World War II was the first major conflict in which air power played a critical part. While air power certainly did not win the war, it made a vital contribution to almost every campaign, and was a decisive factor in many of them.

• Air power was a major contributor to victory in major land campaigns such as the German Blitzkrieg, the Japanese assault on Malaysia and the Philippines, the Allied victory at El Alamein, the Russian victories at Stalingrad and Kursk and the D-Day invasion of occupied Europe.

• At sea, while submarines were the biggest sinkers of shipping, aircraft came second, accounting for about a quarter of all ships sunk, including over half of battleships and aircraft carriers. In the battle of the Atlantic, maritime patrol aircraft provided the key to defeating the German u-boats.

• Some of the most important battles of the war were waged primarily by aircraft and anti-aircraft forces. These included the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, the carrier battles of the Pacific war and the strategic bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan.

The air forces of World War II were small in comparison to the huge land armies of millions of men. At their peak, they comprised a little over 40,000 front-line combat aircraft. These 40,000 aircraft were manned by about 130,000 air crew, representing just 0.2% of the 60 million men and women in uniform at the time.

But these relatively small numbers of aircraft and aircrew greatly understate the resources devoted to the air war. When ground crews, training and support personnel are included, the peak military manpower in the air arms of the combatant powers was close to 8 million. This represents about 200 men and women for each front-line combat aircraft, or close to 15% of the total military manpower. Several million more were in anti-aircraft and civil defense units.

In addition to the men and women in the air arms themselves, more than 8 million more were involved, directly or indirectly, in aircraft production. Aircraft production represented perhaps 20% of total manufacturing output, and made especially heavy use of scarce resources such as aluminum, steel alloys, skilled labor and special machinery. during the war about 75% of the world’s aluminum production went to aircraft production.

Between 1939 and 1945, the combatant powers manufactured around 864,000 aircraft - over half of the aircraft that have ever been built. This number is much larger than the peak establishment of front-line aircraft because for every front-line combat aircraft in service several more were used for training, transport and communications, held in reserve or under repair. Also, combat aircraft had a relatively short life; even if they avoided combat damage and accidents, few aircraft survived the stress of combat operations for more than a year.