WAR PRODUCTION

Grey River Argus, 3 June 1943, Page 5

WAR PRODUCTION

IN UNITED STATES Phenomenal Increases [British Official Wireless!. RUGBY, June 1. Many impressive facts of United States production were revealed when Mr J'. F. Byrnes, Director of the United States Office of War Mobilisation, made his first broadcast since the creation of the office last Friday. Of shipping, Mr Byrne said: “In the first months of this year we completed 100 fighting ships and during this year we will double the size ot the Fleet. That accomplishment is without parallel in history. These are fighting ships —battleships, aircraftcarriers, cruisers, destroyers, escort ships and submarines. They do not include several thousands landing craft completed In the past five months. This year’s warship construction, will be marked by two special achievements —carriers to give air coverage to our convoys and to our attacks and escort vessels to destroy enemy submarines. The submarine is still, a deady menace, but our attack against the submarine is even more deadly. Recently one of our convoys was set upon by a pack of Nazi submarines. They got one of our merchantmen, but we got four of their submarines.” Referring to merchant shipbuilding, Mr Byrnes said: “The United States is building merchant ships four times as fast as they are being sunk.” He disclosed that more than 1000 oceangoing cargo ships and almost 100 tankers had been built in the past 12 months, compared with 50 ships and 22 tankers in the previous year. Sixty thousand aeroplanes had been built in the same period, compared with 10,143 in the previous year. , Equally striking were the Army figures. “In all the World War,” he said, “we produced one piece of artillery for each 45 soldiers. We made 100.000 pieces of anti-aircraft cannon in May last year, and we produced three times as many pieces of artillery for the ground troops as we did in all the 19 months of the last war. Production of high explosive powder has been six times .as great as during the last war. In the year ended June 1, 1941, our ordnance plants turned out 25,000 machine-guns and sub-machine-guns. In the year following we turned out 700,000. In the last year we turned out 1,500,000, bringing our total to 2,225,000 since America began to rearm. In the three years’ period we manufactured 44,830,000 bombs.”