in treasure, time, and lives. A lot of people don't realize just how long it took to get our forces rebuilt in WWII.

In 1939, the US military was ranked somewhere around 16th in the world after such powerhouses as Poland and Belgium. The first peacetime draft (a 1 year term) in US history was implemented in 1940. That's when the rebuilding really began. The draft was extended again in 1941 by only 1 vote in Congress. After the war, the Japanese said they read that one vote margin as a sign of American weakness.

Things like the "Lousiana War Games of 1941" didn't exactly inspire confidence. If you look at the old footage, you'll see trucks being driven around with the sign "tank" on them. You'll also see troops training with wooden maching guns. The reason was simple - there were very few tanks and machine guns available.

Several weapons were pushed from the drawing boards to prototypes in 1940-41, including such planes as the P-47, F4U, B-24, 25, 26, and 29 and P-51. Military production ramped up in a big way, both to meet US and foreign (lend-lease) needs. That's when the Great Depression finally came to an end.

Still, it wasn't until much later that the war production was up to full speed. Much of the fighting in 1942 was a holding action, fought by people who'd entered the military before Pearl Harbor and fought by weapons that just weren't up to the job. We sacrifaced a lot of good, experienced people during that time. When you send men up in death traps like the Brewster Buffalo against the Japanese Zero, you might as well write them off as lost. Many of our front line planes in 1942 were obsolete and horribly outmatched. It wasn't until well into 1943 that we had a Navy plane that excelled over the Zero, the F6F Hellcat.

The military production pipeline wasn't just weapons, it was people. Some 16 million men and thousands of women had to be inducted, trained, clothed, transported, fed, and equipped. They served all over the world. Over 500,000 pilots alone were trained in the war years and almost 100,000 planes were built in 1944. However, the pickings were pretty slim in 1942 and into 1943. The air war in Europe was a case in point. Even in late 1943, the 8th Air Force could only send about 350 planes out on a raid. There were no long range escort fighters available, so it wasn't uncommon for 15-20% of the planes to be lost on a single mission. More than once, 60+ planes out of 350 were lost on a single mission. That didn't change until early in 1944.