Evening star., 1946-02-04
AHForceM Must Write OHBIIions
|OrKeep Using Obsolete Planes
BY w. H. SHIPPEN. Jr,
Av{st ti~v, rSx& rpS a.

III NSSPOSHIy\
BY w. H. SHIPPEN, Jr,
H Aviation Editor of The Star.
The Army Air Forces bold drive
for equipment In overwhelming
quantity saved lives, but 1t piled up
a staggering surplus.
Some Of us just back from an
AAF tour of depots in Ohio, Indiana
and Illinois had seen similar stock
piles all over the hemisphere, yet
the sight lost nothing through repe-
tition.
What with radical new aircraft
already making even the mighty
B-29 obsolete, 1t would seem the
time is near when the American
taxpayer must make a painful de-
cision. Will the armed services be
saddled with this load Of excess
baggage or will the stuff be written
on the books to make way for really
modern weapons?
/ Threat to Production.
For mile after mile we walked be.
tween packing cases loaded with
great engines and other precision
aircraft components machinery
representing vast outpouring Of
American energy, ingenuity and
dollars, and virtually all Of it q drug
on the market and threat against
future production.
No pleasant picture, this wastage
Of billions, and yet men who have
seen our planes in combat took COM
fort from the fact that so much
flying equipment never would have
returned to base but for the over
whelming force of a supply effort
which counted no cost as long as
more and better aircraft were need
ed at worldwide fighting fronts.
Unpredictable factors, like the
success of the atomic bomb, the sud-
den collapse of the Japs, or the
surprising combat record OF our air
men, resulted in the home front
pumping more production into our
long supply pipelines than actually
was needed to win the war. The
result is q surplus to make that of
the last World War seem but
drop in the bucket.
725,0Oo Separate Items.
While the AAF supply division
carried 725,000 separate items,
everything from hangers to watches,
one of its principal problems now
are tens of thousands of engines,
varying from light power plants for
"Grasshoppers" to 2,200-horsepower
giants for the B-29's. These latter
cost up to $4,000 each.
Virtually all are specially de-
signed for combat. New jet and
turbine plants are making them OBJ
solete. Sold for scrap, they bring
about $3.75, but first $40 worth of
labor must 60 into them to strip
them down and remove sodium
filled valves which are explosives if
melted down. Further, it Is costly to
store the huge power plants so that
they are protected from moisture
and supplied with extra parts.
Aircraft manufacturers don't want
these engines and as stationary
power plants they are great con-
sumers of high-test gasoline. So
far an Indiana truck grower has
come forward with a plan for
mounting them in his fields to blow
frost of his crops during spring cold
snaps. The neighbors might con-
slider this a noisy solution to his
problem.
Few Buyers Turn Up.
Non-profit schools and colleges
are taking small numbers Of the
motors at cost and the Army has
stripped down others and mounted
the parts on display boards for pos
sible sale. Almost no buyers are
turning up, however. One suggested
use for a tiny spring is to mount
it in the wind box of mamma"
doll
Meanwhile, the endless crates are
stacked up in some 500 warehouses
throughout the country. Industrial
users want the space to resume
peacetime production. The huge
fair buildings at Springfield, ILL.,, for
example, are crammed with surplus
property. So is the big plant of the
Oliver Plow Co., at South Bend, Ind.
The people of Illinois want to hold
their fair this fall, and the plow
company hopes to get tractor op-
Grafton under way soon. This is
typical of the storage problem in
scores of communities.
After setting aside enough equip
ment of all types to supply a mod
ern air force for five years, the Air
Technical Service Command has re-
ported more than $4,000 combat air
planes to Federal agencies for sale,
salvage or scrapping, along with
vast stores of component parts. This
reported materiel represents a cost
of some S. ,000, 900 900 and it is esti-
mated that only about S per cent
of 1t has any real sale value.
Scrapped Immediately.
Efforts to clean house for future
streamlining of the AAF has re-
suited in the scrapping of heavy
bombers and other equipment as it
came from the production line, ac-
cording to 1t. Gen. Nathan r. Twin
ing, chief Of the ATSC. For in
stance, 16 virtually completed B-29s
were scrapped at the Wichita,
Kans., plant alone because it would
have cost more than 5000 to finish
each of these $750,OO0 giants and
only $1,875 to dismantle them.
Knowing that prolonged storage
only throws good money after bad,
the Army, the War Assets Admin.
istration and the Reconstruction
Finance Corp. are doing everything
possible to clear away the surplus
| without arousing muck-dreaded