Europe after World War II—The Rise of the European Economic Community

ince the 1950s, Europe has been on a journey to consolidate its economic power through a close association of its several states. Significant developments during that period are now having an important impact on the evolving global market. Specifically, the evolving equal­ity between Europe and the United States, and the resulting competition between European and American commercial interests in international civil aviation, is a direct result of these develop­ments. It is important, therefore, that we under­stand something of the history of the relationship between these two great areas of commerce.

The European-American Relationship

The primary advances in commercial aviation during the first part of the 20th century were made in Europe. The French builder Deperdus – sin, for example, flew a 100-mile per hour air­plane in 1912, a feat technologically far ahead of the Americans. European manufacturers supplied essentially all of the military aircraft used in World War I. French, German, and English man­ufacturers produced the world’s most advanced aircraft designs and the most powerful aircraft

engines. Further, the countries of Europe led the way in creating, organizing, and funding com­mercial passenger aviation immediately after World War I and began scheduled international aviation transportation as early as 1919. Amer­ica had to play catch up during the 1920s, and American business interests had a hard time try­ing to figure out how the airplane could make any meaningful contribution to the progression of commerce in the United States.

The first airlines in the United States dur­ing the 1920s often looked to Europe to supply their aircraft needs. Juan Trippe, for example, began Pan American service in 1927 with Fokker Trimotors, as that airplane set the standard with its cantilevered, monowing design. The Fokker departed from the biwing, wire-and-fabric air­planes of that and prior decades. This design was largely emulated in the Ford Trimotor in the 1920s.

But the pendulum began to swing in favor of the Americans about this time when Fred Rent – schler and Pratt & Whitney developed the power­ful Wasp radial engine, which would supply the motive power for the newest and most advanced designs of aircraft in the world beginning in 1927. In fact, aircraft would begin to be designed around the new radial engines.

The work of the small group of engineers at the National Advisory Committee on Aero­nautics would produce cowl designs and other innovations that would lead to the introduction in 1933 of the twin-engine Boeing 247, broadly acknowledged as the first modern airliner with its low monowing, retractable landing gear, and stressed all-metal skin design. At the same time, the fortunes of the leading European aircraft manufacturer, Fokker, went into decline due to design failures that resulted in stress fractures in its wooden wing. The first known failure of this wing caused the highly publicized crash of a Fokker Trimotor in 1931, resulting in the deaths of all passengers, including Notre Dame coach­ing legend Knute Rockne.

In addition, the vast geographical area of America proved to be a fitting laboratory for the evolution of the commercial airliner. Naviga­tional developments in the United States, begin­ning with its beacon system and followed by radio navigation, would lead the world in avia­tion technology as the airlines of America took to the skies. Beginning with the radial engine, the United States would take the lead in civil avia­tion technology and never look back.

Production of state-of-the-art transport air­craft intensified in the United States during the 1930s as Douglas inaugurated the highly suc­cessful Douglas Commercial (DC) series of air­planes. Lockheed joined the contest with the Constellation, Boeing countered with the first pressurized passenger airplane (the 309), and then came World War II.

The consolidation of military and political power by Germany during the 1930s, and the resulting devastation visited on the countries of Europe during the six years of World War II left the United States in a position of preemi­nence in all things relating to commercial avia­tion by 1945. America had a ready-made fleet of commercial-type aircraft, the most advanced of which included the Douglas DC-4 and the Lockheed Constellation. Immediately after the end of the war, advanced types of even larger aircraft began rolling off the American assembly lines, lines that had been set up during the war to produce the massive military airlift capacity of the Allies. The entire war production plant of the United States was now turned to peaceful and commercial ventures. At the same time, Europe lay in ruins.

In 1945, there were widespread hunger, unemployment, and housing shortages through­out the continent of Europe. Raw materials and foodstuffs were in short supply. Industries lay idle, or almost so, as much-needed machinery and capital proved elusive. European cities were little more than acres of rubble, an estimated 500 million cubic tons of it in Germany alone. A breakdown of moral, social, and commercial, life was threatened. The occupying forces of the Soviet Union were entrenched in much of Europe, and the expansionist Stalin government in power in the U. S.S. R. after World War II cast a covetous eye over the continent.