Plane Talk

U.S. aircraft makers have looked on, darkly suspicious, at automakers' wartime invasion of their province. Last week one automaker allayed, another confirmed, their fears.

Henry Ford, 80, still brimming confidence, announced that at war's end he will take up the option Ford Motor Co. holds on the Government-owned Willow Run plant and build there huge multiple-engined, cargo-passenger airplanes "of unique design." The company discreetly hinted that Employe Charles A. Lindbergh's experiments "may influence the design of the new plane." The sky Ford of the future (small models have been built) is being designed to land in relatively small space, to operate at a fraction of present big-plane flying cost. It is to be "as positively safe as it is possible to make it."

Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., General Motors' board chairman, in a Cleveland speech declared that G.M. had no commercial planes designed before the war, has none now, has no engineers available to do the engineering work necessary before a-plane-in-every-garage can become a reality. Added G.M.'s president, Charles Erwin Wilson, at the same meeting: in his opinion, aircraft would not "be a big thing with General Motors immediately after the war," although the corporation "will stay in the aircraft field."

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