This volume deals with the early years of the United States Air Force's effort to build and maintain a strategic striking force, for 1945 through 1953. It discusses the period of reorganization in national defense in the years after the end of the Second World War, as Army Defense Forces dealt with the questions of structure, doctrine, strategy, atomic weapons, and technology. Crucial decisions were made at the end of 1947 and that beginning of 1948, but fiscal austerity limited the new United States Air Force in implementing those decisions. The war in Korea triggered and expansion of the armed forces that culminated in a new look of the Eisenhower administration and emphasized nuclear air power as the foundation of a national strategy of containment and deterrence.