The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1943-06-02
MECHANICAL GENIUS WILL WIN WAR

SO that's the reason | haven't been
able to catch any,"
That was the remark Philadelphia
made to the late ben Tink'' Demeritt about
the right way to bait a hook.
Americans have a knack for mechaG-
ical genius applied to the small as we'll as
the big things in life. If you don't know how
to bait your hook for pompano, for instance,
you may sit for hour after hur beside Key
West fisherman and seldm get bite while
he pulls 'em in" with surprising regular
ity. And a Key West fisherman attaches
hook to a line and the line to leader, so
that the harder fish pulls the tighter the
single half hitch in the line becomes That
applies to hook without an eye, and you
may tie yours on with completely of turns,
only to lose it, while the simple half hitch
holds It tightly
1t is the Simple half hitch that mani
tests itself more than anything else in the
Americans mechanical genius. That genius
is forever impelling him to seek simpler
ways to do thing. Simplicity is a passion
with him; it gave birth to standardization, to
the assembly line.
Monday night James F. Byrnes, direc-
tor of the War Mobilization Commission,
declared that the United States has made its
100, 00Oth plane since this country entered
the war But that is little more than 'be-
ginning" Four days before Mr.. Byrnes
made his address the Ford interests an
nounced that it would not be long before
500 big bombers would be coming off the
assembly line at Willow Run every day.
Counting Sundays, that means a yearly
production of 800 planes from single
manufacturing centeri
Many of us chuckled when Henry Ford,
good many years ago, said the time would
come when he would turn out 5000 auto
mobiles day. But the time came, not only
at his plant, but also at the plants of Gen.
era Motors.
No lost motion, no lost time; pro-
duction measured in precious seconds, not
in minutes or hours, and that objective can
be attained only through simplicity.
The Germans and the Japs have little
inventive genius along mechanical lines.
The Germans are good copyists; the Japs
are poor copyists; the Germans, as rule.
improve on the copy; the Japs, in trying to
improve, fall short of the copy, as in the
case of their Zero, which was glamorized
for time but which has turned out to be
something of an egg she'll. A few days ago
airplane experts asserted that the Zero is
inferior to any of the first-line fighter planes
the Allies use.
But copyists, good or bad, in war time
work at distinct disadvantage. In the
matter of planes even if the Germans and
the Japs had the opportunity and the ex-
tended time to copy our planes, by the time
they have finished their copies the Amer.
lean types have been distinctly improved.
Therein lies the explanation of the
great superiority the American planes have
over the German and the Jap aircraft. In
the Mediterranean, the record shows, in de-
stroyed planes, almost 10 to one in favor
of the Allies; in the European and Pacific
theatres, slightly more than five to one.
Mechanical genius, with trigger-think
ing men behind the products of that genius,
will wipe out, as Mr.. Byrnes said, .'every
yestige of Japanese treachery and German
tyranny"
Tho lo1xy Jov,,, ~, 4bo cifI,otioYa