planes than we ever had thought they could build. This was the beginning not only of World War II, but of Air War I.
This was not the first time that the United States got off to a late start. The same thing was true in World War I. Nevertheless, with typical American confidence, we thought we could do it again. Consequently, in 1940, we set as our goal the building of 50,000 warplanes.
We lost the first rounds of the fight while we were getting started. In the South Pacific it was ten Jap planes to our one; at Wake Island, four obsolete Marine Corps fighters flew gallantly to meet a hundred of the foe. At Pearl Harbor hangars full of planes were caught on the ground. At Corregidor there was a cry of “No planes!”
But a typical American once said, “We have not yet begun to fight.” As in World War I, our military and industrial aviation leaders “rolled up their sleeves” and began to fight. As a result, in less than three years, they produced the greatest aërial fighting force that the world ever has known.
Let us go back to 1920 and review the progress of our Army and Naval aviation up to the start of World War II. We shall find out why we were able to create unbeatable air power when the crisis came.
