MAINTENANCE IN FIELD

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20804, 6 June 1942, Page 5

MAINTENANCE IN FIELD

U.S. ARMAMENTS £1,000,000 SCHOOL Quoted by Time as “America’s No. 1 arms manufacturer and holding 10-12 per cent of all U.S. arms eratracts,” General Motors Corporation has set up a gigantic maintenance school on which it will spend £1,000,000 this year to train men to maintain their huge production an service in the field. On the American production front General Motors has already agreed to produce 40 per cent of all the aeroplane engines for the army, 25 per cent of the tanks, half of the trucks, a third of the machine guns, and half of the navy’s Diesel engines, in addition to fulfilling hundreds of other important contracts. This is typical of the substantial effort of America's war goods. But, to build a tank is one thing; keeping it going is another. To keep this huge volume of its products—whether machine guns, tanks or aircraft engines—functioning in the field General Motors is spending its £1,000,000 allocation this year on the intensive training of men for four different types of maintenance service. First are the men who operate equipment in the field; second, field mechanics for light mobile repair units; third, men for mobile heavy repair shops; fourth, base repair depot staff for major rebuilding and overhaul operations. This work is a large scale extension in co-ordinated form of the training programmes already operated by a number of General Motors Divisions. The Allison Aeroplane Engine Division has already trained large numbers of aircraft engine mechanics from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and China.