FIGHTING PLANES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 November 1940, Page 5

FIGHTING PLANES

OUTPUT IN THE UNITED STATES PRIORITY DEMANDED OUTSPOKEN STATEMENTS BY MR STIMSON. ATTACK ON FIRMS CONCERNED. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) WASHINGTON, November 26. Mr Stimson announced that the War Department has appealed to the Priorities Board to halt the expansion of commercial air services on the ground that they are interfering with warplane production for Britain and the United States. President Roosevelt, amplifying the statement by Mr Stimson, said it was obvious that the military aircraft programme must take precedence over the production of commercial planes, and he appealed to the manufacturers to recognise this as the paramount rule. The Government did not want to resort to a priorities order to ensure the production of military planes on schedule. The rule was that the Government aimed to maintain commercial aviation on its present t)cisi s Mr' Stimson attacked the commercial air lines for not co-operating with national defence and with seeking to expend ->the activities of factories that were already lagging in vital defence orders. He said that the Douglas company in the spring of last year received an order for 86 dive-bombers for the United States'and added: “Not one has been delivered, but simultaneously they are making commercial planes at the’rate of 12 a month.” Mr Stimson continued: “Bombers for the army are grounded for lack of engines, for which we have been obliged to borrow engines ordered by the British Government in their dire need. At the same time equivalent engines are going into commercial planes.” At Santa Monica (California) Mr Donald W. Douglas, president of the Douglas Aircraft, denied that the company had failed to co-operate with the Government. “The military aeroplane contracts for the United States and British Governments have not been delayed for the commercial projects already started, nor will we permit them to interfere with defence,” he said. The head of the British purchasing mission in the United States, Mr Purvis, is reported by the 8.8. C. as stating that there was an ever-increasing flow of weapons, and particularly of aircraft, from the United States. If he were a Nazi, he said, he would be very, worried about the amount of war mat-i erial Britain was getting from the United States. An indication of the vast scale on which American material is reaching Britain is given in the fact that the value of imports from the United States in the first ten months of this year exceeded those of the corresponding period of last year by £230,000.000. Exports from Britain to the United Slates were a little higher than they were last year. These figures show, it is observed, what the German “blockade” is like.