The Truman war-watchdog committee exploded in a new report, this time on a half-dozen phases of U.S. aircraft production, with a special shelling reserved for Curtiss-Wright Corp., second largest U.S. war contractor (first: General Motors).
Blow One. On a flat greensward near Cincinnati sprawls the immense Lockland factory of Wright Aeronautical Corp., hailed in 1941 as the largest single-storied industrial plant in the world. The Truman Committee sniffed trouble there last January, reported it to Wright and the Army Air Forces. After four months, while Wright and the AAF found little wrong, Truman moved in, took 1,300 pages of testimony. Some points:
>Wright "was producing and causing the Government to accept defective and substandard material, by the falsification of tests, by destruction of records, by forging inspection reports.
>"More than 25% of engines built at the plant have consistently failed in one or more major parts during a three-hour test run. . . .
>"Air Force inspectors [at Wright] were transferred because they absolutely refused to accept material which they knew to be faulty. Inspectors were threatened with transfer if they did not accept engines which were leaking gasoline."
AAF sent dignified Lieut. General William S. Knudsen, ex-General Motorsman, to head an investigation of its own. Knudsen findings:
"Careless inspection existed [but] the feeling among some in the plant that many defective engines [were] shipped . . . was not substantiated."
Truman rebuttal: "This conclusion is wishful thinking . . . tendency to minimize. [Knudsen's] report assumes an unnecessarily defensive attitude. [Its] inspection was made after the most flagrant derelictions had been called to the attention of the Wright Aeronautical Corp."
The report, prepared mainly by Washington's Senator Mon C. Wallgren, aimed a side blow at the conduct of certain Air Forces officials "during the committee's investigation. These officials, apparently led by the Chief Inspector for the Army Air Forces, Lieut. Colonel Frank C. Greulich . . . attempted to intimidate witnesses ... made misstatements under oath."
Blow Two. Truman's next punch was directed more at AAF judgment than at Curtiss: "The [Curtiss] P-40 fighter planes have performed valuable work on the various fighting fronts, but were relatively obsolete when we entered the war. . . . The committee regrets the earlier [Army] decisions which concentrated so large a portion of our production on a plane which, although usable, is at best a second choice. The North American P-51 [Mustang], characterized by both the British and the Army Air Forces as the most aerodynamically perfect pursuit plane in existence, was in production in 1941. . . . It would have been preferable to increase production of Mustangs, decrease production of Curtiss Warhawks." (P40 production at Curtiss-Wright's Buffalo plant was scheduled for full capacity this year, said Wright's General Manager William Davey.)