Problems of Plenty: The reconversion of the United States' aerial forces, 1943 – 1949.
Creators: name: Clayton, Mark
Publisher: name: CQUniversity
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 430302
subject: Australian history
classificationCode: 430321
subject: North American history

description: During the Second World War manufacturers in the United States produced in excess of 342,000 aircraft. Almost half of these survived that global conflict and were declared surplus to military requirements. By 1949 the bulk of this surplus aerial armada, history’s largest, had been intentionally dismantled and destroyed. The planning for this massive reconversion commenced years earlier when victory was still far from assured. Throughout North America and in almost every other Allied and Axis nation, thousands of comparatively new aircraft were either hurriedly sold off at massively discounted prices or guillotined into manageable sections and fed into makeshift furnaces that kept burning until the 1960s. With the rapid demobilisation of military personnel, thousands more military aircraft, none more than a few years old, were either dumped at sea, destroyed in-situ or abandoned. It is the only instance of a world power massively and voluntarily disarming itself. 
This thesis addresses the complex strategic, political, economic, and social influences underpinning this mid-century reconversion. Using content analysis, and drawing predominantly on primary source publications and archives, it seeks to determine if and how these unprecedented events were justified. It also examines why there existed such broad consensus, and so little resistance to these mass destruction and fire-sale solutions. It also compares the United States and Australian reconversions, revealing a significant shift in the former’s domestic and offshore justifications, with protracted Lend-Lease settlement negotiations contributing to a deterioration in this post-war relationship. 
This unprecedented destruction and disposal of publicly funded assets was notionally designed to help minimise the risks of post-war inflation and ongoing international conflict. Proponents also claimed this was necessary to protect the economically and strategically important aircraft manufacturing and aluminium industries which ranked then as the nation’s largest employers. Destroying the nation’s vast wartime fleets would guarantee replacement orders for more modern aircraft, thereby safeguarding both these co-dependent industries, and America’s aerial dominance. This thesis argues that these objectives were not achieved and that few of the Congress’s prescribed reconversion objectives, including those pertaining to national security, were ever wholly realised. 
It is further contended that the justifications, when offered, were mostly self-serving arguments of convenience deployed by political, industry, military, and administrative interests pursuing short-term political and commercial ends. By capitalising on internal divisions, widespread confusion within the executive, inflation-induced anxieties, and war-weariness, and by demonstrating a shared disregard for the truth, ethical conduct or peace-time standards of professional integrity, these interests were able to successfully prosecute the case for rapidly destroying and dispersing the nation’s wartime aerial forces.