Expansion of the Air Corps[edit]
In a special message to Congress on 12 January 1939,
[n 33] President Roosevelt advised that the threat of a new war made the recommendations of the Baker Board inadequate for American defense and requested approval of a "minimum 3,000-plane increase" for the Air Corps.
[76][77][78][n 34] On 3 April 1939, Congress allocated the $300 million requested by Roosevelt for expansion of the Air Corps, half of which was dedicated to purchasing planes to raise the inventory from 2,500 to 5,500 airplanes, and the other half for new personnel, training facilities, and bases.
[79] Orders for B-17s, which had been held in abeyance since June 1938, resumed in the summer of 1939 with incremental deliveries of 39
B-17Bs in 1939–40, 18
B-17Cs in 1940, and 42
B-17Ds in the first quarter of 1941.
[n 35] The first large order for heavy bomber production, 512 combat-capable
B-17Es, was placed in July 1940.
[80][n 36]
In June 1939 the Kilner Board
[n 37] recommended several types of bombers needed to fulfill the Air Corps mission that included aircraft having tactical radii of both 2,000 and 3,000 miles (revised in 1940 to 4,000). Chief of Staff Craig, long an impediment to Air Corps ambitions but nearing retirement, came around to the Air Corps viewpoint after Roosevelt's views became public. Likewise, the War Department General Staff reversed itself and concurred in the requirements, ending the brief moratorium on bomber development and paving the way for work on the B-29.
[81]
Over the winter of 1938–1939, Arnold transferred a group of experienced officers headed by Lt. Col.
Carl A. Spaatz to his headquarters as an unofficial air staff
[n 38] to lay out a plan that would increase the Air Corps to 50,000 men by June 1941. The expansion program of the Air Corps was characterized by repeated upward revision of goals for increasing aircraft production, combat unit totals, the training of new personnel, and construction of new bases. New combat groups were created by detaching cadres from the existing 15 Regular groups to provide the core of the new units, with each older group providing the basis for an average of three new groups. Graduates of an expanded flight training program filled out the new groups and replaced the experienced personnel transferred from the older groups, resulting in a steady decline in the overall level of experience in the operational units.
[82][83] In essence, groups "self-trained"
[84] to proficiency standards set by training directives from the GHQAF.
[85] Unable to keep pace with the revised programs for expansion of combat groups, unit tactical training for all groups suffered from a shortage of equipment (particularly combat aircraft), an unavoidable preoccupation with administrative details during organization, and a lack of training facilities, especially bombing and gunnery ranges, leaving a "vast gap between the desired status of training in combat units and their actual status immediately prior to ... Pearl Harbor."
[86]
The initial
25-Group Program for air defense of the hemisphere, developed in April 1939, called for 50,000 men (12,000 pilots). Its ten new combat groups were activated on 1 February 1940.
[n 39] Following the successful
German invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940, a
54-Group Program was approved on 12 July,
[87][n 40] although funding approval could not keep pace and only 25 additional groups were activated on 15 January 1941.
[88] An
84-Group Program, with an eventual goal of 400,000 men by 30 June 1942, was approved on 14 March 1941, although not publicly announced until 23 October 1941.
[89][n 41][90] In addition to unit training and funding problems, these programs were hampered by delays in acquiring the new infrastructure necessary to support them, sites for which had to be identified, negotiated and approved before construction. The General Staff again was unwilling to assign any of this work to the Air Corps, and instead detailed it to the overtaxed
Quartermaster Corps. When the QMC failed to put new air bases in place in either an efficient or timely manner, the
Corps of Engineers was then assigned the task, although it continued to implement the policies already in place.
[91][n 42]
By the time the Europeans went to war in September 1939, the Americans first expansion lagged so distantly in relation to its goals in manpower and tactical aircraft that Andrews described the Air Corps as a "fifth rate air force."
[92] Of its 1,500 combat aircraft, only 800 were rated as first-line, 700 of which became obsolete by December 1941.
[n 43]By comparison, the RAF had 1,750 first-line aircraft and the German Luftwaffe 3,750. Moreover, the Luftwaffe had more personnel on the staffs of its headquarters and air ministry than were in the entire Air Corps (26,000). The first-line aircraft that would soon be considered obsolete were the B-18, A-17, and P-36. The only first-line aircraft in 1939 that remained so during World War II was the B-17, and it had to be significantly modernized before it was combat-capable.
The acceleration of the expansion programs resulted in an Air Corps of 156 installations of all types and 100,000 men by the end of 1940.
[93] Twenty civilian flight schools and eight technical training schools were contracted to provide additional training facilities, and on 10 August 1940,
Pan American Airways was contracted to provide meteorological and navigation training at
Coral Gables, Florida, until military schools could be established.
[94]