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¶CHANCE VOUGHT, which moved to Dallas three years ago, is now producing the tailless, swept-wing jet Cutlass. Vought also is working on flying missiles. ¶HAMILTON STANDARD will shortly quit its plant adjoining Pratt & Whitney for a new $12 million plant at Windsor Locks, Conn. Its postwar hydromatic propellers have made such advances in airline safety that they are now specified on 90% of all U.S. transports in service or on order. In the belief that turboprops will be used on commercial planes before pure-jets, Hamilton Standard is perfecting supersonic and dual-rotating propellers for use with them. With all this, United Aircraft, which has paid a dividend every year since 1935, last year chalked up $269 million in sales and a net of $13.2 million. In 1951's first quarter it earned about $3,700,000. Total backlog: $910 million.
The Challenge. Despite its fast jet progress, United—and the whole aviation industry—now faces an even bigger challenge. For the hard fact is that aircraft production is nowhere near what the U.S. needs to fight a hot war, or even supply reasonable protection in a cold one. In the past year, production has not even doubled. In 1951, it will not exceed 5,000 planes (about the 1939 rate) v. World War II's peak of 96,318 (see chart). Engines are the bottleneck, and there are two main reasons: shortages of machine tools and of critical metals (cobalt, columbium and tungsten). Moreover, engines are so much bigger and more complicated than World War II's that it takes more time, more skill and three times more labor to build them.
Since the "lead time" for engines (i.e., the lag between orders and actual production) is more than a year, there is an absolute limit on boosting production. The U.S. did,not start its emergency production soon enough. Fred Rentschler uses the industry's famous "rule of three" yardstick: from the moment all-out production begins, the existing rate can only be tripled in the first year. In the second year, the new rate can be seven times the original; not until the end of the third year are there no limits except manpower and materials.
The Goal. But the Government's goal is not all-out production. It is not primarily to build engines, but to expand capacity to build. The goal by 1953 is a national productive capacity of 50,000 planes and 216,000 jet engines a year. Thus, instead of concentrating on total production in fewer plants, the manufacturers must spread their skilled forces thin to bring the larger number of plants into limited production. They must have huge new research and development facilities to perfect their knowledge of the infant science of jets (United alone has spent $12 million on its turbine laboratory).
Soon, the big U.S. automakers will begin building United, Wright and other aircraft engines under license. Chrysler, for example, is building a plant near Detroit to make United's J-48, and Ford will make parts for the new J-57. In theory, the big gain in engine production will come then. But the crucial test is whether, by the time these plants come into production, suitable substitutes can be developed for the critical metals now desperately short. If they cannot, the engine program will fail because there is not enough nickel, columbium, etc. in sight now to build the engines scheduled in 1953.