50,000 A YEAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 108, 2 November 1940, Page 10

50,000 A YEAR

AMERICAN PLANES

THE ROOSEVELT PROGRAMME

PLANT EXPANSION

One of the great American steel corporations—Alleghany Ludlum—publishes a house journal., "Steel Horizons," normally devoted to that particular industry, but its most recent issue to arrive in New Zealand is given wholly to American aviation, because, the foreword states: "In all America no subject is more discussed. And yet, what is our air force programme? Some call this decade the 'Flying Fortress,' but it is much more than that, because it might have deserved such a name without the sudden terrible prominence into which war has thrust aviation. Rather it is a decade which has acquired overnight the stature of a giant of destruction and, conversely, of protection—an active measure of the ability of nations to continue to exist."

Authorities in American aviation discuss in this issue the "50,000 Planes a Year Programme" which the Roosevelt Government has launched for the safety of America and " democratic peoples. Only a few of the striking facts set out can be summarised here.

Mr. T. P. Wright, a vice-president of the Curtiss Wright Corporation and a member of the National Defence Advisory Committee, presented the broad facts of the industry. On July 1, 1940, aircraft floor space totalled 10,000,000 square feet and 4,500,000 square feet for engines and propellers. The "capacity production" rate was about 10,200 planes (military and commercial) and 21,000 engines and propellers a year. Employees in July totalled over 100,000. A fourfold expansion was therefore ahead if the 50,000-plane programme was to be achieved.

The increase in the army and navy air/ services had, until a year or so ago, been at an extremely low rate, increasing for the army from about 1000 aircraft in 1937 to 2800 in July last, and for the navy from 1000 to about 1800. Superhuman efforts were needed to expand production.

The 50,000-planes-a-year programme this authority understands as building "production capacity" to that figure, by stages, with 20,000 planes for the army and 5000 for the navy as the first objective. Factory and plant expansion and new factories, he considers, will cost at the very outset nearly 600,000,000 dollars.

GERMAN PRODUCTION

Laurence D. Bell, president of the Bell Aircraft Corporation, admits the magnitude of the expansion task, but voices complete faith in the nation's industrial capacity to reach the output aimed at.

"We have reached the time when it is necessary to step from experimentation and development into volume production," he wrote. "In 1.938 I made an exhaustive study of the German aircraft industry and the German air force. I .found to my amazement that the Germans were producing 30 Messerschmitt 109 single-seater planes a day—or nearly 10,000 a year. Comparative records were being made with heavy J bombers, reconnaissance, and training planes. ... It was impossible for me to convince my personal friends that Germany's aircraft industry was years ahead of us in the science of aircraft volume production

. . . but our Army Air Corps and our naval aviation knew the situation over there, and so did our president."

He placed the total capacity of Germany's aviation industry in 1938 at 35,000 planes annually, achieved after five years of intense development. America could equal or surpass that performance if world events demanded.

Other sections of the journal dealt with the expansion plans of several of the larger aircraft and engine manufacturers, doubling, trebling, and more the numbers of men employed; the programme of training 45,000 student pilots for the next .twelve months (more than a fourfold increase); of engineers and specialists in many sections; advances in machine tool methods; utilisation of new alloys; and as vast a companion development in aerodrome and ground facilities, for though the fields now number 2400, only 200----odd accommodate big transports and big bombers. Provision was recently made by the American Government for votes totalling 250,000,000 dollars for forty-three new major airports, but, the airport section states, some hundreds must be built or rebuilt to meet future, or emergency, needs.

Each of the writers admits that 50,000 a year is a stupendous programme; each states confidently that it can, and must, be achieved.