The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-10-22
BY PAUL BANNING
MA eerYloa staf Cogrespondent

| any British plane plant Is 30 great it hits you between the eyes. That was my reaction to the Lockheed- Vega alrplane factory in Los An- geles, where giant boribers and sleek pursuit ships are being rolled oil the worlds largest assembly line in mounting numbers by 33,O00 highly skilled technicians. I It was the vast acreage, the fiuor. escent lighting, the modern eQuip- ment, the rapidity with which the men worked and the general free- dom they enjoyed that was impress sive. It was so impressive 1t only underlined how difficult is the lot of the British airplane worker.
 Take the Hawker Hurricane fac- tory, for example, not far out of London.
 It is a long, low, brick struc- ture 50 perfectly camouflaged that from the air 1t resembles nothing more than patch of shaded ground, and from the road 1t might be just another building where, during peacetime, they once manufactured sace powder and rouge.
 From the smooth strip of con- crete which bypasses the plant, you can see maybe 25 anti-air- craft guns and three-inch cannons to harass and upset the aim of bombardiers crouched in the nose of high-fying bombers and hedge- hopping Messerschmitt fighters. HURRICANES
 BY NIGHT
 There is 8 high wire fence along the factory border which parallels the road. At 4:30 in the afternoon a small army of men, some leaving the factory, some going into 1t, par- ades through the gate. The men who enter at 4.30 are the night shift.
 They work inethodically through the night, riveting fuselages, mouting wings, bolting six car- mons and four machine guns into those wings, doing ali the hum dreds of big and small jobs which add up to total of one 385 m.p.h. pursuit snip.
 The assembly line floor where they work is as different from the worlds largest Lockheed airplane factory in Los Angeles as night from day. There is no overhead fiourescent lighting to reduce eye strain. And during hot summer evenings when scarcely breath of air moves, they cannot open the hundreds of small glass win- dows because that's just an invi- tation to get bombed. Anyway, open the windows and in come great clouds of oil smoke from the srnudge pots which line tile road- ways and fields as an antidote against those nights which are made vvidly clear by the pene- trating brilliancy of 6 bonber's moon.
 Their assembly lines also are not 50 modern. The equipment is less eflcient and when they bolt metal cowling over one part of the 2000-horsepower engine you know 1t was not sliced into form by one of the new electrically operated cutting saws such as they have at Lockheed, which do Il cowlings in 6 single operation. SIZING UP
 THE SIZE
 Probably the greatest contrast IS the obvious one of size and freedom of working inside and outside of well-hghted plant. There are no 33,- 900 men working in the Hurricane plant outside of London or in the Spitfire factories of the Midlands or in the welsh factory where the great four-engined Stirling bombers now plastering Berlin are turned out. In- stead, the total is maybe 5000 factory, but with many more fac- tories, so that if one Is bombed to the ground total production will not stop.
 The quality and type of men working in the Hurricane factory and in the Lockteed plant are dif- ferent too. American workmen are younger and they move with greater rapidity. As they operate the great pile-driving machines which pound farmless metaieinto corrugated strips you get the feelnig thae here Is something that only the word dy- manic will bescribe.
 Although the English workmen lack this type of high-geared equipment and are cramped for space, due to the stringent rules of biackout, they have been turn ing out Spitflres and Hurricanes which many think surpassed the performance Of any U. S.-built pursuit plane. in opera.:on along the English Channel.
 BEST
 BONFBERs
 American bombers, however, have no counterpart In England. They are superior in every degree. They fly higher, faster and farther with a bigger bomb load, and when they are riddied with shrapnei and machine gun bullets, R. A. F. pilots know they have a better than even chance of getting back safely to their home airdroIne.
 Even in the little refinements of construction an American bomber Is the dream of a seasoised British big-ship pilot. Every lever for flying the big ships is within easy reach 80 that on a flight to Ham, burg or Dusseldorf you don't be- come exhausted reaching behind, down and overhead for levers and gears.
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