Sketchy and incomplete as was our knowledge of airplane construction in the early days of 1917, it was no more hazy than our notion of how many planes to build. What would constitute overwhelming superiority in the air?
As an indication of the rapidity with which history has moved, it may be stated that in January and February of 1917 the Signal Corps discussed the feasibility of building 1,000 planes in a year of construction. This seems now to us a ridiculously low figure to propose as representative of American resources, but in the early weeks of 1917 the construction of a thousand airplanes appeared to be a formidable undertaking. In March, when war was inevitable, we raised this number to 2,500 planes within 12 months; in April, when war was declared, we raised it again to 3,700.
But once we were in the war, through the exchange of military missions our designers were taken into the confidence of the aviation branches of the French, British, and Italian Armies and shown then for the first time a comprehensive view of the development of the war plane, both what had been done in the past and what might be expected in the future. As a result our Joint Army and Navy Technical Board in the last week of May and the early part of June, 1917, recommended to the Secretaries of War and the Navy that a building program be started at once to produce the stupendous total of 19,775 planes for our own use and 3,000 additional ones, if we were to train foreign aviators, or approximately 22,000 in all. This was a program worthy of America's industrial greatness. Of these proposed planes, 7,050 were for training our flyers, 725 for the defense of the United States and insular possessions, and 12,000 for active service in France.
Such was the task assigned to an industry that in the previous 12 months had manufactured less than 800 airplanes, and those consisting principally of training planes for foreign governments.
The expanding national ambition for an aircraft industry was also shown by the mounting money grants. On May 12 Congress voted $10,800,000 for military aeronautics. On June 15 an appropriation of $43,450,000 was voted for the same purpose. Finally on July 24, 1917, the President signed the bill appropriating $640,000,000 foraircraft. This was the largest appropriation ever made by Congress for one specific purpose, and this bill was put through both Houses within the period of a little more than a week.
The figure 22,000, however, scarcely indicates the size of this undertaking, as we were to realize before long. We little understood the infinite complications of fully equipping battle planes. Lacking that invaluable experience which Europe had attained in three years of production, we had no practical realization of the fact that for each 100 airplanes an equivalent of 80 additional airplanes must be provided in spare parts. In other words, an effective fighting plane delivered in France is not one plane, but it is one plane and eight-tenths of another; which means that the program adopted in June, 1917, called for the production in 12 months of not 22,000 airplanes but rather the equivalent of 40,000 airplanes.
Let us set down the inventory of the Government's own resources for handling this project.
The American Air Service, which was then part of the Signal Corps, had had a struggling and meager existence, working with the old pusher type of planes until in 1914 an appropriation of $250,000 was made available for the purchase of new airplanes and equipment. Shortly after this appropriation was granted, five officers were sent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a course in aeronautics. When the war broke out in Europe in August, 1914, these men constituted the entire technically trained personnel of the Air Service of the United States. By April 6, 1917, we had 65 officers in the Air Service, an enlisted and civilian personnel of 1,330, two flying fields, and a few serviceable planes of the training type.
This equipment may be compared with that of Germany, France, and England at the time they went to war. Germany is believed to have had nearly 1,000 airplanes in August, 1914; France had about 300; and England barely 250. America's 224, delivered up to April 6, 1917, were nearly all obsolete in type when compared with the machines then in effective service in France.
No sooner had the United States embarked upon the war than the agents of the European manufacturers of airplanes descended upon the Aircraft Board in swarms. France and Italy had both adopted the policy of depending upon the private development of designs for their supplies of airplanes, with the result that the builders of each country had produced a number of successful types of flying machines and an even greater number of types of engines. On the assumption that the United States would adopt certain of these types and build them here, the agents for the Sopwiths, the Capronis, the Handley-Pages, and many others proceeded to demonstrate the particular excellences of their various articles. Out of this confusion of counsel stood one pertinent fact in relief—the United States would have to pay considerable royalties for the use of any of these European devices.
As to the relative merits of types and designs, it was soon apparent that no intelligent decision could be reached in Washington or anywhere but in Europe. Because of our distance from the front and the length of time required to put the American industrial machine into operation on a large scale, it was necessary that in advance we understand types and tendencies in aircraft construction, so that we might anticipate aircraft development in such special designs as we might adopt. Otherwise, if we accepted the types of equipment then in use in Europe, by the time we had begun producing on a large scale a year or so later we would find our output obsolete and out of date, so rapidly was the aircraft art moving.
