Blueprint for Health

The men who make U.S. air policy last week laid down before two Senate subcommittees a carefully reasoned plan for the aviation industry. It was presented by tall handsome Dr. George P. Baker, 42, special consultant to the War Department, on leave from the Harvard business school. The chief point of the 52-page report: the U.S. should buy a minimum of 3,000 in military prime planes a productive year to health. keep the industry in prime productive health. Otherwise it will not be able to produce military planes fast enough in case of another war.

The report, prepared by a top-level committee from the State, War, Navy and Commerce Departments and the CAB,* is the first study of its kind. Its basic assumption: aircraft production over the next few years will be twice that of 1940 but less than 5% of the planes built in 1944. Spokesman Baker said that the industry would make between 325 and 475 transport planes a year, and 20,000 to 45,000 small planes for private flyers. From these two sources, the industry would get a maximum gross of $295,000,000 annually. But, butted Dr. Baker: this was nowhere near enough. To keep the military aircraft potential from rusting away, the Government must buy a minimum of 3,000 planes a year, at a cost of $750,000,000.

To help the industry, and to have plants ready in case of emergency, the Government should also keep 16 plane and engine factories, one-fifth all war-built aircraft plants ready for operation. The Government should also keep on hand 65,000 general purpose machine tools, 25% of those in the industry.

When it came to the atom bomb, the report dropped its own shocker on the plane-building East and West Coasts. Said the report: six atomic bombs dropped in the Los Angeles area could completely wipe out the giant Southern California plane industry. What must be done, said the report, is to disperse the aircraft industry. This could best be accomplished by letting coast planemakers trade some of their present plants for Government-owned facilities inland. The moving costs should be paid by the Government.

The basic policy, the committee said, must be set now because of the long time between planes on the drawing board and in production. Assistant Secretary of War for Air Robert Lovett summed up: "... there was no air frame used in combat by the U.S. Army Air Forces [in World War II} which was designed subsequent to 1940."

*Members of the Air Coordinating Committee: Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton, Assistant Secretary of War for Air Robert Lovett, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air John Sullivan, Assistant Secretary of Commerce William Burden, Chairman of the CAB L. Welch Pogue

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