Bell's Biggest

The citizens of Atlanta have watched for months the building of one of the biggest things that man has ever made: Bell Aircraft's Marietta Aircraft Assembly Plant, which rivals and may even exceed Ford's famed but fumbling Willow Run.

Last week, though its final tooling up was still months away, the vast, flat topped, windowless Marietta building stood about complete. Designed and constructed by slick Lawrence Wood ("Chip") Robert Jr., work began eleven months ago under the watchful eye of Army engineers. The ultimate in aircraft plants, the new factory will use thousands of machines and workers to turn out bombers --the type still a military secret.

Another experiment in airplane mass production, the success or failure of the Marietta plant revolves around a dynamic man in a dynamic industry--Lawrence Dale Bell, 48, founder, inspiration and chief owner of Buffalo's fabulous Bell Aircraft Corp. Just as the Army had three big reasons for building the new plant in Georgia (power, labor supply and airport facilities), so did they have bedrock reasons for choosing Larry Bell to run it.

Pipsqueak to Airacobra. Born in pipsqueak Mentone, Ind., Larry Bell was so aviation-crazy he went from high school to work in the Glenn L. Martin plant, barged ahead to shop foreman when only 18, then vice president and general manager. In 1928 he switched to Consolidated Aircraft in Buffalo, got along famously until 1935, when the company decided to move to San Diego, concentrate on flying boats. But Larry liked Buffalo and speedy landplanes. So he decided to stay put, start his own company with some Consolidated leftover personnel. It was a nightmare grind.

Before he could even start, Larry had to sell $400,000 worth of stock in a doorbell-pushing junket. This gave him enough cash to rent a plant, buy pencil, paper and drafting board for Larry's pet designer, chunky, modest Robert James Woods, an ex-Consolidated man known to his pals as Mr. Five-by-Five.

Bell Aircraft's first break came in 1937 when it proudly announced the Airacuda, a freakish-looking, poor-flying bomber-fighter which got a burst of publicity but little else. Then came Bell's first success: the Airacobra, a flashy, 400-m.p.h., single-place fighter which has a cannon in its nose and climbs like an express elevator.

The Luck and the Orders. A hit from the start, the Airacobra pulled Bell Aircraft from an experimental laboratory to a production plant almost as fast as it rockets through the sky. The U.S. Army ordered 13, then 80, then thousands. The British ordered 200, then 800. Meanwhile Larry got orders for thousands of machine-gun adapters, hundreds of Flying Fortress fuselage parts. To handle this whirlwind of business, Bell Aircraft expanded again & again, built another large plant, boosted employment from 60 to over 10,000. Result: squadrons of Bell Airacobras now fight in Britain, Australia and Russia, have knocked down as many as 39 German planes with only one loss. Their big handicap: an effective fighting ceiling less than 15,000 feet.

Bell's financial results are equally impressive. Sales soared from 1936-8 $336,000 to $5,000,000 in 1940 and some $120,000,000 last year. Net profits bounced from a paltry $9,000 in 1939 to $1,970,000 in 1941 and even more in 1942. Fortnight ago the company borrowed $60,000,000 to finance its ever-increasing volume of business.

The Risks. Biggest question about Larry Bell's newest venture is whether such a huge bomber plant can avoid the pitfalls into which Ford's Willow Run has fallen. Biggest hurdle will be raw materials, which partly account for Ford's delay. But a safe bet is that Larry Bell will not make Ford's mistake of overcomplicated and overrigid tooling. Reason: Bell is no automobileman turned aviation enthusiast. He is a triple-threat aviation production man who has risen with the industry and is still on his way up.

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