<text id=00he0402><title>Demobilization and Decimation</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Demobilization and Decimation</hdr><body>
<p>World War I had not changed anything, in spite of the best efforts of the airmen. The Army General Staff could not, or would not, see any advantage in a separate air arm commanded by air generals. The proper role of the airplane, the Staff held, was to serve as the eyes of the Army, and to support the ground forces in the ways the ground forces thought best.
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<p>At the Armistice, demobilization took precedence over defense and the air service was hit hard. Its personnel and aircraft strengths were decimated, and its supporting industry was almost bankrupted by the abrupt cancellations of contracts for thousands of aircraft and engines. Airplanes became a drug on the market, and could be bought, still in their original wartime shipping crates, for a few hundred dollars. Many were burned in huge bonfires in French fields, rather than expend the money to ship them back to the US.
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<p>Congress cut budgets for new weapons, aircraft included. Typical was their treatment of a 1918 plan, developed by the Air Service and the Army General Staff, which envisioned a total force of 24,000 personnel, with appropriate numbers of aircraft. Congress slashed the request to less than one-third of the amount. The postwar strength of the Air Service fell to 12,000 personnel in 1920, and there literally was no money to fund the procurement of new aircraft. The squadrons flew aircraft left over from the war.
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<p>To draw attention to the capabilities of air power and to win public support, the Air Service embarked on a series of record-breaking and pioneering flights right after the war. Altitude and speed records were set and broken. Technical developments, less conspicuous, paralleled these historic flights.
