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Blow Three. The Navy gave Curtiss $27 million to build a plant in Columbus, Ohio, threw in $98 millions more for Curtiss to produce its dive-bomber, the SB<sub>2</sub>C (Helldiver). Reported Truman: "Production was to have commenced in December 1941. Production did not actually commence until September 1942. ... To date Curtiss-Wright has not succeeded in producing a single SB<sub>2</sub>C which the Navy considers to be usable as a combat airplane. . . . The knowledge of the inactivity of the plant has become widely known among the friends & relatives of the [21,012] workmen, has had a bad effect upon morale in that area.
"Despite this unsatisfactory performance, Curtiss-Wright has advertised the Helldiver plane as 'the world's best dive bomber.' [It] expended in such eulogistic self-praise $12,448. . . ."
Decision. Truman sum-up on Curtiss-Wright: "Some of its products have been exceptionally good, and its performance as a whole has been creditable." Example: the committee praised the successful cargo-carrying C-46, Curtiss-Wright's outstanding plane contribution to the war. (At week's end, in Trenton, N.J., the U.S. Justice Department sued Wright and eight of its officers for damages, accusing them of selling the Government "unsatisfactory" airplane motor materials.)
Counter-Blow. Dapper Guy Warner Vaughan, ex-automobile racer who heads giant Curtiss-Wright, answered Truman's attacks: "The P-40 has been continuously modernized, [has] shot down from three to 20 enemy planes for every P-40 lost. . . . The company emphatically denies that Wright has at any time sold products known to the company to have contained defective or substandard parts."
This week Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson minimized the report, said the situation was much less sensational. He claimed that vigorous remedial action had been taken immediately after the Knudsen investigation, denied that any engines "known to be defective" were ever placed in service.
But the U.S. public generally seemed well content that the Truman war-watchdogs keep on baying, whenever and wherever they scented bad management.