the air force

The men on the ground are especially important to the Air Force in bad weather. These Air Force sergeants, highly trained technically, are guiding in F-86 Sabrejets and F-94 All- Weather jets that protect the Atlantic Coast cities. During World War II, the Army Air Force dropped nearly three million tons of bombs on the enemy and destroyed more than fifteen thousand enemy planes. The air forces grew to almost two and a half million men and eighty thou­sand planes.

All during World War II there had been argument about making the Air Force a separate branch of the armed services. When the war was over, this was done. The Air Force became a sepa­rate Department on September 18, 1947, on equal terms with the Army and Navy, under the Secretary of Defense. When the fighting broke out in Korea in 1950, the Air Force took on wartime duties as an independent branch of the armed services. It controlled the sky over Korea throughout the fighting. The most widely followed air action during this fighting was the battles between U.S. Air Force Sabrejets and Russian-built MiGs. The Sabrejets downed 800 MiGs while losing only 58 planes.