Link to the RFC/WAA Aircraft Listing

The story of how the U.S. handled its vast war surplus at the conclusion of World War II is massive and complicated. The U.S. government started planning in early 1944 and began putting the infrastructure and bureaucracies into place. There was a highly visible piece of that planning: the disposal of a massive air force no longer needed.

There is much to be told about the planning and execution of the disposal of that air force, but that entire story won’t be told here. But, a large part of the challenge for the planners were the tens of thousands of war-weary and/or obsolete combat aircraft that would be left over after the peace was achieved. These combat aircraft were classified as “tactical” aircraft by the planners, and a thorough review of what possible use could be found for them was made.

A sample B-24 was disassembled to component parts and analyzed. It ended up costing far more in manpower to dismantle the B-24 than was found in the commercial value of the component parts, and most of the aluminum airframe was found only suitable for smelting.

Thus, early on, it was expected that almost all of the tactical aircraft, particularly those war-weary ones, would be scrapped, either overseas in the combat areas or domestically from large storage yards. It was recognized, however, that there could be found uses for a very small percentage of the tactical aircraft. There were some specialized civil applications such as aerial survey, movie-making, foreign aid, and the like. And, it was determined that there may be small market for tactical aircraft to be added to the civil fleet, so provisions were made to offer some tactical aircraft for sale.

And, it was also determined that there was value found in making complex and modern aircraft available to vocational and technical schools, and to high schools or colleges with aviation training courses. A specific program to process such transfers was implemented. Later, this program was widened out to make aircraft available, first, to state and local governments for use as war memorials and, later, to non-profit civic organizations such as veteran groups and Boy Scouts. Included below is a close look at the processes, regulations, time-line, and organizations that administered the educational transfer program.

Surplus War Property Administration

President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9425 in February 1944 to establish the Surplus War Property Administration (SWPA). The intent was to concentrate the development of disposal policy and to designate available federal agencies to manage different parts of the disposal process. SWPA Regulation 1, issued on April 21, 1944, designated the Reconstruction Finance Corp. (RFC) as the disposal agency for surplus aircraft and parts within the continental United States, while the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA) was charged with disposal of aircraft and parts overseas in non-combat areas. The various military services were responsible for aircraft and parts disposal in combat areas.

The RFC was a depression-era government corporation established in 1932 to assist the nation’s financial industry. It morphed into a organization that had its fingers in large parts of the U.S. economy, with numerous subsidiaries such as the Defense Plant Corp. that built aircraft factories. Besides aircraft disposal, the RFC was the primary disposal agency for all domestic surplus from real estate, surplus military bases, defense plants, and a wide range of military equipment and production tooling, to name just a few. The RFC implemented the policies and regulations of the SWPA, the follow-on Surplus Property Board (SPB) its successor organization, the Surplus Property Administration (SPA) and, finally, the War Assets Administration (WAA).

Surplus Property Board

The Surplus Property Act of 1944 was enacted on October 3, 1944. Among its provisions, it established the Surplus Property Board, a three-man board to provide policy direction and management of the war surplus. On January 24, 1945, the SPB established an advisory board with representatives of 19 concerned governmental agencies, including the Navy, Army, and Civil Aeronautics Administration.  Policy studies were completed and a close examination of the problems of World War I surplus management were examined.

The SPB retained the RFC as the disposal agency most of the domestic surplus property. The RFC established the Office of Surplus Property, Aircraft Disposal Division. That office had several sections, including the Education Disposal Section set up to administer educational transfers. The RFC also established a network of sales-storage depots around the country to handle the growing influx of surplus military aircraft that began in early 1945. By the end of 1945, the RFC was operating 29 sales-storage depots, but that number grew and shrunk depending on requirements.

May 12, 1945: SPB Regulation No. 4

The first pertinent regulation issued by the SPB with respect to the education transfer disposal program was Regulation 4 issued on May 12, 1945. Regulation 4 had the catchy title of Disposal of Surplus Aeronautical Property to Educational Institutions for Non-Flight Use, which pretty much said it all. The regulation established Part 8304 that had eight sections addressing transfers from the disposal agency (RFC) to educational institutions, these being defined as “any non-profit scientific or educational institution, organization, or association” that was tax supported or tax-exempt. The regulation included “Exhibit A” that was a listing of all the types of aircraft and equipment that was available, with a “disposal cost” provided for each. For example, an A-26 Invader was $150, a B-17 and B-24 were listed at $350 each, and a P-51 Mustang or FM Wildcat (and most single-engine fighters) were $100 each. All aircraft engines, from a Warner R-500 to the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 to the Packard V-1710 were $10 each. 

