The Production Problem By GROUP C.t\PTAll\' 11. H. l•'t)(IJ'TIT "Here is the area of deep concern - the Sovdets are presently beating us at our own game - production.'' -General Thomas D. White. Deputy Chief of Staff~ U.S. Air Fo1'ce. ~E HOUSE thundered its ap• _l proval. .Amid the tumult Wins• ton Churchill stepped down from the speaker's stand. There was no doubt about it, his visit to Canada, on this cold wintry day in December, 1941, and his speech to the Canadian House of Commons, were an unquali fied success. All Canada cheered his fighting words. For he had made it clear that World War II was in the "build-up" stage, and the Allied na tions must look to their arms and pre• pare for the big battles yet to come. "How long this period will last!" he had said, "depends upon -the vehem ence of the dfort put into production in all our war industries and ship yards.', Churchill had come to Canada in the midst of his clandestine "Arcad ia,, conference with Roosevelt. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor only three weeks past, the great Eng lish speaking nations were now united in war against a common foe. And war meant arms. And arms meant production. Consequently Churchill and Roosevelt had spent many hours in the White House leafing over pro duction plans. The pre-Pearl Harbor estimates, compiled by Beaverbrook from the U .K. and Harriman from the U.S., had called for the production of 28,000 operational aircraft in 1942. But the Arcadia conference upped these calculations. Jubilantly Church ill cabled home. The goal was now 45,000 operational airplanes in 1942, and 100,000 in 1943. Numbers Racket: In 1942, as today, these figures approached the astronomi cal. The President was accused of go ing in for the "numbers racket.,, Even the great production boiler house of the V.S. rouldn 't copt' with such co lm~al 11t11nlins. or ncr1 ~·omc cJoq· tc• them. Still, they were real anJ necess ary targets. And if we were faced with another global war today, we would be faced with similar stupend ous production goals. Yet what have we done, in the 15 years since Church ill stood before the Canadian House of Commons, to simplify aircraft so that they can be readily produced? The bare fact is that we of the \Vest em World have spent billions for aero dynamics and have an empty pocket book for production. We are sadly out of balance. And since we lack a funda mental foundation for e:tsier produc tion, we are hooked on the horns of a dilemma. Dean P. Stowell. Assistant to the President of CanaJair Limitcd. summed up the situation to the Society of Automotive Engineers

The Production Problem

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