Consequently, in June the United States sent to Europe a commission of six civilian and military experts, headed by Maj. R. C. Bolling, part of whose duties was to advise the American War Department as to what types of planes and engines and other air equipment we should prepare to manufacture. Also, in April the Chief of the Signal Corps had cables sent to England, France, and Italy, requesting that aviation experts be sent at once to this country; and shortly after this we dispatched to Europe more than 100 skilled mechanics to work in the foreign engine and airplane plants and acquire the training that would make them the nucleus of a large mechanical force for aircraft production in this country.
But while these early educational activities were in progress, much could be done at home that need not await the forthcoming reports from the Bolling mission. We had, for instance, in this country several types of planes and engines that would be suitable for the training fields which were even then being established. The Signal Corps, therefore, bent its energies upon the manufacture of training equipment, leaving the development of battle aircraft to come after we should know more about that subject.
It was evident that we could not equip an airplane industry and furnish machines to our fliers abroad before the summer of 1918; and so we arranged with France for this equipment by placing orders with French factories for 5,875 planes of regular French design. These were all to be delivered by July 1, 1918.
In the arrangement with the French factories we agreed to supply from the United States a great deal of the raw materials for these machines, and the contract for furnishing these supplies was given to J. G. White & Co. of New York City. This concern did a creditable job, shipping about 5,000,000 feet of lumber, much necessary machinery, and a multitude of items required in the fabrication of airplanes, all to the value of $10,000,000.
The total weight of the shipments on this contract was something like 23,000 tons, this figure including 7,500 tons of lumber. The other tonnage consisted of tubing of steel, brass, copper and aluminum; sheets of steel, copper, lead, and aluminum; as well as bar steel, tool steel, structural steel, ball bearings, crank shafts, turnbuckles, radiator tubes, wire, cable, bolts, nuts, screws, nails, fiber cloth, felt, and rubber. All of this was in addition to approximately 1,000 machine tools, such as motors, lathes, and grinders.
The orders for French planes were divided as follows: 725 Nieuport training planes, 150 Spad training planes, 1,500 Breguet service planes; 2,000 Spad service planes; and 1,500 New Spad or Nieuport service planes. The decision between the New Spad or Nieuport service planes was to be made as soon as the New Spad could be tested. These planes were to be delivered in specified monthly quantities increasing in number until the total of 1,360 planes should be placed in our hands during the month of March, 1918, alone. The contracts were to be concluded in June with the delivery of the final 1,115 planes. We also contracted for the manufacture of 8,500 service engines of the Renault, Hispano and Gnome makes, all of these to be delivered by the end of June.
When the armistice ended the fighting, we had produced a total of 11,754 airplanes in America, together with most of the necessary spare parts for about one-third of them.
While a large part of the American airplanes built in the war period were of the training type rather than the service, or battle, type, nevertheless it was necessary that we have a large equipment of training planes in order to prepare the swiftly expanding personnel of the Air Service for its future activity at the front. The nations associated with us in the war, however, had produced their training equipment prior to our participation as a belligerent, and at the time we entered the war the French, British, and Italians were producing only enough training planes to maintain their training equipment and were going in heavily with the rest of their airplane industries for the production of service planes.
With these considerations in mind, the reader may make an interesting comparison of British and American plane production, the British figures being for both the British Army and the British Navy, whereas the American figures are for the American Army alone. In the following table of comparison the British figures are based on the Lockhart Report of November 1, 1918:
[26]Experimental.
[26]Experimental.
[27]1,476 built in last seven months only.
[27]1,476 built in last seven months only.
[28]Inclusive of 135 secured by Engineering Department. American total 12,837 if October production had continued through November and December.
[28]Inclusive of 135 secured by Engineering Department. American total 12,837 if October production had continued through November and December.
Broadly stated, and without reference to types of planes produced, these figures mean that the United States in her second year of the war produced for the American Army alone almost as many airplanes as Great Britain in her third year of the war built for both her army and navy. In October, 1918, factories in this country turned out 1,651 planes, which, without allowing for the monthly expansion in the production, was at the rate of 20,000 planes per year. Assuming no increase in the October rate of production, we would have attained the 22,000 airplanes in 23 months after July 1, 1917, the date on which the production effort may be said to have started. Our production of fighting planes in the war period was 3,328.
