> United States
|Established|| July 26, 1947|
|Disbanded|| Still Active |
|Last Modified||Gerald Farinas April 30, 2004 10:26am|
|Description||United States Air Force |
The National Security Act of 1947 became law on July 26, 1947 creating the Department of the Air Force. Before becoming an independent branch of the Armed Forces, the Air Force was a division of the Army Signal Corps, established on August 1, 1907 to take "charge of all matters pertaining to military ballooning, air machines and all kindred subjects." When World War I broke out in Europe in August 1914, the Armed Forces began to focus more attention on its aviation services.
On May 20, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order transferring aviation from the Army Signal Corps to two agencies under the Secretary of War: Bureau of Aircraft Production and the Division of Military Aeronautics. On May 24 the War Department officially recognized these two Army agencies as the Air Service of the Army. The Army Reorganization Act of 1920 officially recognized the Air Service as a combatant arm of the Army. The Air Corps Act of 1926 changed the name of the Air Service to Air Corps.
Recognizing that the United States could be drawn into World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began drafting plans to create the modern United States Air Force. In a special message to Congress on January 12, 1939, he asked for 10,000 airplanes designated for the program. Congress allowed for only 6,000. Later that year, the world witnessed the German Air Force conquer Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and drove the British off the continent. Congress allowed for the expansion of the Air Corps giving its leadership everything it requested. Air Corps strength in World War II would swell from 26,500 men and 2,200 aircraft in 1939 to 2,253,000 men and women and 63,715 aircraft in 1945.