Army & Navy: School in Four Echelons

Building a tank is one thing; keeping it going is another. Last week the nation’s No. 1 arms manufacturer went to work on problem No. 2. General Motors Corp., holder of 10-12% of all U.S. arms contracts, set up a great maintenance school. Purpose: to keep its products—whether machine guns, tanks or aircraft engines—functioning in the field.

To repair damage by the enemy, and plain wear-&-tear on far-flung fields, where trees are often makeshift hoists for ailing airplane engines, and a jungle clearing is the only repair shop, G.M. got set to learn a lesson that the aircraft industry had already learned. The lesson: for battlefield and back-of-the-line repairs, technicians must be cracks and they must be resourceful. A mechanic who can patch up tanks at the front, far away from well-equipped shops, needs as much in his head as in his hands.

To produce mechanics who will not need a bookshelf on the battlefield, G.M. tapped its engineering vice president, Charles LeRoy McCuen, gave him a year’s outlay of $5,000,000. He had a working model in his own organization: G.M.’s Allison engine division has already turned out more than 800 U.S., Canadian, British, New Zealand and Chinese aircraft-engine mechanics, has a capacity of 71 more a month and is ready to expand.

The maintenance of Allisons is only one volume in G.M.’s new five-foot shelf. The corporation now makes another brand of aircraft engines (Pratt & Whitneys under license), Diesels for tanks, trucks and light cars in a score of sizes, guns, shells and tanks. Like all big-league war contractors, G.M. recognizes the wisdom in a new principle of warfare: “That army finally wins which has the best remnants.” To make U.S. remnants the best, G.M. began training instructors for 20 products at its Institute in Flint, Mich.

Students will be trained in four different kinds of maintenance work under the armed services’ Four Echelon System. First echelon is the men who operate equipment in the field: plane crews, tank crews, gunners. Second: field mechanics working from light-repair units, usually mobile. Third: men in semi-mobile shops where major repairs and replacements—e.g., patching up badly cracked airplanes—are made. Fourth echelon: permanent overhaul depots, which must be set up, preferably out of bomb range, behind the lines in Australia, India, China, Eritrea—wherever U.S. engines fight.

For all the echelons, manpower is short, in spite of immense Army & Navy training programs. But for contractors like G.M., who start their own schools, there is a great gain in sight, beyond the immediate military service its students will give. Graduates of the schools will also be G.M. performance observers. Their reports to the home factories from the fields of war should be the best of all foundations for improvements to make tanks last longer, aircraft fly higher, guns hit harder.