On the day the armistice was signed we had received from all sources 16,952 planes. Of these 5,198 had been produced for us by the allies. We had 48 flying fields, 20,568 Air Service officers, and 174,456 enlisted men and civilian personnel. These figures do not mean that we had more than 17,000 planes on hand at that time, because the mortality in airplanes is high from accidents and ordinary wear and tear.
Once we had started out on this enterprise we soon discovered that the production of airplanes was something more than a mere manufacturing job. With almost any other article we might have made our designs, given orders to the factories, and rested in the security that in due time the articles would be forthcoming. But with airplanes we had to create the industry; and this meant not only the equipping of factories, but the procurement and sometimes the actual production of the raw materials.
For instance, the ideal lubricant for the airplane motor is castor oil. When we discovered that the supply of castor oil was not nearly sufficient for our future needs, the Government itself secured from Asia a large quantity of castor beans, enough to seed more than 100,000 acres in this country and thus to provide for the future lubrication for our motors. This actual creation of raw materials was conducted on a much larger scale in the cases of certain other commodities used in airplane construction, particularly in the production of lumber and cotton and in the manufacture of the chemicals for the "dope" with which the airplane wings are covered and made air-tight.
An airplane must have wings and an engine with a propeller to make it go; and, like a bird, it must have a tail to make it fly straight and a body (fuselage) to hold all together. Part of the tail (the rudder) moves sideways and steers the airplane from left to right; part moves up and down (the elevators) and makes the airplane go up or down, and parts of the wings (the ailerons) move up and down and make the airplane tip from side to side. All of these things must be connected to the controls in the hands of the pilot. The frontedges of the wings are raised above the line of flight; and when the propeller driven by the engine forces the wings through the air, the airplane is lifted and flies.
All of the airplanes built for the United States during the war were tractor biplanes. In a plane of the tractor type the propeller is in front and pulls the machine. The biplane is so called because it has two planes or wings, one above the other. The biplane has been the most largely used of all types in war for two reasons: first, the struts and wires between the planes form a truss structure, and this gives the needed strength; and second, there is less danger of enemy bullets wrecking a biplane in the air because its wing support is greater than that of the monoplane or single-winged machine.
Since the airplane can lift only a limited weight, every part of the mechanism must be as light as possible. An airplane engine weighs from 2 to 3 pounds per horsepower, whereas an automobile motor weighs from 8 to 10 pounds per horsepower. The skeleton of the airplane is made of wood, mostly spruce, with sheet-steel fittings to join the wood parts together, and steel wires and rods to make every part a truss. This skeleton is covered with cloth, and the cloth is stretched and made smooth by dope.
Wood, sheet steel, wire, cloth, varnish—these are the principal components of an airplane. As raw materials they all seem easy to obtain in America. And so they are in peace times and for ordinary purposes. But never before had quality been so essential in an American industry, from the raw material up to the finished product—quality in the materials used, and quality in the workmanship which fashions the parts. But combined with this quality we were forced to produce in quantities, bounded only by our own physical limitations, and these quantities must include not only the materials for our own air program but also some of the principal raw materials used by the airplane builders in France and England, specifically, all of the spruce which the allies would require and, later, much of the wing fabric and dope for their machines.
Quite early it was apparent to us that we had on our hands a problem in spruce production which the Government itself must solve, if the airplane undertaking were not to fail at the outset. When we entered the war linen was exclusively used for the covering of wings; and it developed almost immediately that the United Kingdom was practically the sole source of linen. But the Irish looms could not begin to furnish us with our needs for this commodity. Later on came up the question of supplying dope and castor oil. Finally, during the last months of the war, it became necessary for us to follow up the production of all classes of our raw material, particularly in working out a suitable supply of steel tubing. But our great creative efforts in raw materials were confined to spruce, fabric, and dope.
The lumber problem involved vast questions of an industrial and technical character. We had to conduct a campaign of education in the knowledge of aircraft requirements that reached from the loggers themselves in the woods to the sawmill men, to the cut-up plants, and then followed through the processes of drying and sawing to the proper utilization of the lumber in the aircraft factories.
