<text id=00he0506><title>Massive European Investment</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Massive European Investment</hdr><body>
<p>There is a misconception existing today that somehow the United States 'gave' those airplanes to the British and the French. Not so; those airplanes, engines, and other weapons of war were paid for, often in dollars, and when the numbers were added at the end of the war, they were impressive. The British and French investment in engine factories alone was $84 million, in the days when that was a huge sum of money. It is perfectly true to credit the French and the British with providing the impetus that made the United States the efficient, large-scale producer of aircraft that it was.
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<p>The fall of France, the evacuation at Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain were triple traumas to Americans. Few remained isolationist after those three events, which polarized most Americans more than any other happening of the years of the ascendancy of the Third Reich.
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<p>The floodgates holding back the flow of money for air power finally were opened. During the three years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Air Corps was told it could spend close to $8 billion dollars to increase its strength, and to earmark enough of that to buy almost 37,500 planes.
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<p>One of the characteristics of war is that it speeds the development of weapons. In combat, the deficiencies of any design rapidly show; if they produce enough fatalities. something is done quickly to improve the situation. War spurred the development of protective armor, of self-sealing tanks that could be bullet-riddled and still hold gasoline. That old standby, the .30-caliber Browning machine gun, soon gave way to the .50-caliber, the 20-mm cannon and the 37-mm cannon. Bomb designs proliferated. Engine horsepower increased. Novel design concepts, like tricycle landing gears, took form in experimental shops and on production lines.
