A $143,200,000 Loss

General Dynamics Corp., the world's biggest privately owned weapons maker, which produces everything from nuclear subs to missiles, last week told its trouble (TIME, Jan. 5) in statistics. Its annual report gave its 1961 loss as $143,200,000.

largest ever sustained by a U.S. corporation in a single year.

It stemmed largely from the company's ill-fated invasion of the commercial jet transport market with its Convair 880 and 990--a venture that has involved G.D. in the biggest single product loss ($470 million) in U.S. corporate history.

(By contrast, the Edsel fiasco cost Ford Motor Co. about $200 million.) With the 1961 write-offs, the great bulk of G.D.'s jet transport losses had presumably been accounted for, and some Wall Streeters were predicting that the company might earn as much as $3.75 a share this year. But under the terms of a $135 million Prudential loan, which requires General Dynamics to make up past losses before it pays out any more cash dividends, shareholders can expect dividends only after future earnings "exceed

$143,996,975."

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