Dutch v. Charlie

What may some day be the biggest and roughest fight in U.S. industry last week flared into the open. The battlers: the rich, powerful automobile manufacturers, epitome of U.S. industrial might, v. the fast-growing aircraft makers, symbolic of U.S. designing and technical agility. The fracas has been stewing ever since the British asked Detroit to make plane engines early in 1940. It will get really hot when Detroit goes after the civilian or transport plane market after the war.

Up rose North American Aviation President James Howard ("Dutch") Kindelberger, a purple talker. Before a trainload of newsmen ogling his vast Kansas City plant, he flatly accused the automakers of fumbling their part of the plane program. Said he: "After 16 months we have not yet received a single part made by the automotive industry. . . . The biggest mistake ever made was to try to break in high-production organizations to airplane-manufacturing methods. ... If they don't catch up soon we're going to start turning out the parts ourselves."

Then Dutch slowed up, admitted that, although the "automobeelers" had fallen down on wings and fuselages, they had done a beautiful job on engines and guns.

Kindelberger's blast made automen turn rage-red. WPB's auto chief, Ernie Kanzler, branded it "perfectly ridiculous." G.M.'s* Fisher Body division said that it has shipped a steady stream of sub-assemblies to North American for months. Murray Body is eleven weeks ahead of schedule on sub-assemblies for Douglas and Boeing. Cracked Chrysler Chief Kaufman Thuma Keller: "I think the auto industry will take care of itself." Big, burly Ford Production Boss Charles Sorensen remarked that automen had always looked upon the planemakers as "little custom tailors."

It was Sorensen's phrase that hurt. Basic difference between automobile and aviation manufacturing technique was that the automakers mass-produced for a mass market, the planemakers tapped and tinkered for the carriage trade. Even with billions of war orders on the books, the aircraft makers have only partly changed their methods. One reason is that the Army and Navy won't completely freeze designs. Even after the design of his own B-25 bomber had been "frozen," said Kindelberger, 15,000 blueprints were changed, 4,000 parts were completely redesigned. Snapped he: "Talk about freezing plane designs is as silly as freezing the design of a flintlock rifle when the enemy is turning out a Garand."

But this made no impression in Detroit, which regards itself as already deep in mass production for war. There is no question that Detroit's methods are different; there is a question of how flexible they may prove if design changes come too thick & fast. Detroit's biggest single venture into aircraft--the titanic Ford plant at Willow Run--has yet to show its stuff. Last week peacock-proud Charlie Sorensen showed newsmen the first B-24-E bomber off Willow Run's half-mile long assembly lines, predicted a ship an hour by late summer. Said he: "[This plant] is an invitation for Hitler to commit suicide."

* General Motors owns 29% of North American Aviation's stock.

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