US Air Power 1945-1990: Volume 1 - US Fighters and Fighter-Bombers, 1945-1949

By David Baker

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the air forces of the United States faced unprecedented challenges. Demobilization had stripped the armed forces of millions of personnel, while the rapid transition from a wartime economy strained the aviation industry at the same time as the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) was re-established as the independent US Air Force (USAF). US Air Power 1945–1990 Volume 1: US Fighters and Fighter-Bombers 1945–1949 examines this pivotal period, analyzing the first steps the USAF took to re-establish its dominance in the skies during the early Cold War era.
 
This volume meticulously documents the political, industrial, and technical decisions that shaped the development of the USAF’s early jet fighters and fighter-bombers. It covers the transition from propeller-driven aircraft to first-generation jet designs, showcasing the radical innovations and experimental prototypes that laid the foundation for future air power. Readers will find detailed descriptions of key aircraft such as the P-80 Shooting Star, the F-86 Sabre, and the F-84 Thunderjet, which became operational despite the severe budget constraints and strategic uncertainties of the time.
 
Author David Baker brings to light the untold stories behind these aircraft. He provides an integrated narrative that goes beyond mere type histories, weaving together the political backdrop, industrial struggles, and technological advancements that influenced the design and deployment of these pioneering jets. This approach offers a comprehensive view of how the USAF navigated the post-war landscape to emerge as a formidable force by 1949.
 
The book also includes an appendix detailing speculative projects that never reached production, such as the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin ‘parasite fighter’, Convair XF-92 delta-wing interceptor and many others, alongside tables listing the performance characteristics of both operational and experimental aircraft from this era. These sections offer invaluable insights into the ‘what ifs’ of aviation history, showing how alternative designs might have shaped air combat strategies differently.
 
The first in an extensive series of volumes, each exploring different facets of US air power during the Cold War, subsequent titles will cover bombers, naval aviation, and the evolving roles of fighters and bombers through conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam wars. Each volume will maintain a focus on the technical and engineering aspects that defined these aircraft, rather than operational histories alone.
 
Extensively illustrated, including rare photographs and specially-commissioned color artwork, this book provides a thorough and engaging exploration of a transformative period in US air power history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helion and Company
• Release date: Dec 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9781804517017

David Baker

Laura Browder is assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Rousing the Nation: Radical Culture in Depression America.

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Text © David Baker 2024

Photographs © as individually credited

Colour Artwork © Jean-Marie Guillou and Goran Sudar

Cover image: A Lockheed P-80B from the 1st FG, representative of a type supreme in early postwar years of the US Air Force. (USAF)

Designed and typeset by Mach 3 Solutions (www.mach3solutions.co.uk)

Cover design Paul Hewitt, Battlefield Design (www.battlefield-design.co.uk)

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The author and publisher apologise for any errors or omissions in this work, and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

ISBN: 978-1-804513-75-0

ePub ISBN 978-1-80451-701-7

Mobi ISBN 978-1-80451-701-7

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CONTENTS

Abbreviations and acronyms

Preface

Introduction

1Holding the Peace

2Building for War

3Lions and Lambs

4Fighters For The Force

5Roles and Responsibilities

Appendix: Stalled and Transient Projects

A Note on Sources

Bibliography

About the Author

Plates

Note: In order to simplify the use of this book, all names, locations and geographic designations are as provided in The Times World Atlas, or other traditionally accepted major sources of reference, as of the time of described events.

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

PREFACE

This is the first in a series of 15 volumes covering the story of US land-based and naval air power during the Cold War between 1945 and 1990. The series is divided into five separate chronological periods, each with three dedicated volumes subjectively aligned with significant developments in the history of American combat aircraft and US air power.

The intention is to provide a broad, spectral analysis of the origin, design, development and evolution of US Air Force combat aircraft as well as the political, industrial, design and manufacturing base from which they, and their variants, were developed. The volumes provided for each period, covering fighters and bombers, together present a story of US military air power.

For reasons of space, these volumes cannot provide an exhaustive history of each aircraft, that information being available in a wide range of published sources, including books, magazines and electronic archives. Instead, they integrate all those separate elements which supported and enabled the aviation and aerospace industries to produce the technologies underpinning the evolution of US combat aircraft throughout the Cold War.

