Target-Maker

Military plane production, as everyone in the industry knows, is far behind schedule. Output is more than 20% below the targets, and planemakers will have a hard time reaching even the modest goal of 5,000 planes this year. Last week Mobilization Boss Charlie Wilson moved to crack the defense program's biggest lag (out of every defense dollar to be spent in the next year, 48-c- is earmarked for aircraft). He set up a board of top brass from civilian and Defense Department agencies with sweeping powers to rev up U.S. aircraft production.

As boss of the Aircraft Production Board, Wilson named 52-year-old Harold R. ("Bill") Boyer, General Motors' director of production engineering. An M.I.T. graduate who started in the auto industry "shoveling nuts & bolts." Boyer is an old hand at aircraft production. During World War II, he was chief of the plane-manufacturing division of the War Production Board, helped push output up to 100,000 planes a year. As head of the new APB, Bill Boyer will set the schedule for military and civilian planes, decide when models should be "frozen" (no further design changes), where scarce materials should go and how fast plants should be expanded to keep production rolling.

Big (6 ft. 2 in., 200 Ibs.) Bill Boyer, who flies his own plane and likes to go off on big-game hunting trips, has a tough job ahead. Delays in deliveries of tools and forgings and castings for jet engines, says Boyer, "have thrown the military aircraft program back four to six months."

In his new job, he is wasting no time. This week he is off on a flying tour of U.S. airframe and jet-engine plants to talk over the industry's problems with the planemakers. Says Boyer: "I'm not worried about production in the next three or four months. It's the picture six months from now and after that worries me. We've got to make the targets."

Charlie Wilson also has set in motion a big expansion program in the machine tool industry, which has been hobbled by a shortsighted OPS pricing policy and delays in priorities for materials. By assuring manufacturers higher prices, Wilson hopes within a year to increase annual machine tool output from $675 million to handle orders of $2.9 billion, get jet production kiting. When engine production matches aircraft output, Boyer may speed aircraft production by freezing designs. As in World War II, he may set up modification centers, i.e., places where minor changes and improvements can be made in finished planes without having to shut down production lines for retooling.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.