Tractor Parade

Said a two-star general in MacArthur's theater: "In this war there are two items of army equipment which should be memorialized in marble--the tractor and the jeep." Said the Army Engineers' Chief, Major General Eugene Reybold: "Victory seems to favor the side with the greater ability to move dirt."

Tractor War. These flat statements from two working generals, who have seen the tractor fight the war all over the world, underlined one of the most pressing of Army production problems last week. When another Army big shot recently cabled "I've got to have 1,300 crawler tractors," the Army had to rob warehouses of badly needed agricultural units, had to beggar other essential construction programs, and even divert equipment from Lend-Lease commitments.* For--in some areas, at least--World War II has turned into a tractor war.

Equipped with bulldozer blades, tractors hack out advance landing fields (see cut), push roads through the jungle and--in the Solomons--one armored giant even buried a dozen Japs in a pillbox that unprotected troops had been unable to approach (TIME, Dec. 20). Crawler tractors cleared banks, helped ford and bridge the Volturno River in Italy. Besides construction work, new-type tractors drag heavy artillery at more than 30 m.p.h.; others nudge landing barges off beaches and (with power winches attached) do all kinds of fabulous lifting and pulling jobs.

For such reasons, the Army today needs some kinds of heavy-duty tractors--the lighter ones are relatively plentiful--even more crucially than landing barges. Ironically, one of the main reasons why production is behind schedule is that tractors must compete directly with naval equipment for scarce cylinder blocks, engines, crankshafts, etc.

But the sorest problem of the tractor program is absenteeism in tractor and tractor-part factories. The workers, who think of their product as something that crawls around cornfields, do not realize how vitally it is needed at the front. Now top Army expediters are out, telling the men, in a tone of real desperation, that "there is no other industry whose men are so directly contributing to the actual war effort."

Hope for the Future. As an index of the Army's serious need, the 1944 goal for ordinary heavy-duty tractors stands at 96% above 1943's production. And 1943 production for the Army was 100% above 1942. For the new high-speed giants the goal is 50% above last year. It would be much higher if there were any hope of reaching it.

The Army already has four longtime tractor-makers at work: Caterpillar, International Harvester, Allis-Chalmers and Cleveland Tractor. Besides that, two big plants have recently been switched from tank production: American Car & Foundry's at Berwick, Pa. and the new ordnance plant at Decatur, Ill., which got ready for production too late to be needed for tanks. Next month when they are due to be in full swing the tractor program will get a real shot in the arm.

But mere plants will not do it. The Army must convince U.S. workers that the tractor, while not as glamorous as a P-47, is even more essential in many areas. Sorest pressed is the South Pacific, where each island hop forward means not only virtual abandonment of rear bases, but a huge new construction job. In effect, the U.S. will cross the Pacific at the speed of a tractor.

* In 1939 total U.S. production of all tracklaying tractors--the "caterpillar" type that runs on two endless metal belts--was just over 20,000 units. "Crawlers" are the slower-moving types.

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