War Effort

President Roosevelt heard the cheering thunder of the U.S. war production machinery and made a decision: the production goals at first called staggering, and denounced in Berlin as pure bluff, were too small after all. He told a press conference that U.S. industry, powered and geared for war, might by the end of 1943 be able to turn out more than the impossible totals of January 6: 185,000 planes, 120,000 tanks and 55,000 anti-aircraft guns. He admitted one disquieting exception to the good news: ship construction, lagging for lack of steel plates. But Franklin Roosevelt firmly promised to increase steel-plate facilities.

WPB's Don Nelson, the big, placid-faced man at the throttle, sat before the Truman committee, pulled carefully on his cigar, and sounded a carefully measured optimism.

Conversion was coming along: "At the end of May, practically all of the consumers durable goods industries will have shut down . . . many of them will have been converted into war work. We are over the hump on production."

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