Such was the task assigned to an industry that in the previous 12 months had manufactured less than 800 airplanes, and those consisting principally of training planes for foreign governments. The expanding national ambition for an aircraft industry was also shown by the mounting money grants. On May 12 Congress voted $10,800,000 for military aeronautics. On June 15 an appropriation of $43,450,000 was voted for the same purpose. Finally on July 24, 1917, the President signed the bill appropriating $640,000,000 for aircraft. This was the largest appropriation ever made by Congress for one specific purpose, and this bill was put through both Houses within the period of a little more than a week. The figure 22,000, however, scarcely indicates the size of this undertaking, as we were to realize before long. We little understood the infinite complications of fully equipping battle planes. Lacking that invaluable experience which Europe had attained in three years of production, we had no practical realization of the fact that for each 100 airplanes an equivalent of 80 additional airplanes must be provided in spare parts. In other words, an effective fighting plane delivered in France is not one plane, but it is one plane and eight-tenths of another; which means that the program adopted in June, 1917, called for the production in 12 months of not 22,000 airplanes but rather the equivalent of 40,000 airplanes. Let us set down the inventory of the Government's own resources for handling this project. The American Air Service, which was then part of the Signal Corps, had had a struggling and meager existence, working with the old pusher type of planes until in 1914 an appropriation of $250,000 was made available for the purchase of new airplanes and equipment. Shortly after this appropriation was granted, five officers were sent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a course in aeronautics. When the war broke out in Europe in August, 1914, these men constituted the entire technically trained personnel of the Air Service of the United States. By April 6, 1917, we had 65 officers in the Air Service, an enlisted and civilian personnel of 1,330, two flying fields, and a few serviceable planes of the training type. This equipment may be compared with that of Germany, France, and England at the time they went to war. Germany is believed to have had nearly 1,000 airplanes in August, 1914; France had about 300; and England barely 250. America's 224, delivered up to April 6, 1917, were nearly all obsolete in type when compared with the machines then in effective service in France.