Readers will note that this first volume also covers the US aviation industry at large between 1945 and 1949, providing a base upon which to explain why decisions were made and how those affected the designs and prototypes produced. The main chapters explore the decisions made at a political, technical and industrial level and include a description of the fighters flown and brought to operational status. It also provides information on who controlled the decisions and how the leadership viewed the national defence agenda.

An appendix describes speculative projects by type, some of which were flown but never entered production, while tables provide the characteristics and performance data for the fighters that equipped the US Air Force and the Air National Guard in this four-year period, as well as for the experimental and prototype aircraft listed in the appendix.

Volume 2 covers bombers and Volume 3 the emerging era of post-war naval aviation, following the same general format but the extensive description of the impact of demobilisation and downsizing of the industry and the years of fiscal constraint contained in this volume will not be repeated there. Instead, opening chapters of Volume 2 describe the origin and evolution of national air policy, long-range bombing and the creation of strategic air power in the US Air Force before covering operational and experimental bomber types.

Successive, volumes will cover fighters and bombers in the Korean War (1950–1953), before moving to the period during which the century-series appeared and supersonic combat aircraft became operational (1954–1960). The series then moves to the period when much change occurred before and during the Vietnam War (1961–1975) before covering the closing years of the Cold War when stealth and advanced combat systems were introduced (1976–1990).

Operational histories will be introduced only when they pertain to the development of fighter and bomber aircraft of the periods covered, emphasis being placed instead on the technical and engineering development of the different aircraft types. There are already copious sources for readers to obtain highly detailed accounts of operational histories. As with this first book, successive volumes will also include failed types either proposed and never built or brought to experimental evaluation without series production.

I wanted to write this series because I felt that the story of American air power had usually been defined through either the type histories of aircraft involved or the personal reminiscences of pilots and aircrew. Nowhere was there a single source of reference that brought it all together, with coverage of the aviation industry, the political base upon which significant decisions were made and the technical choices available to manufacturers and design teams. By integrating the story of these aspects with the aircraft in general, I wanted to provide something different, through coverage that also included the technical, engineering, industrial, political and strategic decisions that both shaped the US Air Force and the way it evolved throughout the Cold War.

David Baker

England, 2024

INTRODUCTION

The single-seat fighter and the long-range bomber would be key assets in establishing global air power during the Cold War. Independent since 1947, the US Air Force emerged from a period of demobilisation and contraction, imposed by greatly reduced defence budgets, further compromised by a degree of uncertainty as to just what it should be based upon and what equipment it should have.

Industry had already provided new technology, both in manufacturing materials and fabrication techniques, and the major aviation companies were not short on ideas. These would serve both the more conventional designs involving reciprocating engines and rotating propellers and newer aircraft powered by jet propulsion. Launched in the UK and Germany, the jet engine was very quickly exploited by the United States before the end of the Second World War, although this would be only one of several new capabilities.

Innovative designs provided a wide range of innovative concepts, providing high-speed/high-altitude flight, range-extension, tailless and blended wing-body shapes and mixed-propulsion involving reciprocating and jet engines, jet engines and rocket motors and aircraft combining both propeller-driven and jet propulsion on the same wing. Fighters were pushed close to the speed of sound and bombers acquired longer range, compensating for fuel-thirsty jet engines by increased aerodynamic efficiency and reduced drag.

In 1945 the constrained capabilities of a post-war air force were unable to stand up a capable air combat strength equal to the challenges of an increasingly hostile world, in which autocratic states threatened democratic countries across the globe. By 1949 the US Air Force had transformed the air power dynamic, establishing a doctrine of deterrence through the capacity for dropping large numbers of atomic bombs on any belligerent country anywhere on Earth.

That job was bequeathed to a new generation of jet-powered, intercontinental bombers tasked with preventing war through a new strategic air arm equipped with a rapidly expanding force carrying greater strike power than any fielded heretofore. Reliance on a strategic bomber force to deter aggression and suppress belligerent states would form the core of air power for the next decade, until tactical air applications achieved new, high-level status during the Vietnam War.

