AMERICAN FACTORIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 134, 7 June 1940, Page 8

AMERICAN FACTORIES

ESTIMATE OF OUTPUT

NOT FULL STRIDE YET

In a recent issue of the aviation journal "Flight" appeared an authoritative article upon Allied purchases of j American war planes. The writer, Leonard Engel, did not pretend an exact knowledge of numbers of planes, for, he wrote, "the Allied Commission have kept admirable silence as to types and numbers of aircraft ordered, but it has not been possible to keep this information altogether secret, as far too many people are concerned. So I will be betraying nothing not already known in American aviation circles if Igo into some detail." Not yet, he emphasised, has the American aviation industry sWung into anything like full stride and into round-the-clock shift production. In 1939 something like 2500 service and training machines were ordered from American factories by the Allies. Then came a lull at the beginning of 1940 before the placing of huge orders, believed to be for 8000 planes of a dozen different types. Of these 1940 orders he estimates, not more than 3000 machines can be delivered before the end of the year, the balance running on well into 1941. _ The orders placed by the British and French Purchasing Commissions are stated to involve £250,000,000. | The planes named, as in the first Allied orders include Curtiss Hawk, fighters, Lockheed Hudson fighterbombers, North American Harvards (trainers, for Britain and Canada), Martin reconnaissance bombers for France, Douglas reconnaissance bombers (France and Canada), and Douglas and Vought-Sikorsky dive-bombers (France).

Included in the orders placed at the beginning of this year are those of Britain for between 200 and 250 Douglas dive-bqmbers (£5,000,000), 50 Consolidated long-distance flying-boats, 320 Brewster, fighters, 1600 North American trainers, and a possible 1000 Bell Airacobea purs Ait planes, one of the most remarkable of 1940 aeroplanes, ordered in large numbers for the American army, but behind timetable in Amei'ican deliveries owing to difficulties of sufficiently* speeding |up pr»iuction of the Allison engines used. Unless the Merlin or some other unit can be adapted to this extraordinarily fast lightweight fighter, weighing under 6500 pounds, it is unlikely that Britain and France will be able to make use of this type. Four-engined 20-ton Consolidated bombers, Ryan all-metal trainers, a new Martin twinengined bomber, and Vultee Vanguard fighters, in the 400 miles an hour class, are other planes which interested the two purchasing commissions. ONE THOUSAND A MONTH. The three-shift capacity of the American aircraft industry at the beginning of the year was about 1250 aircraft and 1500 engines of 1000 h.p. or more a month, but actual production was far below capacity production. Almost all the plants opened the year on a one-shift basis, and had, in fact, never operated in any other way. Production never catches up on capacity output, but, the writer believed, by the end of 1940 American plants should be turning out more than a thousand military aircraft and two thousand engines of 1000 h.p. and over a month.

American national defence needs he placed at between 3000 and 4000 planes a year and his estimate was therefore that by December of this year American factories will be able to deliver to the Allies high performance military machines at the rate of about 650 a month.

PRODUCTION METHODS CHANGE,

In two years the number of employees in forty-five American factories has been doubled, from 30,000 to 60,000; floor • space has been increased from 6,000,000 to 7,500,000 sq. ft. in twelve months in aircraft factories, and from 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 sq. ft. in engine factories. There have been as remarkable changes in manufacturing practice, towards line production." The North American-Company, for instance, builds nothing but seven substantially similar trainers.

Henry Ford has stated that, if he were given a free hand, he could, by straight-line production, deliver from the assembly lines 1000 planes a day.

Sub-contracting for parts, never important in American aircraft industry before, is emerging as a factor of great weight.

In spite of the great expansion of the industry an expected "bottle-neck" in skilled labour has not materialised, for more complete "tooling-up" had enabled the use of semi-skilled labour in place of a markedly greater number of superlative craftsmen.