Magic Carpet

Privately owned U.S. airlines are doing their biggest and most sensational job ever. Some of the details leaked out of Washington last week:

> When an Army post in fog-wrapped Alaska screamed for huge 10,000-gal. gas tanks and 4-ton gas trucks to go with them, the airlines sliced up the tanks and trucks with acetylene torches, stuffed the pieces into airplane bellies, flew them right to the post. Mechanics in Alaska welded them back together.

> One day this month over 30 heavily laden planes rumbled off rough, badly lighted fields in Labrador, winged across 800 miles of stormy water to secret airfields in Greenland. All records later flopped when 60 round trips were made in three days.

> To the south, airline-operated cargo planes have toted thousands of pounds of U.S. currency (for payrolls) to Panama and Puerto Rico; tons & tons of blood plasma, surgical instruments, other medical supplies to Trinidad, Virgin Islands, other U.S. military bases in the Caribbean.

> T.W.A. pilots in a T.W.A. Stratoliner (designed for land service) recently plucked several Army big and little shots out of the Indian jungles, flew them over 13,000 miles of hell and deep water to the Washington airport.

> Meantime, other airline-operated cargo planes regularly shuttle between 120 Army air bases in the U.S. Their load: troops, complete jeeps, tank parts, light field guns, aircraft engines, other military items.

These are but a small sample of the jobs now being done by airline-operated cargo planes working with the newly formed Army Air Service Command. When the Army last month bought outright almost half the 324-plane U.S. airline fleet, it kept 63 planes to use as troop transports. The Army then leased 96 remaining planes back to the airlines, gave them the job of carrying every ounce of Army air freight in the Western Hemisphere. The Ferry Command flies most of the Army's freight going to Africa, Australia, other far-off places.

Each of the 96 airline-operated sky-freighters now flies close to 1,500 miles daily with up to 3,500 pounds of cargo--plus officers and soldiers. All told they haul a smacking 500 tons a week, four times as much as Army pilots ever carried. Beamed one Army colonel: "a magic carpet of transportation." Boasted tough, air-wise General Henry J. F. Miller, drafted from Wright Field to head the ASC: "the hardest-working planes in the world."

Record: Perfect. However tough the grind, airline pilots love this work. Long known as the cantankerous prima donnas of aviation, pilots formerly raised the hangar roof if a single field light was out or the stewardess forgot the chewing gum. Now they fly over trackless wastes (usually without radio), land on bad fields, sleep in flimsy shanties--and never squawk. And their record grounds everyone: not a single lost plane, not a single accident.

For this superservice the Army pays the airlines cost plus a percentage of costs (usually 5 to 10%). This is fatter than the deal talked about last month: cost plus $1. But this week most airline operators were too agog over their new cargo service even to think about profits. Even if the cash is not rolling in as it once did, many operators figure the ASC is good stuff, as an enforced laboratory it has prodded the airlines into wonders they would not dare try themselves.

The Army is also pleased. In fact, it has already earmarked for airline operation some 200 huge cargo planes scheduled to come off production lines before year's end. When these planes are added to airline fleets, U.S. airlines will fly more planes to more places than ever before.

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