The fighters described in this book were first-generation designs powered by jet engines and incorporating radical concepts such as swept wings, equipped with rockets and missiles for air defence and ground attack. There were many designs funded and brought to flight status but rejected for one or other reasons. They formed the basis upon which derivatives of those that were made operational preceded the design of second-generation fighters which would emerge during the Korean War, that story being told in a later volume.

The story of this dynamic introduction to the jet age is told in the first three volumes of this history of US Air Force air power doctrine, a narrative forming the basis upon which the service adapted and changed to meet new requirements as challenges arose throughout the 45 years of the Cold War.

1

HOLDING THE PEACE

When the Second World War ended in September 1945 the demobilisation of US armed services was already in full swing. At that date there were 12.2 million military personnel in uniform of which 5.88 million were in the Army, somewhat fewer than 2.4 million in the Air Forces, 3.38 million in the Navy and 474,700 in the Marines and a further 86,000 in the Coast Guard. Of that total, approximately 7.6 million were abroad and in the preceding months they had begun preparations for the Allied assault on mainland Japan. But that was before the capitulation. By 30 June 1947 only 1.5 million remained in uniform and, according to some, the nation’s defences were reduced to ‘near impotency’.

Pressure on the national economy was great, as industry turned swords into ploughshares and skilled labour was offloaded from the factories at a frightening pace. Aircraft manufacturers struggled to stay in business and competition was fierce to get government contracts. Many existing projects were terminated, others with some promise were cancelled, existing orders were rescinded and the industry faced a near calamitous situation, some companies going under where once they could have survived. There was still a need for national defence, however and a few fighter projects such as the P-80, the F-86 and the F-84 had appeared. Operational deployment would underpin that requirement. But there were also some new development contracts to be had and the lean years of 1945–1949 would be quickly followed by a call-to-arms at the start of the Korean War.

The four years that began toward the end of 1945 were a period during which a range of new technologies in design and manufacturing were applied, if not perfected, and the pressures of the emerging Cold War injected new incentive by way of aggressive communist practices in Eastern Europe, not least the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49. A situation for which the US military was ill-prepared because of extensive demobilisation of the Army Air Force (AAF), which had begun long before the end of the war. Plans for that were being laid in 1943, by which date Germany’s defeat was over-optimistically believed to be imminent followed by the defeat of Japan shortly thereafter. The need for demobilisation was driven by a desire to reduce the government war budget as quickly as possible, while simultaneously maintaining the armed forces necessary to defeat the enemy.

The first demobilisation plan had been made public on 31 July 1943. But it was complex because America was simultaneously fighting two wars, neither of which had certainty of completion by a specified date, with that against Japan to some extent determined by the timing of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Redeployment from the European Theatre of Operations (ETO) to the Pacific Theatre of Operations (PTO) would be one part of a phased demobilisation. In July 1943 the earliest possible end to the war against Germany was deemed to be 1 September 1944, an unlikely possibility given the task ahead, confidence having been encouraged by the eviction of German and Italian forces from North Africa, with the invasion of Sicily in July 1943.

In February 1944 the Tompkins Demobilization Plan provided structural projections for how forces would be redeployed to Japan after the defeat of Germany, which was expected much earlier than actually achieved. Nevertheless, experience with chaotic scenes during previous periods of mass demobilisation – in 1865 after the American Civil War and 1918 after the First World War – made the advantage of early preparations self-evident. The Tompkins plan envisaged that the AAF would have 154 groups in the ETO and North Africa with 112 groups moved to the Far East for the war against Japan. Throughout the period of redeployment the AAF had to set up and administer facilities, stations and bases in the United States for processing the vast number of men and women demobilised and returned to civilian life, as well as coordinating those remaining in service and being assigned to other duties to maintain minimum defence requirements.

In 1941 General Henry Harley Arnold became Chief of the Army Air Forces and played a major part in structuring it for wartime operations, influencing the way the independent US Air Force would be established in 1947. (USAF)

Personnel levels in the AAF peaked at 2,411,294 in March 1944 from which it began to slowly decline, falling to 1,992,960 in September 1945, the month in which the surrender of Japan was signed on the deck of the USS Missouri. Demobilisation had been under the Army Service Forces which had 22 centres capable of processing 300,000 personnel a month. In September, the backlog of those eligible stood at 500,000 and the figure was expected to remain the same in the following month. By 1 October the AAF had separated 304,564 personnel and there was no backlog.

