Please note that this is a photoduplicated reproduction , not an original . The accompanying images were scanned from a reprint, not the original.
Have you ever seen a video-clip of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Arsenal of Democracy” speech? At the point that he declares, to a joint session of Congress, that the United States will mobilize its industry to produce 50,000 combat aircraft a year, he paused. Was it for effect, or was FDR expecting a round of applause? He didn’t get it -- 435 Congressmen and 100 Senators sat in shocked, stupefied silence. 50,000 a year? The U.S. was barely producing 1,000 aircraft, and that was combat AND civil aircraft, running flat out.
Well, by 1944, the United States was pumping out nearly 150,000 aircraft a year, plus ships, tanks, trucks, jeeps, rifles, and everything else that has became a marvel of a democracy roused to action. As Japanese Admiral Isaroku Yamamoto, who had spent much time in the United States in the 1920s, had tried in vain to warn his fellow military officers before Pearl Harbor, once the United States got going, it would produce more aircraft carriers, and faster, than Japan could produce destroyers.
Here’s just one, very small piece of the awesome flexing of industrial muscle. As part of the industrial mobilization for World War Two, the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics had the International Textbook Co., owner of International Correspondence Schools, prepare a publish a series of booklets reviewing the basics of various processes and techniques used in manufacture and fabrication of aircraft. This booklet deals with a very fascinating topic: how to form large, curved sections of metal for an aircraft fuselages, wing rib chords, and other components.
Please note that this is a photoduplicated reproduction , not an original . The accompanying images were scanned from a reprint, not the original.
There is one section in the middle of page 42 where about six words are obscured by what appears to be a lack of ink in the original. This is a defect in the original which carries over to the reproduction.
Contents: