© Committee on Public Information 



GIRLS MAKING AIRPLANES TURNBUCKLLS 



Every job in the manufacture of a flying machine is a responsible job, for, like the 

 famous One Hoss Sha3 r , every part must bear its burden of terrific strain as long as any 

 other part. 



Colonel Deeds has in his office a letter 

 from a manufacturer who gave two 

 dredges, among other things, as equip- 

 ment on hand which might work in some- 

 how in airplane work. 



Let me try to depict by a rough picture 

 a plane in the making. Suppose, for in- 

 stance, you were set to driving 4,326 nails 

 and 3,377 screws. Undoubtedly that 

 would be quite a task — a total of 7,703 

 separate operations. Well, when you had 

 reached the 5,000 mark you could truth- 

 fully be told that you had done less than 

 two-thirds of the work of this sort re- 

 quired for a single airplane. (These 

 figures are for a training plane ; for a 

 French battle-plane 23,000 screws are 

 said to be needed.) Somehow a plane 

 looks so simple and floats so gracefully 

 through the air that we lose all thought 

 of the skill that goes into its making. 



ONE of America's air triumphs 



Just recently we have received some 

 figures of the material which is required 



for one of the simpler training planes. 

 For instance, 921 steel stampings must 

 be cut out, 798 forgings cast, and 276 

 turn-buckles, all for a single machine. 



Think, then, of the hundreds of thou- 

 sands of such pieces needed, for the thou- 

 sands of planes in the American program 

 and of how utterly hopeless the situation 

 would be if those parts were not stand- 

 ardized, turned out by machinery in tens 

 of thousands, and usable in scores of dif- 

 ferent factories on any kind of plane. 

 The reduction of aircraft manufacture to 

 the simplest, standardized, quantity pro- 

 duction basis has been one of America's 

 great triumphs in the air and an achieve- 

 ment which very soon will be making 

 itself felt. 



But metal must be used in an airplane 

 as little as possible. It is altogether too 

 heavy, especially when a few extra 

 pounds make all the margin in speed 

 between victory and defeat. An engine 

 of 300 horsepower is in itself enormously 

 heavy to rise into the air ; so that the rest 



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