Boiler Trouble

Before World War I, Sir Edward Grey, Britain's Foreign Secretary, remarked to Winston Churchill that the U.S. was like "a gigantic boiler; once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can produce." Right after Korea, the U.S. thought it lit a fire. The boiler, however, was a lot slower to heat than it used to be. Last week, nearly 17 months after the invasion, the fires still smoked and sputtered, the boiler bubbled weakly, and the instruments of war were still coming out in a thin trickle.

Grimmest example is aircraft. This year, the U.S. planned to produce 4,500 planes; it will actually produce only 3,800.

The planes being delivered now were ordered almost two years ago.

Main cause of the delay: weapons have become vastly more complicated and expensive. Many cost ten times what they did in 1944, some cost 40 times more. Almost all take longer to make.

Pumps & Gremlins. Other delaying factors include a machine-tool shortage and strikes. Since Korea, the workers in 21 major defense plants have walked off the job. At the Colorado Springs Commanders' Conference, Air Force Chief Hoyt Vandenberg said the strikes have set the long-range program back a full year.

More than the usual number of time-consuming bugs have cropped up in airplane production. At one factory making jet fighters, about 100 planes are ready for delivery as soon as faulty compressor pumps can be replaced. The Boeing B-47 stratojet bomber, plagued with bugs since the first day it flew, is now having trouble with fuel tanks and landing gear.

Last summer, many Air Force planes began having trouble with their fuel and oil hoses. In dives and steep banks, clamps on the hoses snapped. The trouble was finally traced to a tiny screw that was threaded at something like a 40DEG instead of a 30DEG angle. Six dies turned out the screws, and one of the dies was faulty. The Air Force had to ground most of its jet fighters until testing machines methodically examined every screw in every bin in every aircraft plant. No one can estimate how many thousands of man-hours were wasted because of that one 10DEG mistake.

Sabres & MIGs. There have also been the usual design problems. The Air Force doesn't want to jell its designs for mass production until it is sure they are equal to the job. F-86 Sabre jet pilots back from Korea say they need more powerful engines to conquer the Russian MIGs; other pilots say that the after burners on newer jets have not added the expected speed, must be redesigned. F-86 production is shamefully low. It could be three times higher, the Air Force says, if the U.S. hadn't deliberately spent its time & money helping Canadian production get started.

All this adds up to the fact that the U.S. is already six months behind, and schedules have had to be rewritten to fit the new, discouraging facts. The present Air Force goal is 138 groups by 1954. It will be 1955, says Harold R. Boyer, new chairman of the Aircraft Production Board, before they can take the air, 1956 at the earliest before the U.S. can have the 163 groups the Air Force says it needs.

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