The Best Airplane

The great and beautiful fact is that the U.S. is producing more warplanes than any other nation in the world. And those planes are being delivered, are fighting on every front in the global war. Now the point is: How good are they?

The returns are trickling in--stories on U.S. aircraft in Russia, in the sandstorms of Libya, over the green hills of New Guinea, the crags of southern China. But the returns are incomplete and blindingly confused.

The public heard that the Japanese Zero was a superior plane, then read that the antiquated Curtiss P-40 (Tomahawk) knocked the whey out of it. Reports said the Bell P39 (Airacobra) had too fragile a landing gear for the rough fields of Russia; other reports from the Red Front had Airacobras fighting German planes to a standstill. The later P-40s (Kittyhawks) supposedly couldn't get high enough to fight Messerschmitts, but in Libya the Kittyhawk, with Spitfires, took control of the air and held it.

Wait & See? No one with the voice of authority straightened out the confusion. Aircraft manufacturers said only "Wait and see." But there was much to see without waiting. U.S. aircraft production was good, not only for its vast growth but because it had been kept fluid; new types could be produced without wrecking production of older types. And the performance of U.S. aircraft in battle was good, too, will be terrific when new types now in production reach the battlefields in quantity.

In production the U.S. is slowly becoming aware of the eternal air warfare between two kinds of engineers. Design engineers want to make planes that will outfly and outshoot anything in the air. Production engineers struggle to put out more planes than the enemy. The designer wants production stopped any time he has a better design. The production man wants to keep on turning them out, hates to change designs.

Anti-Freeze. For this kind of production war the U.S. had an answer that no other nation is rich enough to make. A new plane design no longer stops production lines. The U.S. builds a new line, drops the old model only when the new one rolls off the new lines. Then the old line is stopped, torn down, retooled for a third type. The U.S. now has fluidity in design without accompanying drops in production curves.

Up to a point, freezing of design worked on the side of the Germans, who started early with good airplanes, poured them out faster than anyone else. But freezing works against the Nazis now. If they make a wholesale switch to new models, their production lines must slow up. If the Nazis hang on to what they have, German war planes will be inferior. In sum: the Germans, unlike the U.S., can't have it both ways in full degree. The same is also true of the Japs, whose aircraft industry is pipsqueak small.

The British refused to freeze their production, have thus kept quality high, can continue improving design on the cushion of U.S. production.

Fighters. The United Nations are well ahead of the Nazis in the planes that count most:

> The British Spitfire is still the best battle-proved fighter in the air-fast, heavily armed and armored; engine's horsepower has been stepped up. The Hurricane is in the same league.

> U.S. fighter design lagged behind British and German, especially in altitude performance and armament. The gap is closing. Lockheed's twin-engined P-38 (Lightning) has plenty of altitude performance, dazzling speed, crushing gun-power. It is in production, is on the way to battlefronts now. Also in production is the best U.S. single-engined fighter yet, Republic's P47 (Thunderbolt), a 2,000-h.p. monster which, like the Lightning, weighs as much as an old Ford tri-motor, but is nimble, climbs like a homesick angel. Quantities of P-38s and P-47s will change the entire course of the war.

> But the burden of U.S. fighter work has so far fallen on the Curtiss Hawk series of P-40s. Newsmen, talking to pilots in the South Pacific, report that the Jap's Zero can outclimb and outmaneuver the P-40. Many a U.S. citizen considers the Zero a better plane. But on this basis, so is a Piper Cub, for a Cub can out-maneuver a P-40 until its gas runs out. When Zeros and P-40s have met, Zeros have usually been beaten. Best example: the record of the A.V.G. in China, which has the oldest P-40s--the Tomahawks. Reason: the P-40 is faster, outdives the Zero, can take more punishment. (The lightly built Zero disintegrates pretty rapidly in a stream of machine-gun bullets.) A.V.G. has knocked down better than 300 Jap planes while los:ng 16.

> Russian airmen have told newsmen that the Airacobra is not the perfect airplane, say it had tough going against Germany's superb Heinkel 113. And from Australia came a story of Zeros leaving Airacobras at the post by climbing out of trouble. The Airacobras (like Tomahawks) are certainly slower in climb than Zeros at high altitudes. But U.S. flyers, using them on a low-altitude mission, knocked down eight Zeros in their first combat, came home with all their Airacobras.

Bombers. Fanciest U.S. things in battle are the bombers, which are old U.S. specialties. Mediums like the Douglas A20 (British Boston and Havoc), the North American B-25 (which raided Tokyo) and the Martin B-26 are faster, more maneuverable and carry more bombs over longer ranges than anything the Axis has.

The U.S.'s big fellows, four-motored jobs like Boeing's B-17 (Flying Fortress) and Consolidated's B-24 (Liberator), have gone through some growing pains. The old B-17-Cs could outfly Germany's famed Focke-Wulf Kurier, but had trouble with German fighters. The fault is remedied: the new B-17-E and B-24-E bristle with better armament (including a tail gun position) and shine with better performance. In operations against the Jap, four-engined bomber crews no longer worry about the Nip's pursuit, knock him down when they go out without fighter escort. In Britain, where the English already have some fancy four-motored jobs (Short Stirling, Handley-Page Halifax, etc.) the U.S.'s big fellows will be flown by U.S. crews when they go into the big aerial push against Germany.

Navy Planes. In naval aviation, a field where the top Navy men of all nations have been sound asleep, the U.S. is a long way out in front. Grumman's famed Wildcat fighters are the best carrier craft in the world, will soon have to fight for their title with another U.S. product: Vought-Sikorsky's gull-winged Corsair. Grumman's new torpedo-plane Avenger has no equal in foreign services. Consolidated's Catalinas have piled up an unequaled record for reliable scouting. And bigger and faster flying boats are coming: Consolidated's four-engined Coronado, Martin's gargantuan Mars.

So indeed are many others, some still on the drawing boards, some already under construction, some to be faster than anything now in the air, some to fly higher. There is no one-plane answer to the question: Which is the best airplane? Which was the best automobile: the car that ran 150 m.p.h. on the Indianapolis speedway, the one that hauled coal, or the one that took the family to the beach on Sunday? As the U.S. design and production machine is geared up, each U.S. plane should be the best in its class--and within only a few months.

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