The United States had a long heritage of isolation, going back to the earliest days of the republic. Within a few years, the Army Air Forces would leap to a peak strength of 2.4 million people and 80,000 airplanes, beyond any doubt the best air force in the world. Mistakes by the enemy helped, too.īy the time the US entered the war in 1941, the framework for growth was in place. Nevertheless, owing to some fortunate steps taken in the 1930s, the United States and the Army Air Corps were better prepared than they looked. Congress authorized up to 6,000 airplanes for the Air Corps but that goal was too ambitious for the emerging US production capacity to fulfill anytime soon. Prospects for the US staying out of the war were diminishing. The United States was rapidly losing confidence in isolationism, which had dominated its foreign and defense policies for decades. World War II had begun in Europe, and it was obvious that airpower would be of critical importance to the outcome. The nation depended on the Navy as its first line of defense, and the fleet ranked with the largest and best in the world.īut times were changing in 1939.
The US Navy fared considerably better than the other services in the interwar years. Woodring had canceled the planned production of more B-17s for 1939 on the grounds that they cost too much and were not needed.
The previous year, Secretary of War Harry H. The only edge the Army Air Corps could claim was the four-engine B-17 bomber, but there were only 23 of them. For that matter, the British Hurricane and Spitfire were superior to the best American fighters, as was the Japanese A6M Zero. The Ju-87 Stuka was better than the standard American attack aircraft. US pursuit airplanes were no match for the Messerschmitt Bf-109. The Luftwaffe in 1939 had 4,100 first-line combat aircraft. Open-cockpit airplanes were still flying in operational units.Įddie Rickenbacker, America’s “Ace of Aces” from World War I, said the United States was 10 years behind Germany in the development of military aviation. It had about 1,200 bombers and fighters, a significant portion of them obsolete.
In 1939, the Air Corps had a personnel strength of only 26,000. The Army Air Corps was rated somewhat higher-perhaps fourth or fifth in the relative standings of flying forces-but that was partly because there were fewer air forces than armies. That put it, according to historian Eric Larrabee, “ahead of Bulgaria but just behind Portugal.” In 1939, the US Army, with a strength of 174,000, was 19th in the rankings of ground forces. In fact, it was well down on the list of military powers. In the years leading up to World War II, the United States had not yet become the world’s leading superpower.
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