Merely the packing of this equipment was a work of great size. It required, for instance, 7,500,000 board feet of seasoned lumber for the crates, besides large quantities of nails, bolts, clamps, wire cable, paint, and roofing paper, and also tools for the packers. A lumber mill employing 195 operatives was set up merely to resaw, tongue, and groove the lumber for boxes and crates. The 2,000 airplanes returned to the United States represented practically all of the great aërial equipment of the A. E. F. which was saved for use after the war. The sales of our used airplanes abroad after the armistice, to either governments or individuals, were practically nothing. The remaining thousands of airplanes which had once borne the American insignia aloft were stripped of their salvageable materials and burned in great bonfires, the pyres of original investments running up into millions of dollars. This seeming profligacy was harshly criticized by those in this country who did not understand the conditions; but, when those responsible for the destruction had put in their defense, the criticism ceased. The life of airplanes in use or in storage is short at best. Thousands of the A. E. F. planes had given considerable service, either at the training fields or at the front. The average life expectancy of these ships was probably less than three months. There was no sale for them abroad--France already owned many more airplanes than she could possibly use up, and the attempts of the Air Service to sell used planes to individuals ended in complete failure. To knock down these machines, box them, subject them once more to the deteriorating effects of the salt humidity of a transatlantic voyage, and to reassemble them in the United States, would still further impair their condition and still further abbreviate their average life. There was also to be considered the expense of maintaining soldiers in France to protect this _matériel_ for several months, the expense of preparing it for shipment, and finally,--the chief cost,--the expense of transporting it to the United States. The question was whether it was good business to spend all this money for the sake of returning to the United States materials which at best would have a useful life of only a few weeks, and which, because of the surpluses of new or little used airplanes already on hand, might never be used at all. The War Department did not hesitate in its answer. It ordered the sale or destruction of all A. E. F. airplanes of this class; and, since sale proved to be impossible, the order meant their destruction.