アメリカ航空機産業の初期段階1903-1939年

抄録

It was because of urgent military needs caused by World War II that the American aircraft industry developed its own method of mass production different from other industries such as automobile. But why and how was it possibly materialized? The present writer's interest stays in analyzing the pre-war stage of the aircraft industry so as to understand the historical and economic background of its process of development. Starting as a military industry during World War I, the aircraft industry survived the war as commercial plane producing industry. Air transportation of mails and passengers opened up to the air line business in the middle 1920's helped the aircraft industry widen the market for commercial planes. In 1929, under the leadership of the airline industry, regulated industry like as public utilities or railways which was out of focus of the Anti-Trust Act, aircraft manufacturers including engine producers joined in forming holding companies. Three biggest holding companies thus formed were, AVCO, UATC, and Curtiss-Wright. By joining holding company groups, aircraft companies enjoyed far more advantages than independent companies, because they could establish demand-supply relations within the same group and because they acquired a close tie with the Wall Street financiers. Without these advantages they were never able to innovate new technolgies of aircraft production, which successfully enabled them to get military contracts as well. Holding companies lasted no long, however, because they were forced to dissolve themselves under the New Deal policies which were generally against industrial monopolies. After 1934 aircraft manufacturers, now all independent, competed one another in seeking overseas markets. In spite of the Neutral Act the world wanted efficient American military planes, and as soon as the Act was revised in 1939, orders from England and France poured in the U.S. only to pull the aircraft industry out of recession ahead of other industries.