<text id=00he1200><title>Independence for the USAF: Introduction</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Independence for the USAF: Introduction</hdr><body>
<p>The war was over, with unexpected suddenness. The abrupt ending found invasion plans still in the making, and production lines still turning out aircraft and tanks and trucks. Millions of people were in uniform, scattered all over the world. Germany and Japan lay in ruins; the countries they had cruelly conquered were at least as badly, and perhaps worse, off. The wartime momentum of the offensive had to be slowed and stopped.
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<p>The easiest thing to shut off was the flow of the industrial production of war materiel. Corporate management received notice by telegrams; next day, guards at the gates turned the employees away. The plants were closed; half-finished aircraft, raw materials, jigs and fixtures were sold for scrap. Overnight, thousands were out of work. Rosie the Riveter was sent back to the kitchen, there to wait decades for a comparable social force that would recognize the importance of women in the ranks of labor and management.
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<p>The United States Army Air Forces had been the direct cause of the sudden armistice. Two nuclear bombs finally ended the long sentence of slow death by fire that the B-29s had imposed on Japan. And the USAAF, like the other services, was faced with the need to do several equally important tasks as soon as possible.
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<p>First, political and popular pressures were on to 'get the boys home'. Second, the last months of the war had spawned new technologies and a new generation of air weapons. Sweepback, the jet engine, radar and guided missiles obviously were the new wave, and any air force that neglected them would do so at its own peril. Third, the USAAF, having staked out a claim to equality among its sister services, was facing a political battle to get that claim recognized in the face of opposition.
