MAY BE CRIPPLED

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIV, Issue 22738, 12 November 1943, Page 5

MAY BE CRIPPLED

Aircraft Industry In Australia Needs of Post-war Years By Telegraph—N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright (Rec. 7.30. p.m.) SYDNEY. Nov. 10. A warning that Australia’s aircraft industry, which has developed amazingly during the war, is in danger of being crippled in the Kost-war years if not imaginatively andled, is given by a special correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald”. The writer says that plans to produce new types of combat aircraft as well as transport planes were disapproved by official American interests in close touch with the Federal Cabinet. They claimed that these aircraft could be supplied from the United States and Britain and that local production would therefore be a waste of manufacturing resources and manpower.

Expressing the fears for tl;e “very existence” of Australia’s aircraft industry the correspondent says that such an unspecified number of aircraft workers are to be transferred to work of high priority. The writer points out that Australian airmen in the south-west Pacific are not yet flying four-engined bombers or long-distance fighters such as American Liberators and Lightnings, or the big transport planes for this theatre which are being used in larger numbers, he adds “even if the oversea output should become so favourable by 1945 that Britain and the United States find themselves in position to supply us with adequate numbers of aircraft of the types needed here, it is debatable whether, from the national point of view, we should view with equanimity a situation which would inevitably lead to the decline of the Australian aircraft industry. For Australia to revert to her helpless pre-war position of being entirely dependent for her defence upon the willingness and ability of other countries to send her fighters and bombers is militarly indefensble. Neither is it any argument to say that we cannot compete against American mass production methods, or that Australia can purchase her aviation requirements after the war more cheaply than she can make them herself. The volume of American output is hundreds of times greater than that of Australia yet our little industry has been founded on such economical lines that we are manufacturing first-rank operational aircraft as cheaply as some types can be imported from the United States. After the war we could without difficulty make all the land transport planes required for operating our own internal airlines at no greater cost than if we bought them from America.” Outlining the steps taken to make the Australian aircraft industry selfcontained. the correspondent says that since 1940 Australia has manufactured not only airframes and engines but also accessories such as electric starters, generators, magnetos, retractable land-ing-gear, variable pitch propellers, aircraft, instruments, bombsights, air cannon and gun turrets. For the future self-sufficiency of a thriving Australian aircraft industry it will be necessary, he adds, to expand the resources for the production of bigger and better engines. Three, kinds of power units are already manufactured in Australia, with the result that most of the aeroplanes now in Australia’s skies are powered by Australian-built engines. The correspondent ur°"es bold and speedy action to ensure the production by Australia both of combat aircraft for the R.A.A.F. and of civilian aircraft for the Commonwealth’s internal airlines in the Dost-war years.