It was becoming clear in 1939 that direct U.S. involvement in World War II was only a matter of time. Training approximately five hundred pilots a year, the United States Army Air Corps was severely outmatched by the warring powers of Europe and Asia. What could be done to ramp up U.S. air power and train two hundred thousand pilots to take on the Axis powers? The answer could only be realized in the United States of America. —James Willis