1,000 Planes a Month?

Fortnight ago three freighters, crammed with 60-odd fighting planes for Britain and France, cast off from the Bollards at San Pedro, Calif., and stood out past Point Fermin to sea. Before they passed Catalina two Canadian destroyers steamed up with bones in their teeth, slowed to freighter's pace, headed south in convoy toward the Panama Canal.

Next day President Roosevelt's neutrality proclamation put the lid on any more shipments until Congress should revise the neutrality act. To planemakers this meant little. In taking over $100,000,000 worth of foreign orders in recent months, they had put a clause in their contracts requiring foreign buyers to accept delivery in the U. S. if export became illegal. Now Britain and France have to take the risk that the arms embargo may not be repealed (see p. 72).

So last week fighting planes for the belligerents still rumbled on test hops over the big Martin plant at Middle River, Md., over the Curtiss plant in Buffalo, over the West Coast factories of Lockheed, Douglas and North American at Los Angeles, Consolidated at San Diego.*

The profits from this business will be counted in the future. Its effect on the industry is already apparent. No longer are planes virtually made to order as they were only last year. Every big plant is on a quantity production basis. Glenn Luther Martin's plant at Middle River, Md., got its start with a real automobile-type assembly line with thumping orders of 151 Bio bombers from the Army and 117 more from The Netherlands. North American sold 350 of its BT-9s to the Air Corps and 457 BT-9s and BC-1s (a combat edition) to France and Britain to start its line. Douglas with an order for 100 of its new attack bombers from France, has a $15,000,000 order from the Air Corps for the new ships.

Today the industry has $332,500,000 of unfilled orders for the U. S. and foreign governments, and good-sized commercial orders. Douglas for example last fortnight got orders totaling $3,000,000 for DC-3s from American Airlines, Chicago & Southern Air Lines, and Braniff Airways, recently sold $3,000,000 worth of big DC-4s to United Air Lines. Lockheed has an order for $180,000 worth of commercial planes for Venezuela--possibly a precursor of other big South American orders.

Quantity production serves two ends: 1) assembly lines reduce the proportionate need for skilled workmen, 2) it rapidly steps up the industry to meet possible wartime needs of the U. S. Some experts calculate the combat life of a warplane at 30 days, which means that soon after a war starts the size of a nation's air force would be the monthly capacity of its factories. Last week plants like Martin and Lockheed were hiring men as fast as they could be interviewed. They were not greatly worried about a shortage of skilled mechanics because army and civilian schools were turning them out by the hundreds. Black-browed West Pointer president Jack Jouett of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, who knows the capabilities of U. S. Aircraft factories as well as he knows where to find the throttle in any military airplane, calculated that within six months the industry could step up its production to 1,000 planes a month.

Today, engines for big ships are produced by only three U. S. factories: Pratt & Whitney (at East Hartford, Conn.) and Wright (at Paterson, N. J.), which produce radial, air-cooled engines, and General Motors Corp.'s Allison Engineering Co. (Indianapolis), which is just getting into production on liquid-cooled inline motors. If there is ever a bottleneck in the production of aircraft for war it will be in the compact engine business, but last week it did not appear close. For Pratt & Whitney and Wright had finished their expansions for wartime business, were operating at no more than 70% of capacity and finding no trouble getting workmen. In the propeller business Curtiss and Hamilton Standard (Pratt & Whitney corporate brother) were turning out all the props business needs without straining capacity and companies like The Sperry Gyroscope Co. had capacity for turning out plenty of instruments for every ship under order. The biggest problem of the industry may be post war: how to make use of its spawning capacity when war orders end.

*Martin and Douglas are working on 315 bombers for France, Lockheed has turned out about 6.5% of its 250-ship bomber order for Britain, and only North American had nearly completed its foreign orders (basic trainers and combat ships for France and England).

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