PRODUCTION OF AIRCRAFT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 November 1940, Page 9

PRODUCTION OF AIRCRAFT

SNAGS IN STANDARDISATION. Air frames and aero-engines cannot be turned out in the same way as mo-tor-cars, simply because they are not similarly standardised over a given period of time, writes Mr J. M. Spaight in the “Spectator." Mass production of cars is possible because it is only a matter of feeding plastic metals to huge hydraulic presses which stamp them into the required shape in the appropriate dies. The machine-tools needed for the process are themselves enormously costly and only an immense and uninterrupted outflow of the product would make the provision of them an economic proposition. They are worth installing if the volume of the output is of great magnitude and the type of the product is stabilised; otherwise they would quickly involve the bankruptcy of the firm concerned. In aircraft production there can be no 1 such steady and unimpeded flow of output. There are snags in the stream; they are known as modifications. There are bigger boulders, too; they are known as changes in design. They are, combined, the nightmare of the production executive, but they are at the same time the beautiful dream, the rosy vision of higher performance, of the design staff. A nuisance to the producer, they are the essential prerequisite of that improvement in quality which means superiority in the encounter in the clouds.