By Rickey Robertson
The Louisiana Maneuvers was a pivotal part of history of American history and we still remember this event in our area. The United States Army was so small in 1939 that it was ranked 17th on a world wide scale of armies in the world. The army had only 190,000 men in its ranks, with 45,000 of these stationed overseas. But what was even more alarming was the lack of equipmentthat the army had in its inventory. Many of the active duty Army and National Guard units were using World War I uniforms and equipment and weapons, and some units actually having in their inventory equipment from as far back as the Spanish-American War of 1898. But one thing that was non-existent and was much needed by the army was observation aircraft.