AIRCRAFT OUTPUT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 127, 29 April 1940, Page 8

AIRCRAFT OUTPUT

ALLIES AND AMERICA. WILD NAZI ESTIMATES. (United Press Association—By Electric 'Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British official un-oiess.) RUGB.V, April 27. The German propaganda machine, after tile very severe Josses sulfereu by the German , navy in the Norwegian campaign, has been at pains to minimise tne importance ot sea power as compared witn air power, and in order to emphasise German superiority in tlie latter lias had recourse to comparative figures of German and American aircrait production. An attempt has been made to prove that the German capacity lar exceeds that of Britain, Franco and the United States, combined. The figures cited are 500,000 workers in the German aircraft industry and 100,000 in the American. The inaccuracy of the German claim is palpable. , For security reasons no precise figures nor the numbers employed in British aircraft production have been published, blit a rough estimate may be deduced from a statement on February 2 by the then Air Minister, who said: “In the field of our aircraft production the numbers already employed to-day are higher than in the [leak period in the last war.” An authoritative source gives the relevant figures for the last war as 004,002. If that figure was already surpassed in February, it is clearly substantially greater to-day. Accepting the German estimates ol their own and the American figures, the British and American totals arc at least equal lo those of Germany, while considerable figures, which are not available, for France and the British Dominions, constitute an ample margin of superiority over Germany. ITALIAN FIGURES. At the beginning of March, 1940, the Italian trade paper Le Vie Dell | Avia estimated Germany’s aircraft industry as capable of producing at the rate of 1000 ’planes a month, but.it pointed out that owing to a lack of raw materials, storage facilities or personnel, it was not producing to capacity. As early as May, 1939, on the oilier hand, the Italian technical periodical Inter Avia cited with approval a Sunday Times report that British aircrait production mad already reached 4000 a month. On April 5, 1940. the American paper the Minneapolis Star stated: “'flie best estimate current of German and Allied air strengths comes from Theodore Wright, senior engineer of the Curtiss Corporation, and an extensive visitor to British, French anti German engine plants. He estimated in a current aviation magazine that the Allied acquisition of ’planes, including those delivered by America, overtook the German production in .January at IGOO each monthly, and that the Allies are now adding ’planes more rapidly than Germany.” With regard to American production an American Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce report published this April gave the figures of 1500 a month, with capacity lor 'considerable further expansion. Not all of this output can, of course, be regarded as available for Allied purchase.