SECRET NEW PLANES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25090, 4 December 1942, Page 3

SECRET NEW PLANES

AMERICAN MACHINES “MAKE THE ANGELS GASP” (Rec. 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, Dec. 2. The United States has secret new planes that are “enough to make the angels gasp,” Major Nathaniel Silsbee, of the Army Air Force, told the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He added that a score ct new fighters, bombers, and transports are under test, and many of them have already been flown. The planes are still on the secret list. In addition to the new designs, the Air Force has developed a method of making wholesale alterations to planes after manufacture. - This is oone in “modification centres,” of which there are a dozen, not all at aircraft lactones. These centres make quick alterations demanded by battle conditions, such as installing a different typo of guns and refitting landing gear that will not crack up in desert fighting. Such centres altered Brigadiergeneral Doolittle’s planes for the bombing of Japan. They paint planes a dusty pink for the Egyptian desert, and fit others for Arctic regions. America is not building planes on a strictly mass production basis, keeping production fluid, nevertheless there are large-scale orders in 1000, and even 5000 lots.