Kaiser Takes to the Air

The biggest, most dramatic shake-up in transportation since the Wright Brothers got their flimsy biplane off the sand at Kitty Hawk is just around the corner--that is, if fabulous Henry J. Kaiser has his way. This week Engineer-Shipbuilder Kaiser pulled all the talk about air freighters right down to earth with a concrete proposal to build in 1943 at least 5,000 giant 70-ton flying boats like the Glenn L. Martin Mars.

"These ships could land 500,000 fully equipped men in England in a single day," he cried. "The next day they could fly over again with 70,000 tons of fresh milk, beefsteaks, sugar and bombs. No submarines could shoot them down.

"We do not want another Bataan--yet there are fronts which may become Bataans if we do not solve, and solve quickly, this matter of overseas transportation.

"I propose that the Maritime Commission turn over nine shipyards to the mass production of flying ships like the Mars--three yards on the Pacific, three on the Gulf, three on the Atlantic.

"The bald fact of the matter is that the plane manufacturers are not in a position to go into an assembly-line production of this new type without extensive construction and tooling. Glenn Martin has said it would take two years to build the plant.

"But with the aid of the aviation industry and with the equipment already in place in the shipyards we can have the assembly line in production at six months or less and it could be in maximum production at ten months or less." Kaiser's proposal sounded fantastic, but the U.S. has learned better than to scoff at the production promises of the man who built Boulder Dam in record time, and whose latest feat has been to cut the time for a Victory ship to one-sixth of the average for World War I freighters.

"Our engineers," he said, "have plans on their drafting boards for gigantic flying ships beyond anything Jules Verne could ever have imagined. There are plans for flying ships of 200 tons, and after that plans for ships of 500 tons that would carry 1,000 men. But that is in the future. . . . This war will be terminated by getting enough sky ships of 70 tons."

Henry Kaiser is not the only big shipbuilder who expects to turn aircraftmaker. Andrew Jackson Higgins announced that, although the Maritime Commission had just closed his huge New Orleans shipyard for lack of steel, the yard would be reopened to construct flying boats. Higgins had just talked with Kaiser, will soon meet him in Washington for a three-way confab with President Roosevelt. When & if Kaiser and Higgins (and maybe others) turn out flying boats as fast as they say they can, the United Nations might begin to win the war.

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