Jack Towers, who in 1911 was one of the Navy’s first three aviators, is now Vice Admiral Towers, Air Chief of the Pacific. John Pride, one of the first aviators to fly from the deck of the _Langley_, is now a rear admiral with our Pacific aërial task forces. Pioneers of naval aviation such as Admirals Ballentine, Sherman, Clark, Radford, and others are all in the Pacific. These men, none of them much over fifty years old, are practical flying officers. Many of the other men, who for the past twenty years or more have devoted themselves to the development of naval aviation, are also rear admirals. That is fitting, for it was they who kept naval aviation alive in the days of peace. [Illustration] [Illustration] AËRIAL ARMADA _From a Mere Handful of Men and Machines in 1940 the U. S. Army Air Forces Grew Into the Greatest Aërial Task Force That the World Has Ever Known. That Air Force Shortened the War by Years and Helped to Bring Us Total Victory in 1945._ As in World War I, we have seen Army aviation reach the brink of war without being fully prepared. Again we have seen our military leaders and aircraft builders roll up their sleeves and go to work. However, we have never seen anything to equal the development of our Army Air Forces. From a force which numbered hardly more than 100,000 men and a handful of airplanes at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Army Air Forces have grown to be the world’s greatest aërial striking power. On December 7, 1941, Army aviation had 3,000 combat planes, only 1,157 of which were actually fit for first-line duty. In all United States territory we had only 159 four-engined bombers. The Curtiss P-40 was our only fighter in production in any quantity. Less than three years after Pearl Harbor the Army Air Forces could send out 1,000 four-engined bombers on a single raid. Eight or nine hundred fighters could accompany them as escorts. More than 200,000 warplanes have been built in this country since Pearl Harbor, and the Air Forces can boast of thousands of planes instead of hundreds of them. Army Air Forces’ bases are in operation over the entire globe.