While the airlines and air racers were setting new records the clouds of war starting to gather over both Asia and the Europe. When Howard Hughes beautiful H-1 came out in 1935 it looked like a space ship. At better than 350mph it set new records and showed the world the future of aviation. Shortly after that, in a resurgent Germany, new records were being set with racing planes that were thinly disguised fighter technology development platforms. German military pilots were also gaining combat experience in Spain as well as well. The German bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in Spain was a dark stain on the golden era. The Versailles treaty had been all but forgotten.
The British were not idle during this time. They were doing the same thing with the R.J. Mitchell's racing designs and in the process ended up creating what would later become the Spitfire.
In 1933 Italy's Italo Balbo had flown an entire squadron of flying boats across the Atlantic to Chicago, IL and back with only two losses. By 1937 The Japanese were in China and by 1939 their advancements in long range medium bombers and carrier borne aircraft were impressive.
In America, the military was still suffering from tight budgets and a gradual crawl out of the depression. The Army Air Service had been elevated to a Corps and then to the U.S. Army Air Force but it was still part of the army. Both Germany and Britain had independent air forces. The English took the WW1 RFC & RNFC and folded them into the Royal Air Force or RAF. The Germans had developed the Luftwaffe or Air Weapon.
During the 1930s the U.S. Army Air Force had been making some advancements especially in heavy bombers (one design was even sold to Japan) and fighters but the overall state of the military was weak. In both Japan and America the respective navies had invested heavily in aircraft carriers and both navies had internal turf battles between the 'carrier admirals' and the 'battleship admirals' aka the Big Gun Club. The advantage the Americans had was the relatively civil rivalry between the army and navy. Naval and Army aviators were often competing for records to help their branch obtain the meager peacetime appropriations that were available.
In Japan, the relationship between the services bordered on dysfunction. There were even assassination attempts on senior officers of the opposing services. The Japanese military had an artificially difficult pilot training school system designed to weed out all but the very best aviators. This led to a small cadre of extremely elite pilots that were not easily replaced. When combined with some of the excellent airplanes that Japan produced and the combat experience gained over China, the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army could boast what were possibly the best air arms in the world if not the most rigidly disciplined.
In comparison both the British and Americans had civilian pilot training programs designed to get as many air minded young men as possible pre-trained as a pool of quickly trainable combat pilots. Even Germany had done something like this with their glider clubs. In addition, by 1939 America had developed both domestic and international airlines that spanned the globe. Pan Am pilots had pioneered both trans Atlantic and trans Pacific flying and even had forward bases across the Pacific. Lindbergh himself had been the pathfinder for many of these routes. This gave America a large pool of experienced flying boat pilots like Edwin n Musick who could be used to train large numbers of new men. The wealth of experience these men brought to the army and navy was immeasurable.
Sadly America was behind the modern world in fighters, torpedo planes and overall numbers. Despite this the services trained as hard as they could and prepared a cadre of future pilots and leaders. One extremely important thing the U.S. Navy did in 1933 was to invest in three new, ground up designed aircraft carriers of the Yorktown class. By 1941 the U.S. Navy had the three best aircraft carriers in the world.
Millbrooke, A. (2006) Aviation History. Englewood, CO: Jeppesen
Jackson, R. (2007) The History of Aviation, New York, NY: Amber Books Ltd
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