Running Away to the Air, 6: America, What A Country!

In honour of the Yakov Smirnov of the Twenty-First Century, another actor who lived his role, doing his best to save the unsalvageable: 

Let us all now meditate on the downsides of method acting. On the other hand, it did clear room for Jim Belushi to have a career. The takeaway here is that America was ludicrously unprepared for World War II, but that something deep in the American spirit, symbolised by FDR, and also Blutus, saying everything that needs to be said, here, pulled the country through. If I need to be an A student to win your love, that's what I'll become.

There's other ways of looking at it. There always are. In one, the American military is somehow well prepared for war prepared because the navy taught its pilots deflection shooting, and, you know, Americans, shooting, that stuff. (No, wait, here!)* 

In another, it's all down to the unleashed might of American private industry. Let's stop here, and think about Bluto. Sure, he's gross. But he's also sticking up for us against those rich people's children. Lately, though, it seems to be all about the rich children arguing back. Or, rather, paying people to do it, who are still poor enough to make an effort. There is  full blown argument intended to be taken seriously to unserious efforts by  unserious people best known for those books, and evidently ready to jump on the wingnut welfare wagon. The main point is that while maybe you thought that the New Deal fought the Second World War,  it was actually the titans of American business that pulled us through. So suck it, Paul Krugman!.

Well, whatever. It's not my country. We lost in 1783, so it's Americans that'll have to fix America. My point is, more-or-less, that we had two great wars in the last century, and the economic trends coming out of the second one can presumably replicated, and if that happened, I might still end up in a house as nice as my grandfather's. You know, could happen. 

That being said, the other great war had nowhere near the same effect. My provisional explanation for that is that the first war destroyed the old horse-based economy, destroying vast amounts of economic value, while the second created the modern automobile-based** economy by investing enormous amounts in the "economy of knowledge."

So doesn't that mean that the "industry saved us" guys are right? Doesn't Arthur Herman's blurb start by pointing out that the head of GM went to Washington with Henry Kaiser and organised themselves up the enormous productive power of American industry and built approximately a billion planes, aircraft carriers and tanks and saved the world?

Well, no, as a matter of fact. I have a ...more complicated explanation.

First of, I'm going to talk about what didn't happen, and that is that the unleashed productivity of the automobile industry most certainly did not win World War II. Here, first, is the link, again, to David Hounshell on the "American system," and let his chapter on Ford stand for the claim that the automobile industry is rich with productive capacity, but unusually weak in design. He will also explain why mass production leads to low-tolerance manufacture of high-tolerance, which is to say, not precision-manufactured products. This is not a good formula for making aeroplanes. 

Unfortunately, the preview omits Hounshell's chapter on Willow Run, and, indeed, Wikipedia manages to avoid mentioning that Willow Run mainly succeeded in manufacturing thousands of overweight B-24s that sat out the war awaiting virtual remanufacturing at modification centres. Here's what I get on Google when I search for "Willow Run B-24 Failure." It seems a little sensationalistic, and leans heavily on pro-Nazi conspiracy over managerial ineptness. Here's the point: the fiasco at Willow Run is what you get when you unleash the automotive industry into a design-intensive space.

Not convinced? I could go on. Henry Kaiser and planes? Henry Kaiser and planes, two? Three? I'd do four, but apparently his late-war national airport scheme is too obscure for the Internet. None of this should be a surprise. Kaiser was one of the New Deal's favourite businessmen, and his political connections only gave him a little bit more of a license to fail than any number of others. It might be a little weird to see nonentities like McDonnell and Ryan invited to bid for cutting edge specifications in mid war while previously-successful firms spiral into irrelevance or read the signs and take proactive steps, but I assume that at this late date we're allowed to be cynical about the political motives of both our heroes and our villains. There were aircraft manufacturers that won contracts when Republicans were in charge, and manufacturers who won contracts when Democrats were in charge. It would matter if there was a vast, deep pool of expertise in the industry that was going unemployed for partisan political reasons, but that isn't really the case. America did not take the labour force of the automotive industry and turn it into an aviation industry. It built an aviation industry labour force up from nothing. 

