PRODUCTION: Fact & Fancy

Last week a hash of defense arithmetic confused the U. S. people. The Department of Commerce announced that the number of planes exported to Great Britain and Canada had dropped from 365 in August to 204 in September, causing dark conjectures that U. S. plane production had bogged down before it was well started. Yet Mr. Roosevelt talked big of ordering 12,000 more planes for the U. S., supplying 12,000 more to Great Britain—all in addition to the 33,000 already on order for delivery by April 1942. Moreover, the President proclaimed a new rule-of-thumb: hereafter, roughly half of U. S. arms production would be for the British.

One explanation of the drop in exports was advanced last month by Defense Commissioner William S. Knudsen: airplane manufacturers had to concentrate on expanding their capacity for future production, temporarily neglect current output. Manufacturers did in fact have their hands full building, staffing and tooling new plants. But Bill Knudsen by last week had decided that the present aircraft industry could not supply the entire future demand. For help, he had gone to his own automobile industry.

General Motors’ Knudsen did not expect automakers to turn their present specialized machines and assembly lines to the manufacture of airplanes. He did expect that the automobile industry could turn loose its mass-production brains on the manufacture of airplane parts and engines, in new factories to be built and tooled for this specific job. To build, tool and man the new plants, actually get into quantity production, will take at least a year, perhaps 18 months.

Aircraft manufacturers had already begun to bring the automobile industry into their business, on their own hook. Hudson is to make parts for Curtiss-Wright airplanes; Studebaker has been licensed to build Wright engines. Packard has a contract to make 9,000 Rolls-Royce engines for the U. S. and Great Britain. Douglas and United Aircraft’s Vought-Sikorsky (airplane) division also look to automobile-body factories for airplane parts. Last week the biggest of all these contract links between the two industries was completed. Let to Henry Ford was a $122,000,000contract to build Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines.

“Stupendous Job.” Henry Ford talked himself into the airplane business last May, with a grandiose announcement that he could build “1,000 airplanes a day.” Just as abruptly he talked himself out in June, when he refused to accept the Rolls-Royce engine contract which Packard later took. What brought him back was the tremendous pressure on Pratt & Whitney to up its capacity, plus P. & W. executives’ respect for the Ford organization, plus Bill Knudsen’s quiet insistence that Ford Motor Co. had to find a place in U. S. defense.

Last August, Son Edsel Ford and tough, brilliant Production Manager Charles E. Sorensen visited Hartford, Conn., where Pratt & Whitney had already upped its capacity nearly ten times since January 1939. Abuilding were factory additions which would double the August capacity, give P. & W. a production rate of 17,000 to 20,000 engines a year by late 1941. Said Charles Sorensen: “I did not believe such a stupendous job could be done in such a short time.” Then he went back to Detroit, broke ground for an $11,000,000 engine plant there before he got his contract.

But those who expected the automobile industry’s mass-production wizards to work overnight miracles were bound to be disappointed. Charles Sorensen is certainly such a wizard. Ford’s great shops can make some of the machine tools which Pratt & Whitney has to get from outside suppliers. Ford foundries will produce alloys which P. &W. buys (from Aluminum Co. of America). Sorensen & colleagues took over Pratt &Whitney’s production methods in the main, but have already worked out some speed-up tricks. Experienced P. & W. men are on the job in Detroit, both to teach and to learn. Yet the Ford aircraft-engine plant will hardly be in production before next August. The maximum hope is that it can turn out 4,500 engines (to P. & W. designs) by mid-1942. Meantime, if all goes well, Pratt & Whitney will produce four to five times as many in the same period. So will Pratt & Whitney’s rival, Curtiss-Wright, which is shooting for an annual capacity of 24,000 engines by next year.

General Time.

Pondering such facts, plain citizens were bound to wonder whether phrases like “12,000 more planes for Britain” were deceitful figments. The U. S. industry has no such capacity now (its October production of warplanes was less than 1,000). What the President was really talking about—no matter how immediate he sounded—was future capacity. Some of the plants to create this capacity were abuilding last week, should be in production next year. For many of them, “future” meant 1942, at the earliest. Booming Pratt &Whitney, for instance, should indeed have its 17,000-20,000 annual rate of production by next year. But 1942 will be the first year when P. & W. will have its full operating rate for a whole twelvemonth, will actually produce that many engines. U. S. defense production last week was still under the command of General Time.