That Other Plane

President Johnson last week asked Congress for $140 million to continue the development program for a U.S. supersonic transport, but no one is quite sure yet when it will be built or how much of its cost the Government will pay. Such uncertainties do not surround another U.S. plane that may be snapping up the passengers--and the profits --by the time the supersonics get into the air in the 1970s. The plane: the C-5A, a hulking, 525-m.p.h. military transport that will be able to carry 700 battle-equipped troops or, as a commercial plane, as many as 750 to 1,000 fare-paying civilians, half of the capacity of the liner United States. The Government has just given General Electric a go-ahead--worth at least $1 billion--for the plane's jet engines. The $1 billion airframe contract will be awarded next month from designs submitted by Boeing, Lockheed and Douglas (the first two of which are also competing for the design of the SST). Present cost of each plane: $41 million. Contractors will not only reap huge rewards from the contracts they win, but also are likely to have an opportunity to sell a modified version of the plane to the airlines, much as Boeing did with the 707, originally a military plane. Designed to bring U.S. forces into fast action in trouble spots around the world, the C-5A will have 20 wheels to bear its fully loaded weight of 350 tons and its prodigious length--twice that of the Boeing 707. Even while on the drawing board, it is being eyed by the airlines as the key to a vast untapped civilian market. Despite economies brought about by the jets, long-range air fares still remain too high for much of the U.S. population. With its high density seating, the C-5A could drop fares dramatically--40% or more by current estimates--and make air travel in the '70s as common as bus travel is today. The plane's new G.E. engine will be fully twice as powerful (40,000 Ibs. thrust) as any jet now in use and will operate at temperatures up to 2,500DEG F., 600 to 700DEG hotter than ordinary jets. Gerhard Neumann, G.E.'s vice president of flight propulsion and the brain behind the new jet, says that its breakthroughs "make it every bit as important as the initial development of the fan jet engine itself." G.E. will build the engine at its Evendale, Ohio, plant, outside Cincinnati. Workers will gradually be shifted from the J79, which has powered the current generation of supersonic fighters and bombers. The Air Force has set up a tight production timetable for the big transport: the first prototype is scheduled to fly in 1967, the first production model in 1968.

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