Secret Weapon

When the U.S. Air Force began burrowing into the wreckage of German planes in 1942, it got a shock. Engine mounts, wing spars and other parts for the planes had not been made by slow machining or welding, as were those in U.S. planes. They had been quickly forged in one big piece, apparently by enormous hydraulic presses that dwarfed any in the world. The big press was a secret production weapon that had enabled the Germans to mass-produce planes in such big quantities.

After V-E day, a U.S. technical mission raced the Russians to grab the presses. The U.S. got two, which exerted a forging pressure of 16,500 tons, three times as much as any operating U.S. press (although, at the time, the Mesta Machine Co. was making an 18,000-tonner). But the Russians snatched the world's largest, a 33,000-tonner. The U.S. later turned the two German presses over to Bohn Aluminum and Alcoa to experiment with aluminum forgings. But while the Russians put their big press to work and started building a 55,000-tonner the Germans had designed, a U.S. big press program lagged. Last week it got into high gear.

A House subcommittee okayed an Air Force program to spend $389 million on 20 big forging and extrusion presses. * Henry J. Kaiser, who has been plugging for the presses for 2 1/2 years, got a contract to build a $17 million plant at Newark, Ohio to house two of them--a 25,000-tonner and a 35,000-tonner to be built by E. W. Bliss at a total cost of $14 million. Only two weeks ago, Alcoa got a letter of intent to operate a 35,000-tonner and a 50,000-tonner to be built by United Engineering & Foundry and Mesta Machine. Wyman-Gordon has a contract to operate two similar presses which Loewy Construction will make.

The Air Force also plans to have the Harvey Machine Co. (TIME, Dec. 24) operate two more in California, from United and Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton. Dow Chemical Co. may also get one for magnesium forgings. The big presses have already proved their worth, even though the present bottleneck in plane production is engines and not air frames. The Wyman-Gordon press has been operating 16 hours a day, and the two German presses are now both in use.

How much will the big presses speed up plane production? No one really knows. But when some of the presses get into operation in mid-1953, they will mass-produce structural plane parts in much the same way that auto parts are now turned out. The forged parts will be stronger than those made by present methods. Some experts estimate that the big presses may save as much as 10% of the cost of the bare air frame, or, in the present big program, billions.

*A forging press shapes a hot aluminum billet by bringing two dies together under enormous pressure; an extrusion press shapes the metal by ramming hot metal into stationary dies.

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