Section 8304.4 also contained the requirement that the institution provide a notarized certificate that it was eligible to obtain the aircraft and

“that the property is being acquired to be used only for non-flight instructional, research, or experimental purposes, that it will not be used for any flight purposes, and that property will be disposed of only as scrap and then only after it shall have been rendered completely unfit and useless except for its basic material content.”

Schools began to take advantage of the new opportunity. Among the first RFC educational transfers was combat veteran B-17F s/n 41-24487, named Eager Beaver, that went to the Williamsport Technical Institute at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in June 1945. Others soon followed.

It can be noted that there was no provision in the initial version of Regulation 4 to allow state or local governments to obtain aircraft for use as war memorials through the program. One view taken by the Surplus Property Board was that such memorials were more likely than not going to end up being vandalized with reduction to local eyesores.  Such concern proved to be perceptive in the years to come.

August 21, 1945: SPB Regulation 4 Amended to Allow State and Local Governments to Acquire Surplus Warplanes

However, a different view about memorial aircraft prevailed within the SPB, no doubt due to some political pressure to allow war memorials to be allowed using surplus warplanes. On August 21, 1945, the SPB Regulation was modified by amendment. The regulation was renamed as the (still catchy) Disposal of Surplus Aeronautical Property to Educational Institutions and State or Local Governments for Non-Flight Use.

Thus was allowed state or local governments to obtain surplus aircraft (or components) for educational use also, but also allowed their use as war memorials. Numerous cities began to take advantage of these new provisions and placed their requests. 

Surplus Property Administration

The SBP proved to be short-lived for a number of reasons, not the least was some bureaucratic infighting and the monumental task at hand. The SPB was supplanted by the Surplus Property Administration in September 1945. While the organizational body of the SPA was widened in scope and manpower, the policy charge remained the same: establishment and prosecution of the overall disposal policy of the federal government. With the changes, the RFC nonetheless retained the job of aircraft and aircraft component disposal.

To put the timeline in context: beginning in September 1945, thousands of surplus aircraft, primarily four-engine bombers, were starting to pour into storage yards dotted across the country. Most of the unneeded overseas fighters, light bombers, and medium bombers were scrapped in the combat zones. The heavy bombers, however, were flown back to the U.S. transporting soldiers and airmen home. Once they discharged their passengers, they were flown on the RFC storage yards and declared surplus. In October 1945, the yard at Kingman, Arizona, was receiving as many as a hundred B-17s and B-24s each day. Also coming to the storage yards were fighters and bombers from the many training fields around the U.S. as well as any other aircraft the AAF or Navy determined was no longer needed. And, in fact, as part of the hasty transition from wartime to peacetime, brand-new aircraft just off the production line were also flown to the storage yards, A-26s at Kingman being an example.

December 21, 1945: Revised Regulation 4

A major revision to aircraft disposal was implemented by the SPA on December 21, 1945. Regulation 4 was amended with the new title of  Disposal of Aircraft and Components and Parts of Aircraft. Part 8304 of the federal regulations was widened out to extend beyond educational transfers to encompass the disposal of all surplus aircraft and components. Section 8304.5 addressed tactical aircraft; Section 8304.15 addressed the process of scrapping “commercially unsaleable” flyable aircraft, plus other processes. Section 8304.11 outlined the process for transfer to educational institutions, but it is notable that the following section, Section 8304.12, added “non-profit institutions and instrumentalities” to the disposal regulations. As per an included definition of non-profit institutions, such civic groups as veteran organizations and Boy Scouts were now eligible to receive transfers of surplus aircraft at the prices established in May 1945, with the same restrictions as to purpose and disposal. 

March 1946: Reorganization and Establishment of the War Assets Administration

War surplus property disposal administration went though another consolidation and reorganization in the early months of 1946. Things get really bureaucratically confusing, but here’s the basic sequence: due to an increasingly cumbersome organization, the RFC transferred all of its disposal functions into the War Assets Corporation (WAC). (The WAC itself was the renamed Petroleum Reserve Corp… go figure.) Then, presidential Executive Order 9689 transferred all of the functions of the SPA into the WAC effective February 1, 1946. The executive order also provided that the WAC would be reestablished as the War Assets Administration as a separate agency from the RFC and under the jurisdiction of the Office for Emergency Management on March 25, 1946. Thus, the RFC lost all of its disposal programs to the newly established WAA, and the policy-making jurisdiction of the SPA was also placed into the new WAA. To tidy everything up bureaucratically, on July 1, 1947, the functions of the WAA were transferred back to the SPA which was then renamed as the War Assets Administration. This satisfied statutory requirements imposed by the original Surplus Property Act of 1944.  

