Happy Birthday to the United States Air Force
September 18th, 2008
In 1907, the U.S. Army Signal Corps was created to assume responsibility over all matters pertaining to military aviation, and in its earliest days was a fledgling force of only eight aviation balloons, a dozen officers, and only slightly more enlisted men. From that small yet effective force came the modern United States Air Force, established as a separate branch of the military services on September 18, 1947.
In the decade before its separation from the United States Army, the U.S. Army Air Corps as it was known proved its strength during the protracted battles of World War II. By September 1939, the German army and air force had managed to defeat and occupy Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France. It was in the wake of such worldwide conflict that the Air Force began to develop into one of the world’s most effective military forces. Equipment and funding poured into the U.S. Army Air Corps as President Franklin Roosevelt began to realize that in order to defeat the determined Germans, the United States would need a superior military aviation force.
