<text id=00he1201><title>Bring the Boys Back Home</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Bring the Boys Back Home</hdr><body>
<p>The USAAF had about 2,200,000 men and women in uniform at the end of World War II, and possessed about 64,000 airplanes of all types. About ten per cent of the personnel were regular Army, and could be expected to stay on in the postwar service. The other nine-tenths were ex-civilians and their families wanted them back home as soon as possible.
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<p>This, of course, is one of the characteristics of citizen soldiers. They fight for the duration; once the war is ended, they want to get back immediately to whatever they were doing, even if it was only loafing around the corner store. General George Washington faced the problem first, with farmers who wanted to get back for the spring plowing and the fall harvests. Pershing faced the same issues after 11 November 1918. Here it was again, to torment the leaders of the powerful and worldwide air force.
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<p>It was done, somehow. Not without the usual number of foul-ups, but it was done and the USAAF was drawn down to a slim shadow of its one-time greatness and strength. By the end of April 1946, the USAAF numbered less than half a million; a year later, it had shrunk to 303,000. In less than two years, the military strength of the United States Army Air Forces was back at its pre-Pearl Harbor level.
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<p>There were more than 413,000 aircrewmen by the end of the war; less than two years later, the number was 24,000. Maintenance personnel, the core of any military service, also shrank by about 90 per cent. With fewer airplanes to fly, and fewer maintenance people, one might expect things to even out a bit and operational efficiency not to suffer too much. That was not the case. During the war years, the overall availability of combat aircraft was about 50 per cent; that is, one out of every two airplanes was ready to go and fight. Little more than one year after V-J Day, availability was down to less than one plane out of five.
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<p>The powerful USAAF, ruler of the skies above Germany and Japan, had achieved that position with more than 218 combat groups of aircraft. In December 1946, the combat-ready strength of the USAAF was just two groups that had survived the immediate postwar drawdown.
