American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

Under the leadership of Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and, after July, of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the Army initi- ated a large expansion designed to protect the United States and the rest of the western hemisphere from any hostile forces that might be un- leashed from the European conflict. The Army expansion was matched by a naval program designed to give the United States a two-ocean Navy strong enough to deal simultaneously with the Japanese in the Pacific and Germany and its new war partner, Italy, in the Atlantic (if they de- feated Great Britain). Both expansion programs had the overwhelming support of the American people, who were now convinced that the dan- ger to the United States was very real but remained strongly opposed to entering the war. Congressional appropriations between May and October 1940 reflected the threat. The Army received more than $8 billion for its needs during the following year, a greater sum than it had received to support its activities over the preceding twenty years. The munitions program approved for the Army on June 30, 1940, called for the procurement of all items needed to equip and maintain a 1.2- million-man force by October 1941, including a greatly enlarged and modernized Army Air Corps. By September the War Department was planning to create an Army of 1.5 million soldiers as soon as possible.

PARACHUTE TEST PLATOON The Army had considered organizing an "air infantry" as early as May 1939 in light of German air-landed forces' 1938 seizure of the Vienna airport. In January 1940 the Army decided to study the feasibility of air infantry and the air transport of ground troops. Germany's use of airborne troops in their May 1940 invasion of the Low Countries gave these studies added impetus. On June 25 the War Department directed the Infantry School to organize a parachute test platoon. Two officers and 49 enlisted men were selected from over 200 volunteers, and the platoon undertook a rigorous course of physical training and small-unit tactics, with classes on parachute packing and parachuting. The first platoon member jumped from an aircraft on August 16. The first mass jump occurred on August 29; in September the War Department authorized constitution of the 1st Para- chute Battalion, marking the Army's entry into this new form of warfare.