Patch Air Force WWII of USAAF “All Gave Some – Some Gave All”

The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF), informally known asthe Air Force, was the aerial warfare service of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II (1939/41–1945), successorto the previous United States Army Air Corps and the direct predecessor ofthe United States Air Force of today, one of the five uniformed military services.

The AAF was a component of the United States Army, which in 1942 was divided functionally by executive order into three autonomous forces: the Army Ground Forces, the Services of Supply (which in 1943 became the Army Service Forces), and the Army Air Forces. Each of these forces had a commanding general who reported directly to the Army Chief of Staff.

The Army Air Forces was created in June 1941 to provide the air arm a greater autonomy in which to expand more efficiently, to provide a structure for the additional command echelons required by a vastly increased force, and to end an increasingly divisive administrative battle within the Army over control of aviation doctrine and organization that had been ongoing since the creation of anaviation section within the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1914.

The AAF succeeded both the Air Corps, which had been the statutory military aviation branch since 1926, and the GHQ Air Force, which had been activated in 1935 to quiet the demands of airmen for an independent Air Force similar to the Royal Air Force which had already been established in the United Kingdom / Great Britain.