QUANTITY v. QUALITY IN THE AIR
By J. M. SPAIGHT
p HERE have been speculations in the Press recently whether ,IL our Government may not be about to change its policy in regard to aircraft production, whether the insistence upon high quality which has hitherto been the cardinal feature of our system of supply is to be modified, and whether a new scheme of mass-production is to be adopted. The result would' be 3 vast number of cheap, quickly-produced machines which would give us an early superiority over Germany, so far as superiority is quantitative.
The proposal is not new. , It has been mooted more than once in the past. A few years ago some organs of the Press were calling for a huge programme of construction and the ques- tion was asked whether the aircraft required could not be turned out in the same way as motor-cars. Perhaps the fact that our shadow factories were organised by the large motor manufac- turers lent some support to this idea. It was at once challenged by some authorities who could not be accused of speaking with- out knowledge.
In the House of Lords on May 12th, 1938, Lord Weir, who was Director-General of Aircraft Production in 1917-18 before he became Secretary of State for Air, referred to the proposal. " Sincere and well-intentioned critics," he said, `f suggested that all would be well if only mass-production methods were adopted and that an expert in mass-production should be placed at the Air Ministry to ensure the adoption of this principle. The motor-car industry was generally cited as a comparable example. The best short answer was that aircraft had not yet reached the stage of technical development of design which would justify anything like the adoption of mass - production methods."
Lord Trenchard expressed a similar view a little later. Speaking in the House of Lords on May 23rd, 1938, he said: " Reference was made in the recent debate to mass-production. If they looked at what might be called the fantastic numbers of 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 aircraft, they would see that these would be bound to be divided into at least eight different types. They could not be fewer. How could they have mass-production of 5,000 aeroplanes like that? They could have it for tablets of soap and motor-cars, which were made in millions, but not for a few thousands." "The morale of the pilots," he added, "was the final con- sideration."
That is the root of the matter. Under a system of mass- production there cannot be the constant improvement in performance upon which depends superiority in air combat. If we are to remain on top—as we are at present—we cannot safely abandon the standards of design and construction which have enabled us to attain that predominance. Morale would suffer if we did. Second-rate machines and first-rate pilots do not To ix. The man is as important as the machine, and the man is a complex of imponderables which are as real, though unseen, as the constituent parts of the machine. Among them is trust in, or distrust of, his machine. If he knows that he has a better machine than his opponent has, that is already half the battle. The two qualities interlock—the quality of the machine and the quality of the man. It is because both are as good as they can be that, against odds of four, five or even ten to one, our Spitfire and Hurricane pilots have been smashing up the German formations on every occasion when they have Come to grips. .
After the very successful raid by our Hampden bombers upon the Dortmund-Ems canal in July the Air Officer Commanding the Bomber Group concerned sent a message of congratulafon to the air crews who had taken part in the raid. In it he spoke of " the efforts of an enemy who relies upon numbers in the Illiei—which we shall disprove—that they can prevail against quality" We shall have numbers, too, in time, and the time will not now be long, but we must have quality as well; and because we shall have both we shall have the mastery of the air. Mussolini ranted in the Italian Chamber of Deputies in April, 1927, about " the spread of the wings of our aircraft obscuring the sun from Italian skies." Well, our Gladiators have been clearing patches of the Libyan sky—and presumably that is Italian—of the Fiat fighters which were getting in the way of the sun there. That is the practical argument for high quality.
One may surmise that there is some kind of subconscious connexion between the suggestion that mass-production should be adopted in this country and the announcement recently made of a new American programme that will yield us 3,000 addi- tional aircraft per mensem. Mr. Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury in the United States, has spoken of that pro- gramme as if it were likely to be realised in 1941. Others have been dubious about the date when it will take effect. Mr. T. P. Wright, the vice-president of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, for instance, has expressed the view that a monthly output of 3,000 machines cannot be achieved before 1944. Probably most technicians would agree with Mr. Wright, but then America is a land of miracles. In any case, an output of 3,000 machines a month, roo a day, can hardly be attained without a colossal drive which must take months, at least, to gather momentum. It is an immense figure. It is quite trivial, of course, in com- parison with the potential capacity of the American motor- manufacturing plants. This is stated to be 6,000 a day for General Motors and something rather more for Henry Ford's plants.
The circumstances are entirely different, however, where aircraft production is in question. Airframes and aero- engines cannot be turned out in the same way as motor-cars, simply because they are not similarly standardised over a given period of time. Mass production of cars is possible because it is only a matter of feeding plastic metals to huge hydraulic presses which stamp them into the required shape in the appro- priate dies. The machine-tools needed for the process are them- selves enormously costly and only an immense and uninterrupted outflow of the product would make the provision of them an economic proposition. They are worth installing if the volume of the output is of great magnitude and the type of the product is stabilised; otherwise they would quickly involve the bank- ruptcy of the firm concerned.
In aircraft production there can be no such steady and un- impeded flow of output. There are snags in the stream; they are known as modifications. There are bigger boulders too; they are known as changes in design. They are, combined, the nightmare of the production executive, but they are at the same time the beautiful dream, the rosy vision of higher performance, of the design staff. A nuisance to the producer, they are the essential pre-requisite of that improvement in quality which means superiority in the encounter in the clouds.
To say that we cannot have mass-production is not to say that we cannot have production on a large scale. We can, and we are having it, and shall have it in greater measure still. Ger- many is probably turning out 6o or more aircraft a day at present, mainly of Junkers, Heinkel, Dornier and Messerschmitt types, all of which are in semi-mass production. Possibly she might be able, with such assistance as Italy can give, to raise that figure to nearly roo machines a day; though the probability is that our air raids will have the effect of reducing the present output. Even if the Axis Powers did succeed in producing anything like roo aircraft a day, we and the United States should be able to produce far more. That, however, should not be the sole aim and object of our endeavour. We must try all the time to improve the quality of our machines as well. Better per- formance and increased production must go hand in hand. That is why mass-protiuction in the accepted meaning of the term is not practicable.
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