HUGE ORDERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 118, 22 May 1939, Page 7

HUGE ORDERS.

FIGHTING MACHINES.

LOS ANGELES FACTORIES.

BRITAIN, FRANCE, HOLLAND.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, May 1

Three Southern California aircraft factories are spurring themselves into the huge task of helping the democracies strengthen their aerial defences. For ♦ Ireat Britain, France and the Nether-j lands they have begun grinding out an 830-aeroplane fleet, for orders placed by these three democracies now total £1">,000,000.

Erom Californian factories 300-mile-an-hour bombers, swift attack ships and sturdy fighters travel to Europe in the holds of freighters, after tests over Los Angeles have proved each airworthy.

Biirbank's Union air terminal pre-| sented a warlike appearance with sixl Lockheed bombers—parts of British and Dutch orders totalling £7,500,000—] drawn up for last-minute tinkering before they hopped off for final test flights.

(Jrim with their olive drab camouflag-l ing. machine gun turrets and clam-shell-like bomb-rack apparatus, three 17,0001b, twin-engined TNT carriers that England ami Australia have ordered from the 1 Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in a 300aeroplano order for £5,850,000, warmed up as a correspondent happened to visit tlie great airship-building centre.

Long-distance Craft. Others which warmed up for similar purposes included a trio of smaller Lockheed 212's. 250-mile-au-hotir bombers, of which the Netherlands has purchased a tentative dozen for 175,000. England's machines are significant. Built for long-distance work, with twin 1000 horse power engines that can drivel

them ait almost 300 miles per hour for 2000 miles, the large, powerful Hudsons carry over-ocean equipment, including a built-in raft in each door. They can carry 30001b of bombs. Lockheed builds ialmost 40 a month, it was disclosed.

At Inglewood—another Southern California aircraft centre, North American Aviation, Incorporated, holds a

£4,500,000 contract with Great Britain for 400 Harvard NA-16 basic combat ships, which are stubby, low-winged export versions of the swift fighter the United States Army has been flying. In addition, it was revealed that the company has sold the manufacturing rights on the Harvard to a Montreal company—one of six Canadian concerns about to embark on a "help the Mother Country rearm" programme.

Some 1000 of the ships may be built 1 at Montreal, it was intimated, but Douglas Aircraft Company, at El Segundo, Southern California, has the contract which early this year launched a stirring debate in Congress. It specifies £2,750,000 worth of 88-7 type bombers, the same model which crashed on January 23 at Los Angeles Airport with a French Air Ministry observer aboard.

Undaunted by the accident, which I stirred up international trouble, France ordered an unspecified number —unofficially placed at 100 —of the 300-mile-an-hour tricycle-geared machines. The European democracy may buy 50 more at £1.250,000, it was said. These 88-7's comprise the latest design in bombardment aircraft, Congress was told, but the American public has never learned the ships' highly secret specifications.

The Netherlands has bought 18 attack •planes similar to the 250-mile-an-hour A-17-A monoplanes which the United States Army has found so effective for ground-strafing and light bombing purposes.

The latest information in the Southern California aircraft factories is that as Europe has continued to hasten its aerial arms programme, Los Angeles would benefit to an even greater extent than the impressive 830-' plane fleet already under contract. France will order more 'planes. So will Great Britain, it was indicated.

Meanwhile in South America the Latin democracies, too. looked to Los Angeles factories f<>r rearmament assistance. _