In working out these problems, while we drew heavily upon the experience in Europe, yet we ourselves added our own technical skill to the solution. The Signal Corps was assisted by the forest products laboratory at Madison, Wis., and by the wood section of the inspection department of the Bureau of Aircraft Production. The United States Forest Service contributed its share of technical knowledge. At the end of the war we considered that our practice in the handling of aircraft lumber was superior to that of either France or England.
Each airplane uses two distinct sorts of wood—first, the spruce or similar lumber for the wing beams or other plane parts; and second, mahogany, walnut, or other hardwoods for propellers. In each case the Army production authorities were involved both in securing the lumber and in educating manufacturers to handle it properly.
In an ordinary biplane there are two beams for each lateral wing, eight beams to the plane. These form the basis of strength for the wings. Because of the heavy stresses put upon the airplanes by battle conditions, only the most perfect and straight-grained wood is suitable for these beams. All cross-grained or spiral-grained material, or material too coarse in its structure, is useless.
Spruce is the best of all woods for wing beams. Our problem was to supply lumber enough for the wing beams, disregarding the other parts, as all other wood used in the manufacture of planes could be secured from cuttings from the wing-beam stock. At the beginning we built each beam out of one piece of wood; and this meant that the lumber must be extra long, thick, and perfect. Until we learned how to cut the spruce economically we found that only a small portion of the lumber actually logged was satisfactory for airplanes. An average sized biplane uses less than 500 feet of lumber. In the hands of skilled cutters this quantity can be worked out of 1,000 feet of rough lumber. But in the earlier days of the undertaking as high as 5,000 feet of spruce per plane were actually used because of imperfections in the lumber, lack of proper inspection at the mills, and faulty handling in transit and in the factories.
We also used certain species of fir in building training planes. This wood is, like spruce, light, tough, and strong. The only great source of supply of these woods was in the Pacific Northwest, although there was a modest quantity of suitable timber in West Virginia, North Carolina, and New England.
While at first we expected to rely upon the unaided efforts of the lumber producers, labor difficulties almost immediately arose in the Northwest to hinder the production of lumber. The effort, too, was beset with difficulties of a physical nature, since the large virgin stands of spruce occurred only at intervals and often at long distances from the existing railroads. By the middle of October, 1917, it became evident that the northwestern lumber industry unaided could not deliver the spruce and fir; and the Chief of Staff of the Army formed a military organization to handle the situation. On November 6, 1917, Col. Brice P. Disque took command of the Spruce Production Division of the Signal Corps, this organization later being transferred to the Bureau of Aircraft Production.
When Col. Disque went into the Northwest he found the industry in chaotic condition. The I. W. W. was demoralizing the labor forces. The mills did not have the machinery to cut the straight-grained lumber needed and their timber experts were not sufficiently skilled in the selection and judging of logs to secure the maximum footage. The whole industry was organized along lines of quantity production and desired to avoid all high quality requirements insisted upon by the Government.
One of the first acts of the military organization was to organize a society called the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, the "L. L. L. L.," to offset the I. W. W. propaganda, its platform being, no strikes, fair wages, and the conscientious production of the Government's requirements. On March 1, 1918, 75,000 lumbermen and operators agreed without reservation to give Col. Disque power to decide all labor disputes. The specifications for logs were then standardized and modified as far as practicable to meet the manufacturers' needs. We arranged financial assistance that they might equip their mills with the proper machinery. We instituted a system of instruction for the personnel. Finally, the Government fixed a price for aircraft spruce that stabilized the industry and provided against delays from labor disputes.
While these basic reforms were being instituted our organization had energetically taken up the physical problems relating to the work. We surveyed the existing stands of spruce timber, built railroads connecting them with the mills, and projected other railroads far into the future. We began and encouraged logging by farmers in small operations. By these and other methods employed, the efficiency of this production effort gradually increased.
In all, we took 180,000,000 feet of aircraft lumber out of the northwestern forests. To the allies went 120,000,000 feet; to the United States Army and Navy, 60,000,000 feet.
ASSEMBLING DE HAVILAND-4 WINGS AT THE DAYTON-WRIGHT PLANT.
ASSEMBLING DE HAVILAND-4 WINGS AT THE DAYTON-WRIGHT PLANT.
