The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
United States. In the long run the success achieved in the production
program was perhaps as vital a factor in victory as any other, and in
some items, certainly, it was a matter of quantitative rather than quali-
tative superiority over German industry and technology. An over-all
history of the war should then be as much concerned with those who
made the weapons as with those who used them. Here it must suffice
to indicate briefly the measures taken to increase the flow of aircraft
and related materials, to divide these weapons benveen the using air
forces as accepted strategy dictated, and to increase the size of the
Army Air Forces.”
In production, as in military strategy, the policies inaugurated im-
mediately after Pearl Harbor rested upon the solid foundations laid
earlier. Under impetus of our own defense program, of foreign orders,
and of lend-lease, the aircraft industry had increased its capacity and
plans had been laid for further growth; machinery for allocations had
long been in operation; and the Army Air Forces had been greatly
increased in size. T h e chief need now was for an accelerated rate of
expansion. A basic guide for this lay at hand in the Victory Program.
In accepting AWPD/I, the Army air section of that program, Sec-
retary of War Stimson had qualified his approval by the observation
that the plan would be practicable only if the nation were at war.47
N o w that war had come, the whole of the national economy could
be redirected toward the successful prosecution of military operations.
As the President wrote Mr. Stimson on 3 January, “The concept of
our industrial capacity must be completely overhauled under the
impulse of the peril to our nation.” 48
In its latest revision of AAF needs, AWPD/4, the Air Staff had re-
quested an overriding priority for production of aircraft. This was
not a practical solution; the fluctuating needs of a very complex war
demanded a more flexible system. At ARCADIA, the Anglo-American
planning committee suggested that, pending an early examination and
revision of over-all needs by the military and of industrial capacity
by civilian production experts, the Victory Program as it existed be
taken as a basis for expansion. Rather than fix absolute priorities for
the several categories of munitions, they wished to allocate resources
for their manufacture in a sequence of limited schedules geared to the
successive approved ~ p e r a t i o n s . ~ ~For Army air needs, this would give
* A more extended treatment of these problems is planned for a later volume
devoted to the Zone of the Interior.
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