The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF), informally known as the Air Force,[1]or United States Army Air Force, was the aerial warfare service of the United States during and immediately after World War II (1939/41–1945), successor to the previous United States Army Air Corps and the direct predecessor of the United States Air Force of today, one of the five uniformed military services. The AAF was a component of the United States Army, which in 1942 was divided functionally by executive order into three autonomous forces: the Army Ground Forces, the Services of Supply (which in 1943 became the Army Service Forces), and the Army Air Forces. Each of these forces had a commanding general who reported directly to the Army Chief of Staff. The AAF administered all parts of military aviation formerly distributed among the Air Corps, General Headquarters Air Force, and the ground forces' corps area commanders, and thus became the first air organization of the U.S. Army to control its own installations and support personnel. The peak size of the AAF during the Second World War was over 2.4 million men and women in service and nearly 80,000 aircraft by 1944, and 783 domestic bases in December 1943. By "V-E Day", the Army Air Forces had 1.25 million men stationed overseas and operated from more than 1,600 airfields worldwide. The Army Air Forces was created in June 1941 to provide the air arm a greater autonomy in which to expand more efficiently, to provide a structure for the additional command echelons required by a vastly increased force, and to end an increasingly divisive administrative battle within the Army over control of aviation doctrine and organization that had been ongoing since the creation of an aviation section within the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1914. The AAF succeeded both the Air Corps, which had been the statutory military aviation branch since 1926, and the GHQ Air Force, which had been activated in 1935 to quiet the demands of airmen for an independent Air Force similar to the Royal Air Force which had already been established in the United Kingdom / Great Britain. Although other nations already had separate air forces independent of their army or navy (such as the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe), the AAF remained a part of the Army until a defense reorganization in the post-war period resulted in the passage by the United States Congress of the National Security Act of 1947 with the creation of an independent United States Air Force in September 1947. In its expansion and conduct of the war, the AAF became more than just an arm of the greater organization. By the end of World War II, the Army Air Forces had become virtually an independent service. By regulation and executive order, it was a subordinate agency of the United States Department of War (as were the Army Ground Forces and the Army Service Forces) tasked only with organizing, training, and equipping combat units, and limited in responsibility to the continental United States. In reality, Headquarters AAF controlled the conduct of all aspects of the air war in every part of the world, determining air policy and issuing orders without transmitting them through the Army Chief of Staff. This "contrast between theory and fact is...fundamental to an understanding of the AAF."

China Burma India Theater (CBI) was the United States military designation during World War II for the China and Southeast Asian or India–Burma (IBT) theaters. Operational command of Allied forces (including US forces) in the CBI was officially the responsibility of the Supreme Commanders for South East Asia or China. However, US forces in practice were usually overseen by General Joseph Stilwell, the Deputy Allied Commander in China; the term "CBI" was significant in logistical, material and personnel matters; it was and is commonly used within the US for these theaters.

Well-known Allied units in the CBI included the Chinese Expeditionary Force, the Flying Tigers, transport and bomber units flying the Hump, the 1st Air Commando Group, the engineers who built Ledo Road, the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), popularly known as "Merrill's Marauders", and the 5332d Brigade, Provisional or 'Mars Task Force', which assumed the Marauders' mission.

The “Flying Tigers” (Traditional Chinese: 飛虎隊; Simplified Chinese: 飞虎队; Pinyin: Fēi Hǔ Duì; Japanese: フライング・タイガース) was the nickname of the American Volunteer Group, a group of USAAF, USN and USMC pilots recruited under a secret Presidential sanction by Claire Chennault, that formed a fighter group with three squadrons that trained in China and defended the Burma supply line to China prior to the American entry into World War II to fight against Japanese forces.

The AVG did not see combat until December 20, 1941, thirteen days after Pearl Harbor. The Flying Tigers achieved notable success against the forces of Japan during the lowest period of the war for American forces, and gave hope to Americans that they would eventually succeed against the Japanese. The Flying Tigers were credited for destroying almost 300 aircraft with a loss of only twelve of their own in combat. After the dissolution of the AVG in mid-1942 and absorption into the USAAF, the name was applied to its successor military unit, the 23rd Fighter Group, and more broadly to the China Air Task Force and the U.S. 14th Air Force. The shark-faced fighters remain among the most recognizable of any individual combat unit of WWII, and they demonstrated innovative tactical victories when the news in the USA were filled with little more than stories of defeat after defeat at the hands of the Japanese forces at the start of WWII.

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