ASSEMBLING DE HAVILAND-4 WINGS AT THE DAYTON-WRIGHT PLANT.
SEWING FABRIC ON AIRPLANE WINGS.
SEWING FABRIC ON AIRPLANE WINGS.
SEWING FABRIC ON AIRPLANE WINGS.
APPLYING THE DOPE TO AIRPLANE WINGS.
APPLYING THE DOPE TO AIRPLANE WINGS.
APPLYING THE DOPE TO AIRPLANE WINGS.
Yet when we had resolved the difficulties in the forests only part of the problem had been met. Next came the intricate industrial question of how to prepare this lumber for aircraft use. We possessed little knowledge as to the proper methods of seasoning this timber. The vast majority of woodworking plants in this country, such as furniture and piano makers, had always dried lumber to the end that it might keep its shape. We now were faced with the technical question of drying lumber so as to preserve its strength. The forest products laboratory worked out a scientific method for this sort of seasoning. Incidentally they discovered that ordinary commercial drying had seldom been carried on scientifically. The country will receive a lasting benefit from this instruction carried broadcast over the industry.
In the progress of our wood studies we discovered a method of splicing short lengths of spruce to make wing beams and in the later months of the production used these spliced beams exclusively at a great saving in raw materials. The use of laminated beams would probably have become universal in another year of warfare.
The flying surfaces of an airplane are made by stretching cloth over the frames. When we came into war it was supposed that linen was the only common fabric with sufficient strength for this use, and linen was almost exclusively used by the airplane builders, although Italian manufacturers were trying to develop a cotton fabric. Of the three principal sources of flax, Belgium had been cut off from the allies, Russia was isolated entirely after the revolution there, and Ireland was left as the sole available land from which flax for airplane linen could be obtained.
As late as August, 1917, England assured us that she could supply all of the linen that would be needed. It rapidly became evident that England had underestimated our requirements. An average airplane requires 250 yards of fabric, while some of the large machines need more than 500 yards. And these requirements do not take into consideration the spare wings which must be supplied with each airplane. This meant a demand for millions of yards put upon the Irish supply, which had no such surplus above allied needs.
For some time prior to April 6, 1917, the Bureau of Standards at Washington had been experimenting with cotton airplane cloths. Out of the large variety of fabrics tested several promising experimental cloths were produced. The chief objection to cotton was that the dope which gave satisfactory results on linen failed to work with uniformity on cotton. Therefore, it became apparent that if we were to use cotton fabric, we should have to invent a new dope.
Two grades of cotton airplane cloth were finally evolved—A, which had a minimum strength of 80 pounds per inch, and B, with a minimum strength of 75 pounds per inch. Grade A was later universallyadopted. This cloth weighed four and one-half ounces per square yard.
We placed our first orders for cotton airplane fabric in September, 1917—orders for 20,000 yards—and from that time on the use of linen decreased. By March of 1918 the production of cotton airplane cloth had reached 400,000 yards per month. In May the production was about 900,000 yards; and when the war ended this material was being turned out at the rate of 1,200,000 yards per month. Starting with a few machines, our cotton mills had gradually brought 2,600 looms into the enterprise, each loom turning out about 120 yards of cloth in a week. A total of 10,248,355 yards of cotton fabric was woven and delivered to the Government—over 5,800 miles of it, nearly enough to reach from California to France. The use of cotton fabric so expanded that in August, 1918, we discontinued the importations of linen altogether.
There was, however, danger that we would be limited in our output of cotton fabric if there were any curtailment in the supply of the long-staple sea-island and Egyptian cotton of which this cloth is made. To make sure that there would be no shortage of this material the Signal Corps in November, 1917, went into the market and purchased 15,000 bales of sea-island cotton. This at all times gave us an adequate reserve of raw material for the new fabric.
Cotton proved to be not only an admirable substitute for linen but even a better fabric than the original cloth which had been used. No matter how abundant the supply of flax may be, it is unlikely that linen will ever again be used in large quantities for the manufacture of airplane wings.
Thus, as the airplane situation was saved by the prompt action of the Signal Corps in organizing and training the spruce industry, so again its decision to produce cotton fabric and its prompt action in cornering the necessary cotton supply made possible the uninterrupted expansion of the allied aviation program.
