World War II

Germany’s aircraft industry after World War I was heavily restricted by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1921–22 the constraints were eased, and a productive light-aircraft industry began to develop. When restrictions were basically abolished in 1926, a number of new ventures were formed; those which survived included such companies as Arado, Dornier, Focke-Wulf, Junkers, and Heinkel. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, funds were channeled into the development of the German aircraft industry through these companies. Compared with the period 1927–31, when a total of 84 million Reichsmarks were spent, funding soared to 980 million marks in 1936 alone. By the start of World War II the German aircraft industry was the most advanced in the world.

The biggest importer of German aircraft was Japan, whose aircraft industry was technologically far behind its European and American counterparts until the early 1930s. After that time a new elevation of Japanese industry was punctuated by the performance of Mitsubishi’s A6M Reisen (or Zero) fighter, which in the Pacific war was superior to its first American counterparts.

In 1938, alarmed by Germany’s conquests, the British and French started to order military aircraft from their own sources and from the United States, resulting in a new stimulus to American industry. After the United States entered the war in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the domestic production of 20,000 military planes in 1942 and a doubling of production every year thereafter, this from a base of fewer than 6,000 planes a year. A total of 22,000 planes were built in 1942; by 1944 the annual rate had grown to 96,000, including several thousand delivered to the Soviet Union.

From January 1, 1940, to August 14, 1945, the United States produced 300,317 military aircraft. Beginning in early 1942, factories ran 24 hours a day, six to seven days a week. By the end of 1943 the industry labour force had swelled to a high of 2.1 million workers, including tens of thousands of women. The Ford Motor Company plant in Michigan alone turned out 5,476 B-24 bombers in 1944–45. At its peak Douglas Aircraft Company’s production line built one C-47 military transport (the military version of the DC-3) every five hours. By the summer of 1944, 15 airframe builders were producing 23 types of combat aircraft.

To achieve this production level, facilities of existing plants were expanded, new facilities erected, nonaircraft producers (mainly automobile manufacturers) brought into the industry, qualified personnel recruited and trained, and new production processes developed. Nonaircraft producers obtained licenses to build entire products developed by the aircraft industry or acted as subcontractors for aircraft manufacturers. As a result, a revolutionary change in the technology of airframe production occurred, shifting from “job shops” with craft labour to assembly lines with workers of lesser skills. This necessitated greater standardization of parts and job processes because of the complexity of the product. For example, the 5.5-metre (18-foot) nose section of the Boeing B-29 bomber had more than 50,000 rivets and 8,000 different parts procured from over 1,500 suppliers. On the other hand, automobile-engine manufacturers were able to use existing skills to build aircraft engines along mass-production lines in already established factories.

World War II began a differentiation among the aircraft producers. American companies such as Boeing, Martin, and Douglas, which had emphasized larger civil aircraft in the prewar years, became developers of bombers, as did Great Britain’s Vickers, Avro, Bristol, and De Havilland and Germany’s Dornier and Junkers. Focusing on fighters were Curtiss, Grumman, Lockheed, and North American Aviation in the United States; Hawker and Supermarine in Britain; Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf in Germany; and Mitsubishi and Nakajima in Japan.

As a result of the earlier political suppression of its top designers, when the Soviet Union entered into combat with Germany in 1940, it needed to procure American fighters. Production of American designs from American-furnished tooling was carried out in factories evacuated to the east of the Ural Mountains. By 1944, however, fighters from the Yakovlev and Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG) design bureaus had proved to be competent native-design aircraft; they were mass-produced and served in the defeat of Germany.

By the end of the war, airplane production in the United States and Britain had assumed the character largely maintained to the present day. Design, major assembly, and integration of systems in the makers’ factories rather than the complete manufacture of an entire vehicle became the emphasis. Development departments performed most of the engineering, and supplier specialists and vendors complemented and supplemented the aircraft producers’ manufacturing departments and equipment requirements. Only the United States and Britain retained advanced aircraft industries. What remained of the German industry after surrender was transported to the United States, Britain, France, and Russia. French industry had to restart completely, and the Soviet industry, although it survived the war, was not technically advanced. Japan was banned from resurrecting its industry until 1952.

After the war, the Soviet factories and newly established design bureaus were relocated west of the Ural Mountains. Research activities at the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI), the Aeroengine Institute (TsIAM), and schools such as the Moscow Aviation Institute were placed under the purview of the government’s Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP). In 1957 MAP relinquished control of the schools. The design bureaus, given status during World War II, were headed by notables such as Aleksandr Sergeyevich Yakovlev, Artem Ivanovich Mikoyan, and Mikhail Iosifovich Gurevich. Prototypes were also built in these bureau plants, which specialized in particular classes of aircraft. In contrast to Western practice, responsibilities for aircraft types, military and civil, were specified explicitly by the government. (For additional information on the history of specific Soviet design bureaus, see Energia; MiG; Sukhoy; Tupolev.)

