Page 24 - Volume 10 Number 7

The Air Capital of the World: “Wichita at War”
During World War II, the prairie city became a major contributor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Arsenal of Democracy” that helped to crush the Axis powers into submission.
by Edward H. Phillips
By 1939, the United States was slowly emerging from the Great Depression that had decimated the national economy for nearly 10 years. Job growth was increasing each month as thousands of people abandoned the soup lines for work in America’s industrial complex. In the words of a popular song of the time, “Happy days are here again.”
Across the Atlantic Ocean, however, Europe was plunging into another major war with Germany as Great Britain and France pledged to come to the aid of a besieged Poland. A majority of Americans paid little attention to the daily headlines about “Europe’s new war” while staunchly supporting the Roosevelt Administration’s isolationist policy. Despite his constant assurances that the cream of America’s youth would not be sent to fight Europe’s war, in 1940 the president had accepted the fact that unless the British and French defeated Germany quickly, the day would come when the United States would be forced to take up arms against Adolf Hitler. To make matters worse, the militarists in
Tokyo had cast their lot with Berlin along with Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini, creating the Tri-Partite Pact.
During the closing months of 1939 in Wichita, Kansas, the boss of Boeing Airplane Company’s Stearman Division, Julius Earl Schaefer, was not concerned about the war in Europe as much as he was about finding more floor space to build airplanes. Three weeks before Germany struck Poland, the United States War Department had awarded contracts worth $688,888 for Stearman primary training aircraft, with an option for more that could drive the total value to nearly $2 million. The local press summed up the good news: “There was no disguising the pleasure felt at the plant
The Boeing/Stearman factory’s greatest numerical contribution to the war effort was construction of PT-13-, PT-17- and N2S-series primary trainers for the United States Army Air Corps and Navy. The N2S-2 (shown) was powered by a Lycoming R-680-8 radial engine rated at 215 horsepower. More than 120 were built, but the improved N2S-4 was built in greater numbers than the N2S-2 version.
(KANSAS AVIATION MUSEUM)