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[[image]] HON. CHARLES E. WILSON Secretary of Defense [[image]] HON. ROGER M. KYES Deputy Secretary of Defense [[image]] HON. ROBERT T. STEVENS Secretary of the Army [[image]] HON. ROBERT B. ANDERSON Secretary of the Navy [[image]] HON. HAROLD E. TALBOTT Secretary of the Air Force [[image]] ADM. ARTHUR W. RADFORD Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff [[image]] GEN. M. B. RIDGWAY Army Chief of Staff [[image]] ADM. ROBERT. B. CARNEY Chief of Naval Operations [[image]] GEN. L. C. SHEPHERD, JR. Commandant of Marine Corps. (Continued from preceding page) Cunninghams, Geigers, Schilts, Sandersons, and other pioneers of Marine aviation. In Korea, all close-air support theories were culminated by the air-ground team in providing the hardest-hitting one-two punch against the communists. On June 4, 1920, Congress passed an Army Reorganization act which created a new Air Service, "as a separate and coordinate branch of the line of the Army," with an authorized strength of 1,516 officers and 16,000 enlisted men. On July 2, 1926, Congressional action eliminated the designation "Air Service" and created the Office of the Chief of Air Corps. In the 1930's, military aviation turned to the new monoplane design and all-metal construction. Boeing fashioned the Air Corps' first all-metal bomber, the B-9, a mid-wing monoplane with retractable landing gear, powered by two 500-horse-power Pratt and Whitney engines. And Curtiss introduced the A-8, an all-metal attack monoplane. By 1936 the four-engine B-17 Flying Fortress had arrived, although only 13 had been delivered up to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939. When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Air Force consisted of 23,000 officers, 16,000 cadets and 275,000 enlisted men with 12,000 planes to operate. History's greatest air armada reached a peak strength of 2,411,294 in 1944 and a wartime high of 80,000 aircraft. In 1944 the agent which spelled doom to the Jap Zero made its dramatic entrance into the Japanese conflict--the Navy's famed Corsair fighter, the first airplane to go over 400 miles an hour. The postwar years ushered in the jet age and a series of ups and downs in Air Force strength. The Lockheed F-80 and Republic F-84, jet fighters, appeared in 1946. The following year brought the North American B-45, a four-jet bomber. Air Force Captain Charles Yeager became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, accomplishing the feat in the Bell X-1, a piloted research rocket aircraft. On December 15, 1948, an unaltered production model F-86 Sabre Jet, flown by Major Richard L. Johnson, set a world's speed mark of 670.981 miles per hour. Four jet engines were added to the six conventional engines of the intercontinental B-36 bomber. (Continued on page 43) NATIONAL AIRCRAFT SHOW 25
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Added "Cunning" from earlier page to make a complete word starting the text on this page, per instructions
