Good News is Bad News?

Storm warnings flew from the War Department last week. If the final figures of June arms production are no better than the preliminary estimates, the U.S. may soon be shocked by news for which it is wholly unprepared: there is a crisis in war production--a crisis rooted in home-front troubles.

May's production of materiel for the Army Ground Forces was below expectations, but not necessarily alarming--3 1/2% below April, 5 1/2% below the goals (TIME, June 28). Lieut. General Brehon B. Somervell, commanding the Army Service Forces, called this drop "serious." But indications are definite this week that war production in June was no better than in May.

This news is worse than it sounds. Under the Army's timetable of planning ahead, the production goal must be set higher month after month, until the still-growing Army is wholly equipped to the last shoelace and gas mask, and further, until the Army has a solid backlog of reserve equipment for the changing needs of the war. When production falls below goals two months in a row, as seems to have happened, the Army loses not only equipment but time--and if enough time is lost, an all-out assault on Festung Europa may be delayed too long.

Effect. This is the year in which the largest part of the 8,200,000-man Army must be equipped. The danger is that the carefully laid U.S. military plans will be upset.

The fact that production of shipping and some other items is still up to schedule does not help the Ground Forces.* But any slump in the production of small arms, heavy artillery, vehicles, etc. is vitally important to them. For its barest needs the Army requires between May and December a 20% increase in railway equipment and Army boat production. Against the day when the desperate enemy may decide to use poison gas, the Army needs a two-thirds increase in the production of gas masks and poison gas. It needs a 95% increase in radar equipment production.

Cause. What caused the unexpected lag in production at the very time when increases are required? Some individual drops are traceable to the redesigning of equipment, to changeovers because of new battlefield needs. Some have been caused by strikes and floods. But the lag has apparently been far too general to be traceable to any of these isolated causes.

General Somervell wrote flatly last week in Mill & Factory, trade paper for production men: "By far the greater part of the failure (in May) was due to the psychological letdown--the overconfidence that has swept the country with favorable news from the battlefront." Some Army men suggested that industry was getting so confident that the war had been won that it was giving its energy to preparations for postwar production.

Other factors in the production setback had not yet been diagnosed--new bottlenecks developing as materials and skills were spread thinner, new breakdowns suddenly occurring because men and machines have for months been working at fuller capacity than ever before, absenteeism. But regardless of the cause, the U.S. will have to work harder to overcome the lag in production. Good news from the battlefronts must not be allowed to become bad news for the war effort.

In a few days, when the final war production figures for June come in, the U.S. will know exactly how serious a crisis it faces.

* In 1943's first six months, U.S. shipyards built 879 ships, aggregating 8,818,622 deadweight tons--more than all 1942's output.

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