Jenny's Return

The dreary, ever-pressing shortages of strategic materials pose one of the most troublesome problems of the U.S. air arm: the need of spacious, speedy transport units to move personnel and equipment to combat areas. Last week Curtiss-Wright Corp. had a new answer on the drawing board: a mammoth transport plane, perhaps the world's largest of its type, made mainly of plywood and plastics.

Said Curtiss-Wright: the plane will have "the speed required by modern warfare and will be constructed largely of wood and materials not included in the list of military priorities." Production will begin as soon as a new factory, site undisclosed, is completed.

Air veterans recalled World War I's old flying "Jennies" (the JN types, fabric-covered, wooden cratelike structures), the wooden Lockheeds (the type Wiley Post flew around the world) and Fokker commercial planes of more than ten years ago. They had high praise for planes mainly built of wood on grounds of greater maneuverability, especially on quickly built temporary landing fields. The Army explains that it is not yet ready for wooden combat planes, is meanwhile ordering more & more wooden primary trainers, has available a design for an advanced trainer in which priority precious metals may be replaced by wood and low-alloy steel.

But the Jenny's transport successor has one clinching, convincing argument in her own right: she can be turned out in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost of an aluminum plane, not to mention a total saving of aluminum.

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