The Poplar Standard

'IMPOSSIBLE' DONE AS AIRPLANE OUTPUT HITS MONTHLY HIGH

Some not-so-okay folks may remember back shortly after Pearl Harbor when people were saying President Roosevelt was asking impossible task for industry by asking for 100,000 planes a year. At the time those experts who had to count on pointed out in horror that this would mean 8,000 planes a month! Now the War Production board is announcing that aircraft construction has reached a new high; output last month was 8,436 planes of all types including the largest number of heavy bombers ever produced in a single month. This news isn't nearly so astounding as it might be if American industry didn't get into the wartime habit of cracking production records fast as a B-17 can bomb Cologne.

A Big Job

Newspapermen who were permitted into the most guarded precincts of war industries saw that it took more to build a fighting plane than just a construction set. Airplane manufacturers had to work with steel, rubber, wood, machines, motors and precision instruments, and have to get them from other manufacturers who in turn had problems of their own. Automobile men had gone into airplane production too, and were learning a lot in a hurry. And the manpower situation didn't help any, either. The consensus then, with Berlin and Tokyo in agreement, was that it was a nice trick if you could do it, and they didn't think industry could. When the Axis hears about this record it will be in more war than a newspaper article.