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Out from the Pentagon in Washington last week went a flurry of wires to the aircraft industry saying: get ready. President Truman had signed the 70-group Air Force bill, and the Air Force and Navy were about to give out some fat new plane orders. To planemakers, fogged in by losses of $33,000,000 last year, it looked as if the weather were finally clearing.

The industry was heartened not only by the $3.2 billion the Government would spend for 4,262 aircraft, but also by the way it would spend it--over a period of years. A beginning had been made on a long-range program to replace the old year-to-year buying which had reduced the industry to a hand-to-mouth existence. As a start, the Air Force would order only a minimum number of "interim type" planes. This meant that only companies with proven planes would get any immediate benefit from the program. Except for experimental models, orders for supersonic planes and newfangled ships of other kinds were well in the future.

Fat Orders. Curtiss-Wright, which recently got a $1.5 million tooling-up contract for its multiple-jet F87 fighter, will get production orders. Boeing is also ready for production. Vice President Wellwood E. Beall, who had directed the development of the B29, was already turning out the B-50, bigger and faster than the B29. Thus, Boeing expected to get the bulk of the big bomber orders to add to its $220 million backlog. North American Aviation, which has done nothing but military work since last year, is in production on 223 of its F-86, a sweptback-wing jet fighter, and 138 of its B45 jet bombers. It too will get more orders, along with United Aircraft, Bell and Convair. Also due for orders are Republic Aviation (F84 Thunderjets), Douglas (the C74 and a cargo version of the DC-6), Lockheed (F80 Shooting Stars), Fairchild (C-119, a bigger version of its C82 Flying Boxcar), Martin (Navy bombers) and Grumman (F-8-F Bearcats and F9F2 jet-powered Panthers for the Navy).

Lined up with these oldtimers was a comparative newcomer, McDonnell Aircraft Co. of St. Louis. President James S. McDonnell Jr., 49, a onetime commercial pilot and designer, was a top man at Martin before he formed his own company in 1939. He produced trainers and experimental models during the war. Since then his company has developed the Navy's twin-jet carrier-based fighter (the F2H-I Banshee). The staff has grown to 3,900, the backlog to over $40,000,000.

Thin Profits. Plane production will be stepped up slowly. As North American's Boss J. H. ("Dutch") Kindelberger put it: "People have the idea we can squeeze airplanes out like an elephant stepping on a tube of toothpaste. But it takes time."

Most planemakers think it will take 18 months to get the program well under way. By then, they expect to boost employment from the 200,000 now at work to about 300,000. Production, barring strikes and shortages, should edge up from the present annual rate of 1,500 military planes to 3,000. Planemakers estimate that profits will be small this year, bigger in 1949. As for plants, if the program is spread, most companies figure they can do the job with what they now have.

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