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34 World War II brought dramatic changes to the government-aviation partnership. During the war, government intervention in the U.S. economy reached unprecedented heights. While production remained in the hands of private companies, the government’s Office of War Mobilization set prices and ambitious production quotas. Consequently, as historian David Kennedy noted, in 1943 the Allied Powers’ aircraft production outnumbered the Axis Powers’ production nearly four to one (151,761 to 43,100). “Such figures,” Kennedy added, “disguise the fact that the Anglo-American totals include a large number of heavy four-engine bombers, so that Allied superiority is even more marked when the number of engines or the structure weight of the aircraft is compared with Axis totals.”1 The government’s policies sustained a profound impact on commercial air travel. With President Roosevelt’s call for the annual production of 50,000 military planes, the production of commercial airline passenger planes by Boeing, Douglas, and other manufacturers came to a halt. Assembly lines turned out B-17 and B-29 bombers in mass quantities, leaving DC-2 and DC-3 assemblies idle. The War Department requisitioned 183 of the country’s 359 airliners and two-thirds of the airline pilot workforce to transport military personnel and equipment for the war.2 With the remaining passenger planes, the airlines managed to fly on reduced schedules, transporting mostly war personnel. In 1942, the War Department formed the Air Transport Command to coordinate all air, cargo, and personnel travel throughout the country and abroad, enforcing strict priorities for air travel. First priority went to anyone traveling on White House business; military pilots ferrying planes to the war front were given second priority, military personnel and civilians traveling on war business third, and military cargo fourth. Civilians had to wait on standby with vIPs such as ambassadors, corporate businessmen, and war correspondents taking precedence. Even in a primarily tourist city such as A Symbiotic Relationship Forms ◀ c h a p t e r t w o A Symbiotic Relationship Forms ▶ 35 Las vegas, travelers had to be ready to be bumped at any time to give space to someone of higher priority. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Western Air Express Field in Las vegas was immediately activated as a full-fledged military air base, with a name change to Las vegas Army Air Field. As a joint military and civilian airfield housing fighter planes, small gunnery pilot training planes, and commercial airline passenger planes, as well as a destination for civilian crews delivering Boeing B-17 bombers to the U.S. Army Air Corps, the airfield saw its civil and military operations fall under strict wartime travel priorities. According to vern Willis, Las vegas station manager for Western Air Express, “These B-17 bomber ferry crews had the second highest priority for transportation and regularly bumped our passengers off the Western flights to return to their bases. . . . Passengers were patriotic but sometimes felt this was overdoing it. We had to make arrangements to send our passengers on their way by either train or bus.”3 The country became well aware of the sacrifices needed to support the war. Leisure travel by car, train, or plane was strongly discouraged, but heavy military passenger volume kept the airlines in business with filled flights. Airlines reported 80 to 90 percent of their seats filled, and nationwide, they transported more than 4 million passengers.4 Americans were on the move with the war effort, crossing the continent to work in the hundreds of defense plants, to train at the many new and old military bases, and to take to the skies for transport to new war regions around the world. Never before that time in the nation’s history had so many planes transported so many people. In 1945, the end of the war opened the skies for new airlines and more than five hundred passenger planes, and 6.7 million Americans were eager to fly.5 Las vegas became a wartime city, though it was different in size from the giant military and industrial centers of Los Angeles and San Diego. It was home to an active military base, and to the biggest magnesium factory in the nation. Basic Magnesium Incorporated (BMI)—built near the Hoover Dam with an ample supply of water and electrical power for production, a workforce of 6,500 people, and a peak payroll of $1 million per week—by 1945 had shipped 166,322,685 pounds of...

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