Page:Legislative History of the AAF and USAF.djvu/30

 �This Page Declassified lAW EO12958 Ar Force Letslafio U,A1  I-I$TO!CAL STUDIES -- 25 tary risk seemed to be involved, since the United States could always stay ahead of any nation which depended on it for mill. tary planes. Hence, under the Cash and Carry Act various Air Corps models, some obsolescent and some more modern, were made available to Great Britain, France, and some other nations. On 25 March 1940 a more liberal policy was adopted whereby certain modern types were released/or sale to foreign natons as soon as a super,or type or model could be formshed to the Air Corps. us By the end of 1939, the French govern- ment had ordered almost 2,000 airplanes and over 6,000 Wright and Pratt and hey engines. In this period our own Army and Navy orders had increased to almost 4,000 planes. These orders, small as they were, had an almost revolutionary effect upon our aircraft industry and laid the groundwork for the great expansion which was to come in 1940 and after. The greatest contribution of the French orders was the field of arcraft engines, for engines were the real bottIencck in our aircraft pro- duction. The French orders, by keeping the engine manufacturers busy, and the action of the French and British governments in payung for the expansion oi plant facilities, gave us an important head start. The German victories in 1940 greatly stimulated the demand for planes on the part of both Great Britain and the United States. When France fell, the British took over all the French contracts for planes these and their own orders called for 14,000 planes. As the British coinbat needs on the eve of the Battle of Britain seemed more urgent than our own expansion require- ments, it was agreed on 23 July 1940 that the Air Corps should defer the delivery of 8,586 planes in favor of the British.* This, of course, dad not prevent the Brit- ish from placing additional orders so that the Air Corps began to fear that its own program might be further delayed in ful- fillment. Hence, in order to insure a more systematic and eqmtable allocation of air- craft and engines, the United States and for Amerlcal altersf t, peris, ere until fter the psgage the Cash aV.d Carry Act, Great Britain estabhshed on 13 September 1940 the Joint Aircraft Commission (JAC). The JAC was made up oœ representatives of the three principal customers of the Amen- can an'craft industry--the Bntmh Pur- chasing Commasstun, the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, and the Ar Corps The Chief of the Air Corps, whose office had taken the mltiative m securing the authorization of JAC, served as its chairman. In 1941, SAC was given control over all production plans, making t possible to integrate them into a single schedule 0 It soon became necessary, however, to supplement the Cash and Carry Act with other leõis!atmn. By the end of 1940 Great Britain's war chest of dollars was down to two billion, and of this sum nearly a bil- lion and a half was pledged to pay for war goods ordered in the Urnted States but not yet delivered. Britain could not hope to scrape up the dollars necessary to keep on buying on a cash basis the weapons so sorely needed, and by the middle of December British contracting for war goods Lu the United States had virtually ceased.  As the system of making loans so that foreign countries could procure war mate- riel on a credit basis had been thoroughly discredited as a result of our World War I experience, it was necessary to find some other way by which Great Br,tain and other friendly powers could secure from us the necessary mumtrans of war. Obviously it was of vital importance to our own na- tional defense to help those powers fighthug the Axis. Also, ff the United States should become involved in the war, it would need alhes (especially Britain) who could furrash the bases from winch to mount an aerml assault on the Ax powers. 2 The idea of leasing war materrole to the British was mentioned by President Roose- velt at a meeting of the Defense Advisory Commission in the late summer of 1940. The idea o a lend-lease act was first pro. posed in the Treasury Department. In De- cember of 1940 loosevelt, in one of his "fireside chas," warned the American peo- ple that if Britain went down we would be living ag the point of a gun and summed up our national pohcy by saying, "We must THIS PAGE Declassified lAW EO12958
 * he British did not begin placing any substantial orders