AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 2, 28 September 1943, Page 5

AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION

Greater Output Needed To Speed Victory

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 26, Speaking at Newcastle, the Minister of Aircraft Production, Sir Stafford Qripps, declared that victory now seemed certain. “Only the time and the cost of human life are still in doubt,” he said. How long that time will be and how great the casualties are must now depend largely on the efforts of those on the. industrial front in Britain and America. Sustained and increasing effort may bring us earlier victory, with all that means m saving human lives.” ■ . Pointing to the enormous expansion of aircraft production and the production Ot all those multifarious devices which assist the fighter and the bomber. Sir Stafford said: “If the figure for the first .six months of 1940 for structure and weight of aircraft produced is taken at 100, then the corresponding figures for 1941, 1942, and 1943—in each case the first six months—are 161, 244, and 364. “This shows how great is our prodtiction now compared with that of the first six months of 1940, when we were making the planes which fought the Battle ot Britain. But this is not in itself cnougm We still need more and more aircraft. to make good heavy losses in the oßensiye fighting of today and to prepare for that even greater offensive which must come before the end is reached.”