Though it took to the skies long after Britain’s Spitfire and Germany’s Messerschmitt Bf 109, US fighters like the Grumman F4F Wildcat were significantly behind the times. Only by leveraging its massive industrial might did America close the gap in the field of aviation in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Visitors to the FHC encounter the following words when they enter the hangar lobby:
Technology transforms society, but not at a constant rate. Occasionally, circumstances produce—demand—a sudden surge of innovation, yielding rapid and dramatic changes in society.
One of those surges began during World War I and lasted through World War II, resulting in the planes you’re about to see. Fully restored to flying condition, they represent advances in aviation and more broadly, in engineering, communications, manufacturing, and electronics—the building blocks of modernity.
In many ways, the changes brought about by the largest conflict in human history,
World War II, have shaped our modern world. While historians agree that it was an era of rapid technological transformation, one has to look much farther into the past than the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the invasion of Poland to understand the advances in
technology that took place during that war.
Even examining the period spanning the 1920s and 1930s won’t reveal the entire
picture. One could argue that World War II is the product of a long-ago age that most
probably only learned about in school. Technologically speaking, it was the Industrial Revolution that put the world on a path toward the weapons and fighting styles seen in the 1940s.
A massive Beardmore V-12 engine is lowered into a Canada National Railways “oil-electric” locomotive in 1928. The sight would have been unthinkable to people living just a few generations before. In fact, even at the time, this huge machine regularly attracted large crowds of spectators along its route from Montreal to Toronto.
The old and new worlds collide. This image shows a “motorized smithy” in the St. Louis area in the 1930s. Though his trade centered around horses, he drove to jobs in the cab of his motorized truck, not a wagon.
As far back as the 1780s, many Western nations were moving from one milestone era
to the next—from an existence based on manual labor and agriculture to a society and
economy centered around production and machines.
While it might seem ridiculous to begin the story before Hitler or even his father were born, it is important to note that big changes often happen incrementally and have a
delayed effect on history. Commonly, societies move slowly and cautiously, with each new development creating opportunities for further invention. Good ideas are often combined with contributions from many individuals over many decades.
Many ideas take years of “gestation time” to fully reach their potential. For example, a machine judged to be the first automobile was created around 1769. The first gasoline-burning engines were incorporated into auto designs around 1885. The first Model T,
considered the first affordable and dependable motorcar, rolled from the Ford factory in 1908. And, even though the concept of an auto had been around for more than 130 years, there were still many more horses employed for transportation than there were cars in
1908.
While the Industrial Revolution may seem like far distant history to many of us, the
second phase of the era is quite important toward understanding World War II. The era
from 1871 to the outbreak of World War I (1914), dubbed the “Second Industrial
Revolution,” saw great advances in three technological areas—expanded transportation,
wide-spread electrification, and refined production methods.
In the transportation field, one can see the rise of the first viable automobiles, a fully mature railroad system, great steamships, and, of course, the advent of the airplane.
Though electricity seems less related to warfare, the availability of a dependable power source for tools, light, and movement helped change the face of production, which
drastically affected the nature of clashes between nations.
World War I brought many of these Second Industrial Revolution developments to the
forefront. Prior to that conflict, for example, each airplane was a sort of one-of-a-kind
“work of art.” That was not the case with World War I–era aircraft like the Curtiss
Aeroplane & Motor Company’s Jenny. One Jenny strut was built to fit exactly like
another. These parts were mass-produced at a big factory—quickly and relatively easily.
In a time of world crisis, the gains made during the Second Industrial Revolution
(transportation, electricity, and production) were coupled with great desire and urgency (world conflict). To continue to use Curtiss as an example, the company matured from
making rickety Reims racers to pounding out literally thousands of “modern” trainer
aircraft within five or six years. Similar examples can be seen in Europe, with Sopwith, Albatros, Fokker, and Nieuport all building tremendous numbers of aircraft.
However, most of the changes during World War I happened on the ground as the
newly acquired strengths and techniques were coupled with a dire situation. Over a fairly brief period of time, the face of armed conflict changed as tanks, machine guns, deadlier artillery, poison gas, flame throwers, and viable submarines all became significant factors in warfare.
Military leaders were stunned. They were still fighting a nineteenth century-style war but were now encountering twentieth century equipment. The fight bogged down to a
stalemate and both sides dug complex systems of trenches, protecting themselves from
these new deadly weapons.
It is important to remember that the release of the Ford Model T was in no way the beginning of the automobile. Dozens of builders were making cars before Henry Ford perfected the production line. This relatively modern machine was cruising the streets of Paris in 1903.
They are both steam engines, but things have improved with a century of development. This staged photo, taken in Chicago in 1933, shows a DeWitt Clinton locomotive from 1831 and Northern Pacific’s newest behemoth, built 102 years later.
