Survival in the Air Age; A Report by the President's Air Policy Commission
Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1948. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Wraps. 24 cm ix, [1], 166, [4] pages. Wraps. Maps. Tables. Illustrations. Fold-out charts. Cover has some wear, soiling, and the top of the spine is torn/chipped. Thomas Knight Finletter (November 11, 1893 – April 24, 1980), was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman. In World War I, he served with the 312th Field Artillery advancing to the rank of captain. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1920 and the New York Bar in 1921. Finletter practiced law in New York until he began his government service in 1941, as a special assistant to Secretary of State Cordell Hull on international economic affairs. In 1943, he was appointed executive director and later deputy director of the Office of Foreign Economic Coordinator (OFEC). In this post, he was in charge of planning economic activities related to liberated areas and was in control of matters of foreign exchange and matters relating to the operations of the Alien Property Custodian. In 1945, Finletter acted as consultant at the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco.
He returned to public service July 18, 1947, when President Harry S. Truman established a temporary, five-man commission that inquired into all phases of aviation and drafted the national air policy report. This commission was sometimes known as "The Finletter Commission". Finletter served as chairman of the Air Policy Commission which, on January 1, 1948, sent to the president the report entitled "Survival in the Air Age." After the war Finletter headed a task force (the Air Policy Commission) on the future of U.S. air power. Finletter was the principal author of the commission’s influential 1948 report, “Survival in the Air Age,” which led to the rapid expansion of the U.S. Air Force. The report warned that the Soviet Union would reach air parity with the United States by 1952 and advocated improving military preparedness by increasing the budget of the Air Force and the number of military aircraft in the U.S. fleet . Subsequently, the Air Force tripled in size.
During the early years of the Cold War, American business was unusually united in its suspicion of vastly increased military spending, especially if it risked a budget deficit. An important exception was the aircraft industry, which unlike most other sectors had trouble finding adequate civilian demand after World War II reconversion. Facing mounting losses and in many cases the real risk of firm failure, representatives of firms manufacturing airframes and engines sought government assistance. This came in the form of the President's Air Policy Commission of 1947-8, whose report recommended substantial emergency military appropriations to ensure the survival of the industry. These recommendations, in turn, were easily passed through Congress, resulting in the most significant extension of military-industrial activity until the Korean War and cementing the outsized role of the newly formed Air Force in the new political economy of defense procurement.
The Air Policy Commission (also known, for its chair, as the Finletter Commission) was a historically pivotal instance of business leadership cooperation. There were at least two dimensions of this cooperation. First, work of the Commission helped forge a new pattern of competitive collaboration between business and the state, in which government outlays would provide liquidity and solvency to an industry deemed essential to the national interest. The industry would remain private, rather being nationalized, and competition between multiple capitalist firms, rather than a single consolidated entity, would remain the ideal. Second, the Commission mobilized a notable degree of cooperation between different firms, who converged on a desired remedy. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Cold War, Air Policy, National Security, Military Transport, USAF, Naval Aviation, Electronics, Missiles, John McCone, Aircraft Manufacturing
[Book #20353]
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