This figure, indeed, is an estimate; but it is a close estimate. It is an estimate because, at the time this is written (July, 1921), the liquidation of the war aircraft industry is not yet quite complete. Four contractors’ claims are still unsettled, and surplus worth less than $18,000,000 remains unsold. Therefore, even if the estimated cost of settling the claims and the estimated recovery from the sale of surplus are grossly inaccurate, such errors cannot greatly affect the total estimate. The last official financial statement on the war business of the Air Service, dated April 23, 1921, showed that the net cost then was $738,133,972.28, leaving in the Treasury at that time an unexpended balance of $419,936,801.20, and this cost was still to be reduced by recoveries from the sale of surplus and by reimbursements of overpayments made to contractors in the settlements. Thus we have, as the cost of the war air program, the figure $720,000,000--not half the billion and a half alleged by the critics to have been wasted. But what happened to the $720,000,000? Was it wasted? What did we get for it? The answers to these questions may be a revelation to those who have accepted the common misstatement that the whole project ended in a colossal failure. First, airplanes. For the money spent the Army received, not a few hundred airplanes, but approximately 19,000. When the money was appropriated, those in charge of the air program, and the public, too, expected these funds to produce airplanes in numbers sufficient to darken the skies. Well, here was the sky-darkening cloud of them--19,000 planes, produced and delivered to the Army. And at least half this number consisted of “service” planes, as distinguished from training machines. The average value of an airplane without engine may be conservatively placed at $6,000. Thus, the planes delivered on the war orders were worth $114,000,000, a sum which accounts for nearly one-sixth of the total war expenditure made by the Air Service. In round numbers, the American industry produced 12,000 of these planes before the armistice, and afterwards, during the termination of the work, completed production on 1,500 that were unfinished. The remaining 5,500 were purchased from the French, British, and Italian industries. Those who criticize the administration of this branch of our war industry commonly lose sight of the fact that all the foreign airplanes procured by us were bought with the funds appropriated for the Air Service.