The organizational shake-up aside, the period between December 1945 and June 1946 bore the crux of the tactical aircraft disposal process. The first large-scale sale of surplus aircraft was made in February 1946, at Stillwater, Oklahoma. By June, it was decided that the five largest RFC storage lots would be released for sale to the highest bidder. These lots were located at Kingman, Arizona; Walnut Ridge, Arkansas; Ontario, California; Clinton, Oklahoma; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bid announcement was made on June 10, 1946, and awarded on July 1. After that time, those tactical aircraft, numbering nearly 21,000, were off the books as far as the U.S. government was concerned. These tactical aircraft were expected to be quickly scrapped, and most of them were. In any event, they were no longer available to the RFC for educational transfers.

There were, however, many dozens of such educational transfers made in the first six months of 1946. In March 1946, the city of Memphis paid its $350 to obtain B-17F 41-24485, the famous Memphis Belle, from the storage yard at Altus, Oklahoma. Also in March 1946, the city of Los Angeles obtained the equally famous Swoose, B-17D 40-3097.

May 1946: Final Revision to Regulation 4

On May 21, 1946, the WAA issued another revision to Regulation 4. Now under the auspices of the WAA, the regulation rewrote Part 8304 but it retained the same (catchy) title. This final iteration are the regulations under which the sale of the five field-size lots of stored aircraft were made six weeks later. The disposition of tactical aircraft, the declaration of such as scrap or salvage, and the post-sale scrapping restrictions were all established or clarified.

Provisions for educational transfers to schools, local governments, and nonprofit civic organizations were retained, largely unchanged. As noted earlier, though, the pool of available tactical aircraft quickly shrunk after June 10, 1946, when the inventory of the five large storage yards were frozen to allow the bidding process to proceed. After the bids were awarded on July 1, those tactical aircraft were no longer available. There did remain a sizeable number of stored aircraft at Altus, Oklahoma, as well as a variety of smaller storage yards, but the appeal and demand for educational transfers had already waned.

There did remain, however, a small demand for educational transfers. For example, on August 30, 1946, a B-17G was transferred from the RFC lot at Altus to Boy Scout Troop 67 at Polo, Illinois. That B-17G, s/n 42-107215, was subject to the standard agreements imposed by Regulation 4. Looking at a copy of the agreement, the Boy Scout troop certified that the B-17 was for non-flight purposes, that it would be scrapped when no longer needed, and that if it was sold or transferred within the first three years after transfer, approval was required from the disposal agency. And, as can be seen here, the WAA did not provide a bill of sale to the receiving group, only a release of custody. This would prove problematic for the later path of this and many other RFC-transferred aircraft.

In this particular case, the Boy Scout troop tried to sell the B-17G in August 1948, neglecting to abide by the WAA agreement. After several subsequent sales, the U.S. government asserted that, based on the original transfer agreement, it actually owned the aircraft. It ended up that the newest owner (in 1953) had to pay $10,000 to the government to gain legal title. This account is typical of many of those aircraft that were later “sold” by the educational or local governments contrary to the original transfer agreement.

Educational Transfers Come to an End

The last field-size lot of surplus tactical aircraft was announced for auction in April 1947, with eleven aircraft offered at Ontario, California, 46 at Clinton, Oklahoma, and 423 at Altus, Oklahoma. At Altus were contained most of the remaining tactical aircraft including 260 B-24s, 78 B-17s, and 21 P-38s.

On May 12, 1947, it was announced that the winning bid for the Altus aircraft was the Esperado Mining Co. The standard scrapping restrictions remained for these aircraft, and most were subsequently scrapped. There still remained at least 50 B-17s in November 1947, so it was not done quickly. In any event, the source of tactical aircraft for educational transfers was gone with that last May 12, 1947, bid award. 

There may have been a few transfers of utility, trainers, or transport types after May 1947 but records to indicate this have not surfaced. The demand for the educational or memorial transfers had been satisfied by early 1947 and, indeed, many of the receiving institutions were already seeking to dispose of those aircraft they had received in 1945 and 1946.