The wings of an airplane must not only be covered with fabric, but the fabric must be filled with dope, which is a sort of varnish. The function of the dope is to stretch the cloth tight and to create on it a smooth surface. After the dope is on the fabric the surface is protected further by a coat of ordinary spar varnish.
We found in the market two sorts of dope which were being furnished to airplane builders of all countries by various chemical and varnish manufacturers. One of these dopes was nitrate in character and was made from nitrocellulose and certain wood-chemical solvents including alcohol. This produced a surface similar to that of a photographic film. The other kind of dope had an acetate base and was made from cellulose-acetate and such wood chemical solvents as acetone.
The nitrate dope burned rapidly when ignited but the acetate type was slow burning. Thus in training planes not subject to attack by enemy incendiary bullets the nitrate dope would be fairly satisfactory, but in the fighting planes the slow-burning acetate dope was a vital necessity. Up to our participation in the war the dopes produced in the United States were principally nitrate in character.
It was evident that we should make our new dope acetate in character to avoid the danger of fire. But for this we would require great quantities of acetone and acetate chemicals, and a careful canvass of the supply of such ingredients showed that it would be impossible for us to obtain these in anything like the quantities we should require without developing absolutely new sources of production.
Already acetone and its kindred products were being absorbed in large quantities by the war production of the allies. The British Army was absolutely dependent upon cordite as a high explosive. Acetone is the chemical basis of cordite; and therefore the British Army looked with great concern upon the added demand which the American aviation program proposed to put upon the acetone supply.
We estimated that in 1918 we would require 25,000 tons of acetone in our dope production. The British war mission in this country submitted figures showing that the war demands of the allies, together with their necessary domestic requirements, would in themselves be greater than the total world production of acetone.
There was nothing then for us to do but to increase the source of supply of these necessary acetate compounds; and this was done by encouraging, financially and otherwise, the establishment of 10 large chemical plants. These were located in as many towns and cities, as follows: Collinwood, Tenn.; Tyrone, Pa.; Mechanicsville, N. Y.; Shawinigan Falls, Canada; Kingsport, Tenn.; Lyle, Tenn.; Freemont, Mo.; Sutton, W. Va.; Shelby, Ala.; and Terre Haute, Ind.
But it was evident that before these plants could be completed the airplane builders would be needing dope; and therefore steps were taken to keep things going in all the principal countries fighting Germany until the acetate shortage could be relieved. In December, 1917, we commandeered all the existing American supply of acetate of lime, the base from which acetone and kindred products are made. Then we entered into a pool with the allied governments to ration these supplies of chemicals, pending the era of plenty. Our agency in this pool was the wood-chemical section of the War Industries Board, whereas the allies placed their demands in the hands of the British war mission. These two boards allocated the acetate chemicals among the different countries according to the urgency of their demands. Since it was evident there might be financial losses incurred as the result of the commandeering order or in the project of the new Government chemical plants, the British war mission agreedthat any deficit should be shared equally by the American and British Governments. It was also agreed we should not have any advantage in prices paid for acetates of American origin. Under this arrangement we were able to produce 1,324,356 gallons of fabric dope during the period of hostilities, without upsetting any of the European war-production projects. Had the war continued, the output from the 10 chemical plants in which the Government was a partner would have cared for all American and allied requirements, allowing the production of private plants to go exclusively for the ordinary commercial purposes.
The actual building of the airplanes gave a striking example of the value of previous experience, either direct or of a kindred nature, in the quantity production of an article. What airplanes we had built in the United States—and the number was small, being less than 800 in the 12 months prior to April, 1917—had been entirely of the training type. These had been produced principally for foreign governments. But this slight manufacture gave us a nucleus of skill and equipment that we were able to expand to meet our own training needs almost as rapidly as fields could be equipped and student aviators enlisted. The training-plane program can be called a success, as the final production figures show. Of the 11,754 airplanes actually turned out by American factories, 8,567 were training machines. This was close to the 10,000 mark set as our ambition in June, 1917.
There are two types of training planes—those used in the primary instruction of students and those in the advanced teaching, the latter approaching the service planes in type. The primary plane carries the student and the instructor. Each occupant of the fuselage has before him a full set of controls which are interconnected so that the instructor at will can do the flying himself, or correct the student's false moves, or allow the student to take complete charge of the machine. These primary planes fly at the relatively slow speed of 75 miles per hour on the average and require engines so reliable that they need little attention.
