The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-03-17


 Submarines were sinking ships wholesale. Boss man Kaiser blew in from the west, dramatizing the need for more and more cargo planes, demanding contracts. When he couldn't get anything from Army or Navy, War Production Board stepped into the picture and asked the Defense Plant Corporation to give him the contract he finally got.
 Today the Kaiser Hughes Aircraft Corporation has letter from WIPE Chairman Donald M. Nelson saying that he has asked the Defense Plant Corporation to cancel that contract on the strength of a De- cember investigation by a board of engineers and their mid-January report to WIPES Aircraft Production Board, headed by Charles E. Wilson. Progress on the XIII has been tough right from the beginning When the Army and Navy refused to give the builders any strategic materials or even let them use any aircraft engineers otherwise em- ployed, it was necessary to build the plane of wood. Planes of 320- foot wingspread designed to carry 60 tons of cargo had never been built before, and wooden construc- tion turned out to be heavier than had been calculated thus lessen- ing the potential load carrying power.
 ENGINEERS OKAY,
 WORK GOES ON
 Work on the first model is still going on. Four of the WIPE engin- eers who inspected the project are reported to have recommended con- tinuation without condemning the plane, while two were in doubt. The most that can be hoped for is completion of the first wooden plane as a test model, with re-en- gineering on the two other planes to build them of metal, of which there now seems to be no shortage.
 What has happened to the Kaiser Hughes projects is typical of what has happened to the entire cargo plane building program in the last year and a half. Practically all wooden plane projects have been abandoned.
 Production of new model super cargo planes, while huge in com parison to pre-war quantity stand ards, is still subject to serious de- lay, according to the Senate Tru- man Committees third annual re- port on aircraft. Full credit is given to Army and Navy for build ing up their 90,000 miles of trans port route, without which success full operations could not have been carried out at Guadalcanal, New Guinea, North Africa. Burma and over the hump to China.
 DC-3 IS TOP
 TRANSPORT NOW
 It is pointed out, however. that more transport work has been done with Army versions of the 10-year- old Douglas DC-3 - the workhorse of the air - than with all other types of cargo and transport planes put together. And while thousands of these planes have been built. even their production is not up to original schedule.
 In heavy planes. production ot both the four-engined Douglas Sky master C-54 and Consolidated Vul- tee C-87 version of the Liberator Bomber are reported behind sched- ule. Production of the Lockheed Constellation was stopped because of the need for Lightning P-38 fighter planes.
 All combat aircraft still get high est priority. but the need for cargo planes in all theaters is still con- sidered great, and it is also Iconsid- cred important that planes be re- turned to the airlineS as fast as that can be done, consistent with success of military operations.