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It had built 149 munitions and aircraft manufacturing plants and constructed depots with 205 million square feet of storage space. By the end of 1942, the Army could house 4.37 million soldiers and provide hospital beds for 180,000 more. military construction expenditures in July of that year alone exceeded those spent during the entire period of 1920 1938. Finally, in December 1941, Congress transferred to the Corps the responsibility for real estate acquisition, construction, and maintenance for Army facilities, including training camps, government-owned munitions plants, air bases, depots, and hospitals.ĭomestic base construction peaked in 1942, as the nation geared for war. In November 1940, Marshall ordered the transfer to the Corps of Engineers of all air base construction in the United States, excluding the Canal Zone.
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After the Destroyers for Bases Agreement of September 1940, the chief of staff, General George Marshall, assigned the Corps the job of constructing air bases in the string of British Atlantic territories from Newfoundland to British Guiana, thereby initiating a program of overseas base construction by the Corps of Engineers that long remained one of its most important functions. Shortly before the United States entered World War II, Congress and the War Department approved the transfer of military construction responsibilities from an overtaxed Quartermaster Corps to the Corps of Engineers.