The advent of jets and missiles

The development of the jet engine about 1936–37 was the result of independent undertakings in Great Britain by Frank Whittle and in Germany by Hans von Ohain. The first successful test of a turbojet engine was conducted in 1937 in Britain, while two years later the German Heinkel He 178 became the first operational aircraft powered by a jet engine.

Jet power rendered piston-engine military aircraft virtually obsolete following the end of World War II, meaning that the surplus situation of the post-World War I era was not repeated. Nevertheless, a major contraction of the industry occurred in both the United States and Britain; by 1949, in fact, the producers were essentially the same as those of the prewar period. The Korean War saw use of the residuals from World War II, with the exception of two early jet fighters, the Lockheed P-80 and the North American Aviation F-86. Their power plants were furnished by Westinghouse, General Electric, and the Pratt & Whitney division of United Aircraft Corporation. The postwar “Century” series of fighters (i.e., fighters from various companies having an “F-” designation of 100 or higher) stressed supersonic performance, and the first production aircraft capable of flying supersonically for a sustained time was the North American Aviation F-100. Its several innovative characteristics included the use of titanium in the airframe because of the metal’s lightness, strength, and heat resistance (see titanium processing: Aerospace applications).

The Soviet Union entered the jet aircraft field using conventional airframes and either German Junkers Jumo axial-flow jet engines or British Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal-flow engines. The first all-new Soviet jet aircraft, using pirated copies of the Nene that had been upgraded by the Klimov plant, was the MiG-15, which began deliveries to front-line fighter units in 1949. More than 15,000 aircraft of this type were built, including those produced in Soviet bloc countries. The MiG design bureau became the sole producer of Soviet fighters for many years, while the Yakovlev bureau developed several radar-equipped all-weather interceptors (such as the Yak-25, of which some 10,000 were produced). The Tupolev bureau was responsible for all bombers and civil jet transport planes.

By 1958, combat aircraft worldwide had largely achieved supersonic breakthroughs, and a new breed of fighters emerged. Although, with time, the Soviet Union developed larger and faster fighters, initial versions were lacking in performance and weapons capacity. In Britain in the 1960s, Hawker Siddeley Aviation worked on a new type of jet fighter, the Harrier. Adjustment of the angle of the engines’ nozzles allowed the aircraft to take off and land without a runway—the vertical/short-takeoff-and-landing (V/STOL) concept. For the American market, the Harrier was licensed by McDonnell Douglas and produced for the U.S. Marines.

Immediately following World War II, because many veterans wanted to continue or learn flying, American light-plane production soared—33,254 aircraft were sold in 1946, a 455 percent increase over the last prewar sales figures. Although prospects seemed promising, rising retail prices for aircraft, high operating costs for the owner, and other factors caused the market to narrow, and by the mid 1950s only the three light-aircraft industry leaders—Beech, Cessna, and Piper—remained major forces.

With the advent of the Cold War and as the military’s transition to jet aircraft moved into high gear, a new opportunity arose—the development and production of guided missiles. During World War II German researchers had pioneered antiaircraft missiles, submarine-launched solid-fuel missiles, and surface-to-surface missiles, of which the V-2, with a top speed of 5,000 km (3,100 miles) per hour and a range of 320 km (200 miles), was the greatest achievement. The German developments and the researchers themselves provided the foundation for research and development by the victorious countries after the war. Initial postwar missile production began in the early 1950s. The first generation included artillery-like battlefield weapons, antiaircraft missiles, pilotless tactical bombers, and air-launched weapons, with increasing competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Between 1955 and 1958 the United States worked on no fewer than nine missile programs, including ground-to-air defensive systems and pilotless bombers, both of which were also emphasized in Europe. While cooperative efforts existed between Britain and the United States, both Britain and France developed strong independent programs.

Despite the claim of American aircraft manufacturers that they were best qualified to produce missiles, they were faced with significant competition. Nonairframe producers, particularly companies in the electronics field, were considered by the federal government to be as technically well qualified to produce missiles as companies with years of experience as aircraft manufacturers. Thus, the new dependency on electronics technology swept away an important barrier to entry into the production of military aerial vehicles. Completely new facilities were required, and the labour force, already changing as the result of the transition to jets, became increasingly composed of highly skilled scientists, engineers, and technicians. Nonetheless, the traditional aircraft companies were successful in responding to the new technological challenges and the competition. This was attributable to their already having a significant assemblage of top research-and-development personnel and an established position in handling government business. By 1959, of the 16 companies that dominated the U.S. missile business, eight—including the six largest—were traditional aircraft firms. Of the remaining eight, six were electrical and electronics manufacturers, one an automobile manufacturer, and one a subsidiary of a rubber company.