[Homer_J_Simpson]

This is from the Sunday supplement, “News of the Week in Review.”

[Since March 1, 1933] the army has been increased from an enlisted strength of 116,000 men to 165,000 . . .

That may not be enough. It is about the number of American troops who landed in North Africa in 1942. What is the ratio of support personnel to front-line troops? Something like 3 to 1?

[henkster]

This “Big Buildup” is NOTHING. Compared to what we were going to need, and what we were eventually going to produce, the amounts of money spent and materiel produced is insignificant. I suppose it was a start, and got industry thinking about how it would have to re-tool for war. Another benefit was this gave us a chance to start building modern weapons systems on a small scale so that we could work out bugs and defects. Thus, the weapons systems that went into mass production later were improved versions of “prototypes” produced from this program. Examples include the Essex class aircraft carriers, which were modified Enterprise class, and the Iowa class battleships, which were improved from North Carolina/South Dakota class ships.

[BroJoeK]

Note the report says US defense spending averaged about $1 billion per year during the 1930s.

In today's terms, that would be less than $200 billion per year, or around 1/3 of our current military efforts.

And, it's interesting to consider the numbers of ships listed -- hundreds of ships, with dozens of new ones completed each year. By contrast, today's fleet is about 300 ships, with maybe a dozen new ones each year.

But total naval tonnage today is several times greater than the 1.6 million tons of 1938.

So, I think it's fair to say that by 1938, US military spending, even for the Navy, was no more than half of the effort we make today.

[BroJoeK]

"[Since March 1, 1933] the army has been increased from an enlisted strength of 116,000 men to 165,000 . . ."

Oh, and by the way... did anyone else notice that not once in this whole article does the word "tank" appear?

Do you suppose that our military planners might be overlooking something?

[BroJoeK]

"First on the list is aircraft. The Army can get the planes, industry is equiped to provide the engines; but it is a different story when it comes to bombsights. At this moment their production in the quantity that would be needed in an emergency would be impossible.

"Every effort is being made to solve this aspect of the problem, and army authorities say that the answer appears in sight."

This is a fascinating discussion of the supposedly super-secret Norden bomb-sight.

You will be happy to learn that all the production problems were eventually overcome, but probably not before a certain spy passed on the design to the Germans, in 1938!

Norden Bomb Sight