American companies were not the only ones that harnessed the power of production for the Great War. In this image, French Nieuport fighters stretch to the horizon. When US pilots came overseas, they most often flew and fought in French- or British-built combat machines.
Workmen finish the job of installing a massive twenty-five-ton propeller on Cunard Line’s newest ship; then simply called
“hull number 534.” When the ocean liner was launched later in 1934, she had been given the name RMS Queen Mary.
The Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, circa 1917, was engaged in creating scores of aircraft using production-line methods. The Curtiss Jenny was considered America’s first mass-produced aircraft. During World War I, Curtiss built not hundreds of airplanes, but thousands.
With a few exceptions, most of the fighting equipment employed in World War II had
been used during World War I. Some, such as the flame thrower and machine gun,
changed only a little, while others, like aircraft, made great leaps with twenty years of technological maturation. World War I air fighting demonstrated most of the now familiar roles for combat aircraft (heavy bombers, attack aircraft, photo-reconnaissance, and
fighters), though aircraft did not largely affect the outcome of that conflict. In the next war, things would be different. Aircraft would be involved in every major battle of World War II and were the deciding factor in many of them—the Nazi invasions in Europe, the
Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the American victory at Midway, and the United
States’ use of atomic bombs against Japan.
The interwar years became a perfect breeding ground for technological developments
and improvements. Some of this was due simply to the legacy of past eras. The advances from the Second Industrial Revolution combined with impetus of “The Great War” made
for a new age percolating with ideas and potential. Some new technologies were created, but in many cases, existing ideas were improved upon. Many of the milestone creations
attributed to the interwar era were actually just significant pushes to make a known idea more useful, more viable, or available.
The automobile, invented years before, was coming into its own with a new
infrastructure of roads and amenities, as well as improved assembly-line production
methods spearheaded by the Ford Motor Company.
Flight, first demonstrated in 1903, really matured as Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic,
aero-engines became more dependable, and the machines themselves were practical
enough to transport people or cargo over long distances. By the mid-1930s, designers were making all-metal monoplanes very similar to the type that would be seen in World War II.
Radio, long attributed to the 1920s, was actually a known entity by the late nineteenth century. However, the 1920s was the era when 60 percent of American households
purchased a radio for the first time, the first commercial broadcasts were made, and initial commercial radio stations were established.
While significant improvements stole the spotlight during the interwar era, it was also a period of invention, although many of these ideas made an impact later in the century
during or after World War II.
The late 1920s saw the start of what would later become commercial television. In
1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the first modern, liquid-fuelled rocket. Enrico Fermi and his team achieved nuclear fusion experimentally in 1934. Rudimentary radar was
installed on the ocean liner Normandie in 1935. In 1937, Frank Whittle ran his first jet engine. These were shades of things to come.
Militarily, the 1920s and 1930s were a period of continued development, especially in
Europe. Many felt that the conflicts in Europe were not really resolved. Underlying
tensions kept the innovations coming. Military leaders who fought in World War I worked to push, create, and keep their war machines current, believing that there would be more battles in the future. Even Germany, a country supposedly inhibited by World War I
treaties, found ways to make new weapons. In many ways, this was similar to the climate seen during World War I—a time of technology and means, coupled with desire. But in this era, at least, the desire came from tensions and anticipation, not from all-out war.
By the 1920s, the concept of mass production was put into motion all over the world. This shot shows motorcars being assembled by men and women on a moving assembly line in Europe.
Soldiers with flame throwers, tanks, and deadly machine guns stopped antiquated infantry charges cold during World War I.
In order to get away from these mechanized killing machines, opposing forces dug into the ground. Soldiers spent years in the trenches.
Radio had been around for decades, but it was popularized in the 1920s. This European unit works without an aerial or batteries. Plugged into household current, the user can “listen to broadcasts from London to Berlin.”
In a burst of production before the fighting, nations like Great Britain put nearly all of the nation’s resources into making the tools of war. Here, workers at the Bristol factory build Blenheim light bombers in the months before Germany attacked Poland.
The first Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter flew in January 1944. Though some of the American jets were deployed to combat theaters by the end of World War II, none of the planes saw any fighting until the outbreak of the Korean War, five years later.
The situation in the United States, however, was a bit different. Americans considered themselves separated from the ill-feelings among European nations. Even Japan’s invasion of China on the other side of the Pacific Ocean seemed terribly remote. While agitators like “Billy” Mitchell warned of a nation falling behind, the people of America had had enough of war.
In the field of aviation, the contrast between nations on the potential front lines and those who were “isolationists” was startling. In 1935, Germany’s Bf 109 and Britain’s
Hurricane flew for the first time. That same year, America’s Grumman F3F Navy biplane fighter first took to the skies. America was behind by a full generation of aircraft
development. In 1936, the Spitfire was introduced. More than a year and a half later, the Grumman F4F Wildcat and Brewster Buffalo flew for the first time in America. Those
planes hardly deserve to be called “fighters” in the presence of a sleek machine such as the Spitfire.
