After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the declarations of war by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on America in December 1941, the nation mobilized for war and Perry Countians prepared for challenge and sacrifice. War production monopolized almost 50% of the American economy. In Perry County in 1941, an Army training aircraft crashed near Blain, killing its pilot. In 1942, rationing of consumer goods affected families and communities, and after German U-Boats decimated American oil tankers carrying petroleum from the Gulf of Mexico to the East Coast during the spring and summer, a gasoline shortage gripped Pennsylvania throughout the war. Fearing the German Luftwaffe, aircraft spotters worked from towers near Blain, Millerstown, Liverpool, Duncannon, and Newport, and local towns held blackout drills. In Duncannon, the Aldon Products Company plant shifted from making kitchen knives to bomb cases. In 1943, price controls brought an unprecedented and controversial expansion of federal power as the Office of Price Administration fought inflation by setting prices for goods, especially food and lodging. Unemployment, which had been as high as 19% in 1938, plummeted during the war, and millions of women entered the workforce. In 1944, local headlines reported the gathering of 1963 bags of milkweed pods to fill life jackets, a pulpwood drive for cardboard packaging, a large junk parade in Bloomfield led by Carson Long Institute cadets and drum corps, a call to plant victory gardens and attend a Red Cross rally, and the collision of two Navy training planes near Millerstown in which two pilots died. In 1944 the Allies invaded Normandy, France, and in 1945 victory in Europe and Japan was celebrated as the war ended. From 1941 to 1945, the period brought sad goodbyes, separation, homesickness, fear for the safety of young men and women, and service marked by commitment and sacrifice.