AIRCRAFT: Big Bill Speaks

When U. S. defense preparations began last summer, the aircraft industry jumped almost directly from swaddling clothes into ill-fitting long pants, quivered before the big bad wolf of mass production. Defense Commissioner William S. Knudsen was patient. As aircraft manufacturers hacked away by hand at their $2,500,000,000-plus backlog, he quickly allayed the fear that their industry would be moved to Detroit, but at the same time he made eyes at his mass-producing auto friends (TIME, Oct. 7). Neither planemakers nor automen enjoyed this coquetry.

Last week big Bill Knudsen spoke. To 69 automotive bigwigs gathered in Detroit he outlined the part they were to play. Franklin Roosevelt had just decided to add 12,000 new bombers to the air expansion program—for parts of which automen would receive $500,000,000 in orders by next spring. With him Commissioner Knudsen had brought blueprints to help them retool their plants, prepare to mass-produce wing, fuselage and tail assemblages. If they could handle the job, said Mr. Knudsen, automakers would get one quarter of the entire rearmament fund alloted to aircraft.