By the end of World War II, the United States possessed the world’s largest and best-equipped air force, which made a critical contribution to the Allied victory. American airpower was based on the support of an unrivalled industrial base and on remarkable technological progress, culminating in the production of atomic bombs, delivered by state-of-the-art B-29 Superfortresses in August 1945. The words popularly attributed to Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto, that his country’s attack on Pearl Harbor had awakened a ‘sleeping giant’, seemed to have come true.
In the early stages of the Cold War, the air force took centre stage as the body that would, in the last resort, have been called on to spearhead a nuclear assault on Soviet Russia. A network of forward bases was established around the world to make this possible. By the 1950s, jet bombers, spy planes, and long-range missiles were set to transform the environment in which military planners operated. Proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam tested American air- power on the battlefield, while successive US administrations engaged in a prolonged arms race with the USSR (see MHM 152, June/July 2026).
The path to aerial dominance had, however, been an uneven one. Although the world’s first powered flight in December 1903 was an American engineering achievement, the US was slower than its European rivals to apply the new technology to military purposes. During World War I, the US relied heavily on aircraft manufactured by its allies. In the immediate aftermath of both world wars, cost-cutting led to rapid demobilisation of aircraft and personnel. Advocates of airpower struggled to make their case to politicians and the wider public, whose peacetime priorities lay elsewhere.
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