HENRY FORD'S PLAN

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 51, 1 March 1941, Page 8

HENRY FORD'S PLAN

PLANE PRODUCTION.

A THOUSAND A DAY?

(Air Mail). SAX FRANCISCO. Fob. S

Henry Ford, apostle of ma-- production, expects to have opportunity yet to put manufacture of aviation iMipiiu's on a volume output basis.

Essential lo thici aehievenuMit. he believe?, if adaptation of nuinnuiliHi , engine manufacturing technique to the production of certain parts of the aircraft motor. !So he i< working on a '"mass production"' engine of his own.

Ford has a contract for the production of 4000 Pratt and Whitney radial, air-cooled aviation engines, and Hearing completion at his Rouge plant i< u 21,000.000 dollar factory unit in which to build them. They will be construded entirely according to Pratt and Whitney specifications and om-e o|>eralions are under way they will be turned out at the rate of one an hour. The idea of devoting an hour to the assembling of a single engine, however, irks the product ion-minded Ford. He has in the making now a Pi-cylinder, V-type, liquid-cooled motor with an injector fuel system and an e\hau-l operated supercliarjrcr. Many i>l iiparts already have been made l>\ the casting process. Dynamometer tc<-t----have been given to a two-cylinder working model. Sometime laic x 1«i — r-uiumcr Ford expects the engine its-elf t'> lie reudv for tests, possibly in a plane of hi- i.wn making, for actual flij-lii trials, Koni engineers dcsigneil the nmtnr after *tinlying every tyj.e uf aircraft i-nginc now in use, including -ome of (ifiin.in make shot down in c.unb.it in Europe. A little more than eight mont'.i- auo Ford asserted that uml.-r certain ...ml; tions he could build lniui aeroplane- ;] day, and he ttill believes he enn do that. It wa* later revealed that Foul liarevolved an intricate method whereby welding may be effectively u-ed in the mass production of plane> on a gigantic scale, and it is believeil the manufacturing of plane* may be effectr-ri in ■•nefifth the customary time to build «u>-h aircraft.