For our training planes we adopted the Curtiss JN-4, with the Curtiss OX-5 engine, and as a supplementary equipment the Standard Aero Corporation's J-1 plane, with the Hall-Scott A-7-A engine. Both of these planes and both engines had been previously manufactured here. The Curtiss equipment, which was the standard at our training camps, gave complete satisfaction. The J-1 plane was later withdrawn from use, partly because the plane itself was not liked, partly because of the vibration resulting from this Hall-Scott engine, it having only four cylinders, and partly because of the uncertainty of the engine in cold weather.
CURTISS JN4-D, USED AS A PRIMARY TRAINING MACHINE. ENGINE, CURTISS OX-5.This machine has a dual control and is used solely for training purposes.
CURTISS JN4-D, USED AS A PRIMARY TRAINING MACHINE. ENGINE, CURTISS OX-5.This machine has a dual control and is used solely for training purposes.
CURTISS JN4-D, USED AS A PRIMARY TRAINING MACHINE. ENGINE, CURTISS OX-5.
This machine has a dual control and is used solely for training purposes.
V. E. 7. EQUIPPED WITH 180-HORSEPOWER HISPANO-SUIZA ENGINE.An American designed training plane.
V. E. 7. EQUIPPED WITH 180-HORSEPOWER HISPANO-SUIZA ENGINE.An American designed training plane.
V. E. 7. EQUIPPED WITH 180-HORSEPOWER HISPANO-SUIZA ENGINE.
An American designed training plane.
It was evident that at the start we must turn our entire manufacturing capacity to the production of training planes, since we would need these first in any event, and we were not yet equipped with the knowledge to enable us to make intelligent selections of service types.
In taking up the manufacturing problem the first step was to divide the existing responsible airplane plants between the Army and Navy, following the general rule that a single plant should confine its work to the needs of one Government department only. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule. This division gave to the Army the plants of the—
The factories which fell to the Navy were those of the—
Of these concerns, Curtiss, Standard, Burgess, L. W. F., Thomas-Morse, and Wright-Martin were the only ones which had ever built more than 10 machines.
These factories were quite insufficient in themselves to carry out the enterprise. Therefore it became necessary to create other airplane plants. Two new factories thereupon sprang into existence under Government encouragement. The largest producer of automobile bodies was the Fisher Body Co., at Detroit, Mich. The manufacture of automobile bodies is akin to the manufacture of airplanes to the extent that each is a fabrication of accurate, interchangeable wood and sheet-steel parts. The Fisher organization brought into the enterprise not only machinery and buildings but a skilled organization trained in such production on a large scale.
At Dayton, Ohio, the Dayton-Wright Airplane Corporation was created. With this company was associated Orville Wright, and its engineering force was built up around the old Wright organization. A number of immense buildings which had been recently erected for other purposes were at once utilized in this new undertaking.
As an addition to these two large sources of supply, J. G. White & Co. and J. G. Brill & Co., the well-known builders of street cars, formed the Springfield Aircraft Corporation at Springfield, Mass.Also certain forward-looking men on the Pacific coast created in California several airplane plants, some of which ultimately became satisfactory producers of training planes.
At this point in the development we were not aware of the great production of spare parts that would be necessary. Yet we did understand that there must be a considerable production of spares; and in order to take the burden of this manufacture from the regular airplane plants, and also to educate other factories up to the point where they might undertake the construction of complete airplanes, we placed many contracts for spare parts with widely scattered concerns. Among the principal producers of spares were the following:
For a long time the supply of spare parts was insufficient for the needs of the training fields. This was only partly due to the early lack of a proper realization of the quantity of spares that would be required. The production of spares on an adequate scale was hampered by numerous manufacturing difficulties incident to new industry of any sort in shops unacquainted with the work, and by a lack of proper drawings for the parts.
As to the training planes themselves, with all factories in the country devoting themselves to this type exclusively at the start, the production soon attained great momentum. The Curtiss Co. particularly produced training planes at a pace far beyond anything previously obtained. The maximum production of JN-4 machines was reached in March, 1918, when 756 were turned out.
