At the end of World War II civil aviation inherited an infrastructure in which the state of the art had necessarily been accelerated beyond normal commercial pressures and for which the research and development costs had been funded by military resources and requirements. Within the UK a patchwork quilt of military aerodromes were progressively run-down as military activities decreased and were either adopted by the state, the municipal authorities or private ownership. The possibilities for civil aviation development seemed boundless and to many communities the availability of airline services were deemed sufficiently desirable, because of ancillary benefits, to justify the subsidization of the airport and navigation facilities inherited.