Bells and B-29s

"Attention, please!" The amplified voice boomed through the loudspeakers to every corner of Boeing's Wichita plant-"Another blow to the Axis has just been dealt by Boeing workers. Another B-29 has just been delivered to the Army. Listen for the bell. Keep it ringing!"

Bong! into the microphone boomed a 1,700-lb., bronze-plated, ear-jarring bell, borrowed for the duration from a Wichita church--one bong for each B-29 completed during the week. For the past month, Boeing workers, feeling fine about their output, have listened to the bell each Monday, slapped each other's backs. Boeing's Vice President J. E. Schaefer calls the weekly ceremony the "hottest morale booster we ever had."

But Army security officers frowned, brooded, gnawed their thumbs. What was to prevent an enemy agent from counting the bongs? Any spy with ears could check off the exact number of V-29s being turned off the Wichita line. Finally Air Forces public-relations men could stand it no longer, took the company to task. Nonplussed, Boeing officials asserted that the whole bell-bonging idea had been suggested by no less than Lieut. General Bill Knudsen himself. They hinted that until they heard from some higher rank, the three-star order was good enough for them.

As this week began, no U.S. Army officer of sufficient rank had spoken. But Boeing compromised anyway; officials turned off the loud speaker and bonged the bell softly, for Boeing ears only.

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