Air and Space Defense
Air and Space Defense.Recognizing that the two great oceans that had protected the United States from invasion for more than a century could now, at least in theory, be overcome through aerial assault, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 began to rearm the nation. A sizable investment in this effort went to the Army Air Corps, which was woefully inadequate to meet the needs of national defense. In April 1939, when Congress passed the National Defense Act of 1940, it authorized the Army Air Corps to develop and procure 6,000 new airplanes, to increase personnel to 3,203 officers and 45,000 enlisted, and to spend $300 million, much of it directly earmarked for defense of U.S. territory. As a result, the aviation forces received $70.6 million, 15.7 percent of the army's direct appropriations. This number and the percentage continued to climb during the early...
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