This gallery contains airplanes from the formative years of air transportation in the United States. After 1926, the airlines were created to carry first the air mail and later passengers in regular service. With direct government support, together with a technological revolution that produced modern all-metal airplane by the early 1930s, air travel made tremendous strides in speed, safety, and reliability. By World War II, the United States had a well-developed modern network of air routes and airlines linking every state and reaching across the oceans.