Doolittle on the Job

The slow production rate of the Allison engine plant in Indianapolis has been the biggest disappointment in the air rearmament of the U. S. Only high-powered (1,000 h.p.) U. S. liquid-cooled engine, the Allison is the U. S. Army Air Corps's one present hope for building airplanes around slim, streamlinable power plants. It will continue to be the only hope until another, possibly the Rolls-Royce Merlin (TIME, July 15), is put into production in a U. S. factory. Last week Allison's production was reputedly rising from a monthly rate of about 30 to its fall quota of 125. It still had a long way to go to its estimated production top, 500-600 a month. The Curtiss factory at Buffalo was meanwhile howling for Allisons for its P-4O pursuit ships, was understood to have 70 to 100 waiting for engines. Bell Aircraft, manufacturer of the speedy Airacobra, was waiting too.

With Big Bill Knudsen of General Motors heading procurement for Franklin Roosevelt's Defense Advisory Commission, no one doubted that General Motors' Allison plant would get plenty of steam in its boiler. To see what could be done about speeding up the main Indianapolis plant, the Army Air Corps sent as its factory representative a famed flier-engineer who was once one of its brightest technical stars. Stubby, go-getting Reserve Major James Harold Doolittle, famed speed pilot and Sc.D. in Aeronautical Engineering (M. I. T.), was recalled to active duty from civilian life, was glad to answer the call. From Shell Petroleum Corp., which had lured him away from the Air Corps to be head of its aviation department, he took a year's leave of absence, dusted off his uniform and reported for duty. Air Corps men who remembered Jimmie Doolittle's varied talents, his urge to get things done, suspected that someone in Washington had put the finger on just the right man.

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