Clipped Wings

Into a briefing room at the Pentagon last week filed 75 aircraft men to hear what production cuts they may expect under Harry Truman's pruned military budget (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Instead of the $25 billion the Air Force had asked for fiscal 1953, it will now have to make do on $20.7 billion.

The Air Force insisted that this means no change in the overall program to boost the Air Force from 95 to 143 wings. But instead of being completed by 1953, as first planned, the 143 wings will not be finished until 1955 or 1956. Peak production will be lower and delivery lengthened. The aircraft industry's boom will be longer, but thinner.

Although mobilization officials minimized the change, many an aircraftmaker thought it was a drastic about-face. They said that the basic concept of the mobilization program, the "multiple source of supply," had been jettisoned. Under that theory, big-production would not be concentrated in just one factory making a medium bomber; three factories would be tooled and output divided among them. Thus, all would be available for immediate mass production for total war.

Under the new stretch-out plan, aircraft builders agreed that the number of "multiple sources" ready for volume production is bound to diminish. Aircraft companies who have been farming out a big chunk of their work will probably shift more work back into their own plants. The result will probably be that some aircraft plants, scheduled to come into production, will be crossed off.

One gain came out of the new aircraft program. Production Expediter Harold R. Boyer said he had persuaded the Pentagon to "freeze" production on current models and stop the multitude of minor changes --one of the biggest obstacles to quantity production.

Nevertheless, the fact remained that the Pentagon's "period of maximum" danger, during which the U.S. will neither be fully equipped to wage aerial atomic war on the enemy or defend the country against aerial atomic assault, is being lengthened. The fact also remained that air power, on which the bulk of U.S. military strength is being concentrated, is having its wings clipped.

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