Advanced training machines are faster, traveling at about 105 miles per hour; and they carry various types of equipment to train observers, gunners, photographers, and radio men. For this machine we adopted the Curtiss JN-4H, which was substantially the same as the primary training plane, except that it carried a 150-horsepower Hispano-Suiza engine. We also built a few "penguins," a kind of half airplane that never leaves the ground; but this French method of training with penguins we never really adopted.
The finishing school for our aviators was in France, where the training was conducted in Nieuports and other fighting machines.
In July, 1918, we reached the maximum production of the advanced training machines, the output being 427. As the supply of primary training planes met the demands of the fields, the production wasreduced, since the original equipment, kept up by only enough manufacture to produce spares and replacement machines, would suffice to train all of the aviators that we would need.
The actual production of training planes by months was as follows:
It was not until we took up the production of fighting, or service, airplanes that we came into a full realization of the magnitude of the engineering and manufacturing problems involved.
We had perhaps a dozen men in the United States who knew something about the designing of flying machines, but not one in touch with the development of the art in Europe or who was competent to design a complete fighting airplane. We had the necessary talent to produce designs and conduct the manufacture of training planes; but at the outset, at least, we were unwilling to attempt designs for service planes on our own initiative. At the beginning we were entirely guided by the Bolling mission in France as to types of fighting machines.
In approaching this, the more difficult phase of the airplane problem, our first act was to take an inventory of the engineering plants in the United States available for our purposes. With the Curtiss Co. was Glenn Curtiss, a leader of airplane design, and several competent engineers. The Curtiss Co. had been the largest producers in the United States of training machines for the British and had had the benefit of assistance from British engineers, and so possessed more knowledge and experience to apply to the service-plane problem than any other company. For this reason we selected this plant to duplicate the French Spad plane, the story of which undertaking will be told further on.
Orville Wright, the pioneer of flying, was not in the best of health, but was devoting his entire time to experimental work in Dayton.Willard, who had designed the L. W. F. airplane and was then with the Aeromarine Co.; Chas. Day, formerly with the Sloane Manufacturing Co., and then with the Standard Aero Corporation; Starling Burgess, with the Burgess Co., of Marblehead, Mass.; Grover C. Loening, of the Sturtevant Co.; and D. D. Thomas, with the Thomas-Morse Co., were all aviation engineers on whom we could call. One of the best experts of this sort in the country was Lieut. Commander Hunsaker, of the Navy. In the Signal Corps we had Capt. V. E. Clark, who was also an expert in aviation construction, and he had several able assistants under him.
The Burgess factory at Marblehead, the Aeromarine plants at Nutley and Keyport, N. J., and the Boeing Airplane Co. at Seattle were to work exclusively for the Navy, according to the mutual agreement, taking their aeronautical engineers with them. This gave the Army the engineering resources of the Curtiss, Dayton-Wright, and Thomas-Morse companies.
Quite early we decided to give precedence in this country to the observation type of service plane, eliminating the single-place fighter altogether and following the observation planes as soon as possible with production of two-place fighting machines. This decision was based on the fact, not always generally remembered, that the primary purpose of war flying is observation. The duels in the air that occurred in large numbers, especially during the earlier stages of the war, were primarily to protect the observation machines or to prevent observation by enemy machines.
The first service plane which we put into production and which proved to be the main reliance of our service-plane program was the De Haviland-4, which is an observation two-place airplane propelled by a Liberty 12-cylinder engine. As soon as the Bolling mission began to recommend types of service machines, it sent samples of the planes thus recommended. The sample De Haviland was received in New York on July 18, 1917. After it had been studied by various officers it was sent to Dayton. It had reached us without engine, guns, armament, or many other accessories later recommended as essential to a fighting machine. Before we could begin any duplication the plane had to be redesigned to take our machine guns, our instruments, and our other accessories, as well as our Liberty engine.
The preliminary designing was complete, and the first American-built De Haviland model was ready to fly on October 29, 1917.
Figure 11 does not tell quite the complete story of De Haviland production, since in August and September, 204 De Haviland planes which had been built were shipped to France without engines and were there knocked down to provide spare parts for other De Havilands in service. These 204 machines, therefore, do not appear in the production total. Adding them to the figures above, we find that the total output of De Haviland airplanes up to the end of December, 1918, was in number 4,587.