Tanks, Please

Ford officials in Detroit last week confirmed a portentous rumor: Ford will go into the manufacture of Army tanks —mediums like those that Chrysler now turns out at the rate of seven a day. Fortnight before, General Motors had announced that it was also getting ready to build mediums.

These announcements were encouraging to the Big Three’s suppliers and workmen, now facing an anemic business prospect because of the cut in automobile production. To Britain and Russia, to the U.S. Armored Force, now busy building its fifth Panzer division, the news gave impetus to a Washington rumor: that within a few weeks the U.S. would announce a vast increase in its tank program.

If Hitler had not changed World War II’s pattern by invading Russia, the scope of U.S. production as now set up might well have proved ample. The output of tanks, now around 400 a month, is well ahead of the Army’s original estimates. Big contractors already in production, besides Chrysler, are American Car & Foundry Co. (light tanks) and Baldwin Locomotive and American Locomotive (mediums). When all are rolling at top speed (e.g., Chrysler, 15 a day) the output (round figure: 20,000 a year) will meet the demands of the Army and Lend-Lease — as of six months ago.

But Adolf Hitler outmoded the U.S. plan. With tanks needed to block Hitler in the East as well as in the West, many an ordnance expert now says that the U.S. will have to aim at production of 30,000-35,000 tanks a year.