410 : The Atlantic 



land, to Nova Scotia in the first air delivery of fighting planes. By 

 September American and Canadian pilots were meeting in Montreal 

 to form the first transatlantic ferry group. By June of 1941 the Army 

 Air Corps was organizing the ferry command to fly airplanes, manu- 

 factured in this country, across the ocean for delivery in England. 

 Later in the same year Pan American Airways completed an agree- 

 ment for delivery of planes to Africa and the Middle East. 



A Naval Air Transport service was established in January of 1942 

 to carry personnel and cargo in connection with navy operations and 

 the Air Transport Command, under Major General Harold L. 

 George, commenced operations to all parts of the world on the first 

 of June. In the fall, it took over the African line operations previ- 

 ously carried out by Pan American Airways. The size and scope of 

 military air operations is well illustrated by the fact that the United 

 States 8th Air Force, in order to carry out a raid over northwest 

 Germany at the end of 1944, assembled a fleet of over 1,300 heavy and 

 medium bombers. 



Commercial air transport services over the Atlantic were resumed 

 in January of 1945 and have been steadily growing in reliability and 

 popularity and frequency of offered services. By the year 1950 over 

 half a million transatlantic air passengers departed from or arrived 

 at American airports. The exact figure is given as 515,154. Of this 

 number approximately 75 per cent were being carried on United 

 States air lines and approximately 25 per cent on foreign air lines. 

 Overseas air mail amounted to approximately nine million pounds 

 and overseas cargo to nineteen million pounds. 



The number of air passengers carried is a significant fraction of all 

 first-class transatlantic passenger services including those of the 

 steamship lines. The carrying of half a million passengers, however, 

 in both directions is less impressive when compared with the ten 

 millions of people that entered this country in a single year during 

 the period of large volume transatlantic services before the world 

 wars began. The carrying of air mail, of course, is significant and 

 important but the volume of goods carried by the transatlantic air 

 lines is insignificant when contrasted either with the needs of trans- 

 atlantic services or the services actually performed by the transatlan- 

 tic cargo carrying ships on the sea. Taken all in all, even at its pres- 

 ent high level of performance aircraft are now performing some- 

 thing like I per cent of the total volume of transatlantic services 

 required in normal times. 



It was once thought that aircraft would open up new routes and 



