Evening star., 1940-09-08
Old Days Of Building
Planes With Ease
Are Gone Forever
Once-SimpIe Industry
Becomes Complicated
With Progress

I fThiS is the fifth OF series OF
trticleS prepared BY the National
Defense Commission to qtUe the
public background on the cur
rent program OF building for
hetenSe."D
IN the good old days "a whole 80
YEARS ago. the best of airplanes
could be built at home A picture,
on the back of an old envelope
gave the general outlines. Then
the young idea man, reasonably
handy with bamboo. piano wire
clpth, a few pieces of old tin, some
hAirpins. and a power plant cribbed
f}om a motorcycle went sto work
Ptetty soon he had an airplane
Al least it chugged through the air
at 40 miles an hour.
Our young idea man is 30 years
older today. He's president of an
aircraft corporation with a plant
that runs for acres, turning out
sleek. all-metal beauties made up
of 10000 separate parts, each
stamped, spun, or fabricated, ac-
cording to exact specifications. Each
part is made of special heat
treated metal.
A Giant Assembled.
These 10000 parts are assembled
into smooth-skinned airplane,
which looks as though it had been
stamped out like a cigarette tray.
BY virtue of a few thousand horse
power strapped on its nose it can
streak through the air at 400 miles
an hour with a ton of bombs in its
belly, deposit these a thousand miles
away, and be back for lunch.
The whole process still starts as
paternal gleam in a mans eye.
But these days that eye belongs to
some Army or Navy officer. He
seizes a piece of paper, writes down
how far and how fast the ship
should fly, and with what: then he
turns it over to the designing engi-
reers and the fun starts.
They draw pictures of it. They
figure the stresses and strains. They
beef it up to stand the gaff and
pare it down to save weight. They
make little models and fly them in
wind tunnels. They throw away a
million pieces of paper and end up
with drawings of a complete air.
plane. These are turned over to a
manufacturer to produce an expert
mental model
BY dint of few thousand man.
hours hard work the experimental
model OF the airplane Is ready.
Much to the engineers surprise it
flies and does about what it's sup
posed to. Then it's turned over to
the Army test pilots to find out what
makes it tick.
BY the time the testers get through
the plane will do everything any
airplane before could do. and lots
of tricks that would give last weeks
plane air sickness. A few planes
are built and tried out in actual
service.
Then the order goes out for
quantity production. That's the
stage where our national defense
aircraft program is at present. And
that's where the National Defense
Advisory Commissions Production
Division, under William S: Knudsen.
went to work, finding the factories
to turn out copies of the new ship in
q hurry. The factory found, the
price agreed on, work started.
More Drawings Needed.
Another set of drawings-these
are practically final They go to the
lofting room, similar to the lofting
department in shipysrd. Here the
drawings of the final ship are turned
into wooden mock up"-a dummy
of each piece. These are assembled
Into a full-sized wooden model of
the plane. This is complete with
pilot seat, machine guns, instru-
rnents, gas tanks and all. This is
done so that machine gun won t
turn out to be firing through the
middle of gas tank, or the wheels
von't fold up into the space where
the pilot is supposed to ply his trade
Then steel templets are punched
out so that each piece will fit with its
reighbor, like dress pattern, and
we're off to production.
First, as always, come materials
A plane has more trick metal alloys
tucked away inside it than you could
ever learn to identify. Each part is
specially heat treated to give it
special qualities of strength, or
toughness, or resistance to fatigue,