Equally impressive was the demobilisation of units. The peak strength of 243 groups in March 1945 had been reduced to 218 groups at the time of the Japanese surrender and to 109 by the end of the year, a reduction of 50 percent in four months. But the effective loss in personnel strength was very much greater. The procedure for demobilisation began first with the most experienced people with the greatest number of flying hours, as measured by ‘points’ to which a return to civilian life was given priority as acknowledgement of their service record. With the most expert and experienced getting home first, the capacity of units to carry out their duties was reduced in efficiency and in effectiveness. But the cascade of demobilisation continued throughout the following year and that had a measurable effect on morale, damaging that vital ingredient, the ‘spirit’ of a fighting force.

In October 1945, General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold received a letter from Major General St Clair Street from the Continental Air Force asserting that ‘we will have soon reached a point, if it has not been reached, at which the Army Air Forces can no longer be considered anything more than a symbolic instrument of National Defense’, adding that ‘a potpourri of warm bodies’ was no substitute for an air force. Behind which were differing views at the Department of War and in Congress as to the type of armed services which would be required after the defeat of Japan, with universal acceptance that there would have to be a considerable reduction in the size of individual air forces.

In January 1946 the AAF had 89 groups, reducing to 81 in February, 71 in March, 65 in April, 60 in May, 54 in June and 52 in July, where it remained. At the end of the war with Japan the AAF had 1,895 installations, down from a peak of 2,252 in December 1943. The majority were in the United States but by VE Day at the beginning of May 1945 these had been cut from 1,133 to 429 and that included all the auxiliary fields supporting the prime stations and bases. On those installations in Europe the AAF had 24,000 spare aircraft engines, 238,000 tons of technical supplies, 12,000 special purpose vehicles and more than 466,000 tons of bombs and ammunition.

Keeping Stock

By 1 January 1946, the United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE) had disposed of almost 80 percent of engines, 53 percent of technical supplies, 43 percent of vehicles and 40 percent of munitions. The road-block on faster decommissioning of equipment and ammunition was due to the Surplus Property Act of October 1944 and the legislative procedures required for that. To speed up the processes involved, on 18 September 1945 it was replaced by the Surplus Property Administration, moving it from the Treasury Department to the Department of Commerce.

The sheer scale of disposing of surplus stock is displayed by the transfers list through bulk sales agreements with the British, French and Italian governments, the first being entered into with the British in March 1946 for a contract figure of $532 million. The sale of aircraft originally costing $120,000 apiece were disposed of at little more than $19,000 and this deficit to the US government raised eyebrows in Congress where the immediate cessation of the Lend-Lease agreement was felt to be some small compensation for the bargain-basement price paid by allies for materiel redundant to US use. By January 1947 the Air Materiel Command (AMC) declared $4.8 billion in surplus property broken down into a variety of war assets or awaiting salvage.

The quantity of material retained was however, a testament to production levels higher than anything achieved by any country since the start of the industrial revolution. On 1 May 1946 there were 24,114 aircraft in the United States of which 15,050 were placed in storage or issued to reserve organisations. This inspired development of a new environmental preservation process involving a layer of webbing applied over each airframe on which was sprayed a liquid that hardened into a protective envelope. That process never did provide the total solution and several new materials and processes ensued to make it effective. The balance was divided into 8,224 preserved airframes and 840 declared excess to requirements.

The Bell Aircraft assembly line for its P-39 fighter epitomises the intense industrial mobilisation of national resources as a result of fighting both Germany and Japan during the Second World War, a capacity which would provide unprecedented supply chains during the Cold War. (Bell Aircraft)

At the end of the war a freeze had been imposed on modifications and planned upgrades to operational aircraft types until it could be determined whether they would be required in future. General Arnold said that he did not want to ‘shoe any more dead horses’! Materiel Command experienced a reduction in personnel, falling from 25,443 in July 1945 to 8,308 by 1 January 1946, further reductions lowering that