When America finally entered World War II, the nation found that its fighters were
inferior, its bombers couldn’t protect themselves, its navy ships couldn’t hunt German submarines effectively or win in a fair fight with their Japanese counterparts (especially at night), and its torpedoes were often nearly worthless. How did America make up the gap?
It was the very late 1930s and into the early 1940s before the United States began its true build-up for war, including producing equipment for France and Britain.
Luckily, the United States had the means, will, and resources to mobilize its great
power and industry rather quickly. Their homeland was not under real threat of attack, as was the case for Russia, Britain, Germany, and Japan. The access to manpower, means of production, and relatively vast supplies of metals, gas, oil, and rubber made the United States a manufacturing powerhouse. In addition, America’s ally, Britain, was a battle-seasoned nation—a veteran of real, “modern” fighting in Europe and the Middle East—
able to help US leaders decide what needed to be done and how.
US projects often considered mid-war developments—the P-51 Mustang, F6F Hellcat,
TBF Avenger, and B-29 Superfortress—all had their roots in this American burst of
energy right before the start of conflict in Europe in 1939.
Again, we see a period of technological gestation. At the beginning of the shooting war for the United States, America had to fight with equipment it possessed before Pearl
Harbor—F4F Wildcats, P-39 Airacobras, early model B-17s and B-25s, P-40
Tomahawks/Warhawks, etc. The late 1930s developments mentioned in the paragraph
above came into the picture, roughly, around 1943. Results of the developments started after Pearl Harbor—the P-80 Shooting Star, acceleration of the Manhattan Project, the first mass-produced helicopter (Sikorsky R-4)—appeared at the very end of the fighting.
Jet aircraft and helicopters, though extremely important to the military after World War II, had no real bearing on the outcome of that war. The atomic bomb, of course, was the exception.
Innovation during wartime isn’t considered ideal and is typically frowned upon by
many. Why? It takes money and resources away from proven equipment. A great example
is the F6F. When it came time to make an up-rated version of the Hellcat naval fighter, the military told Grumman they could do it, and that the navy would be grateful, but please, please don’t ever stop the assembly line. It was no time for radical (i.e. time-consuming) changes. The new F6F-5 exhibited very modest improvements over the F6F-3 as a result
(strengthened tail, tighter cowling, new windscreen, water injection). The jump from P-51B to P-51D was equally as “low impact” on the factories.
Production military helicopters, which would play an important role in Korea and Vietnam, had their roots in the innovations of World War II. Here, the Sikorsky XR-4 demonstrates shipboard landings on the SS James Parker in the summer of 1943. By the end of the war, some helicopters joined the fight with US forces abroad.
This striking photo shows a shipyard worker dwarfed by giant gears destined to be installed in American warships. The image was taken by the Office of War Information around 1943.
Slight evolutions in design, but not enough to stop production, can be seen in this flight of P-51 Mustangs over Europe. The oldest plane is the P-51B farthest from the camera. D-model P-51s had additional guns and an easily recognizable bubble canopy. With a cut-down fuselage, the fighters experienced more pronounced lateral stability issues. The newest Mustang in the photo, closest to the camera, has an added dorsal fin to quickly correct the problem without stopping the production line.
The bulk of Japan’s fighter force during World War II was made up of continuously
upgraded versions of the Zero. Britain did the same with the Spitfire, and Germany with the Fw 190 and Bf 109. The latter changed the most. America had the luxury of trying
many new projects on an accelerated basis: the P-40 gave way to the P-51, the F4F
Wildcat was replaced with the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair, and new Essex class fleet carriers took over for prewar carriers lost in the 1942 battles.
Some historians maintain that innovation during wartime can actually be harmful.
Germany’s leaders, desperate by the later stages of the war, were willing to entertain radical ideas (ideas that other nations would reject out of hand) hoping to change the course of the conflict. Some were quite successful. Conversely, though aircraft like jet planes were technologically advanced, German military leaders often asked, “What’s
better, fifteen more conventional Fw 190 fighters or a single new jet-powered Me 262?”
More peculiar projects, such as massive tanks and unconventional aircraft, consumed
precious resources and manpower in Germany, often with little to show for it in the end. In some ways, the biggest winners in the World War II technology game were the Soviets
and Americans, who swooped in to acquire Germany’s data, innovations, and scientific
minds after the war.
In the FHC aircraft, we see all stages of the development of combat planes before and
during World War II. Quaint contraptions of fabric and cloth gave way to thundering all-metal war machines in just over a generation.
This amazing story of technological innovation has to open somewhere. We might as
well start near the beginning.