How did that happen? The same way that America got its air force. Just as it didn't really have an air force prior to 1939, so it lacked an industry. Not surprisingly for a business built around defence contracting, once the government needed one, it got one. 

That process actually started with a foreign government, specifically, the French, who pumped almost two billion dollars into American aircraft manufacture in 1938/9 (say what you will about being the last to leave the gold standard; it came in handy for someone). Britain took up the French contracts, then placed their own, more to their taste, and then the Americans placed extensions. By 1941, employment in the American aviation industry had reached 500,000 (projected for June, 1941), with 400,000 in labour, 100,000 in total overhead. Not less imortant was investment in plant, "with 7.5 airframes produced per square foot of floor space per year, on a 6 day work week with a 3/2/1 shift schedule." (How Many Planes When?” Fortune, March, 1941, 41, 81–85, 183–4, 183–90).

From here, employment increased steadily:

Industry’s Production Record in WWII,” Aero Digest, 15 November, 1944, 51–3, 142

Month	1942			1943			1944
	Total employment (000s) /Primary Contractor/Secondary			Total/Primary Contractor/Secondary			Total/Primary Contractor/Secondary
Jan	618.4	460.4	158.0	1609.3	1064.3	545	2079.9	1368.9	711
Feb	682.8	501.8	181	1681.2	111.2	570	2062.7	1356.7	706
March	735.1	572.6	220	1739.4	1148	591	2018.1	1327.1	691
April	792.6	611.2	237	1789.4	1180	609	1986.9	1305.9	681
May	848.2	664	266	1836.4	1211.6	625	1956.5	1285.6	671
June	930.	710.3	290	1895.3	1252	643	1909.6	1254.6	655
July	1000.3	772.	327	1941.5	1281	660	1883.4	1235.4	648
Aug	1098.4	819.8	360	1980.7	1304	676	1811	1186	625
Sept	1179.4	?	401	2032.3	1338	694
Oct	1280.4	879.3	443	2073.9	1364	709
Nov	1384.3	939.3	?	2101.6	1382	719
Dec	1496.5	1003	493	2079.1	1369	710

Here's another breakout of employment in the larger industry, I think from the same Aero Digest article. Notice that employment growth is much steeper in the engine sector. (I'd say propellers, too, but this a variegated industry, working in wood, hardened aluminum, and steel. And it's small, too.)

Month	Airframe	Engine	Propeller	Month	Airframe	Engine	Propeller
Jan 40	59	16	2.5	Jan 43	770.7	219.1	38.4
June	85.8	24.8	4.13	May	856.2	263.7	46.6
Dec	133.65	38.9	6	Sept	924.9	310.6	54.7
Jan 41	146.2	41.33	6.6	Jan 44	913.09	337.7	87.2
May	183.13	54	8.9	May	840.31	332.1	55.2
Sept	255.8	74.7	11	Sept	769.3	317.3	53.3
Jan 42	241.6	104	15
May	439.2	148.7	23.35
Sept	589.5	176.6	30.9

By late 1943, employment growth  had stalled. Total industry employment was 1.7 million, but to reach the target production of 10,000 a/c per month, would need to reach 2.2 million. (John R. Foster, “Which Will We Get –Men And/Or Planes?” Aviation, October 1943, 111, 353.) That's a lot of people. By November, it is noted that one of the ways in which industry is trying to make up the numbers is by delivering directly to modification centres, from which many aircraft, and not just Willow Run-built B-24s, never emerged.  ([“Communique Number 23,” Aviation, November 1943, 112–13, 311]; Arthur Goldberg, “Equipment and Services,” 352, in Craven and Cates, eds., AAF, 6: 352ff]). Fortunately, that turned out not to be a problem. The 10,000 a/c remained a PR goal, and the United States won the war just fine without production ever going over 8900/month; and, in fact, falling below 8000 to stay in February 1942.

If I had to theorise about this, I'd throw out the traditional explanation that points to rising structure weight produced, or, at least, minimises it, in favour of a labour-centric vision. There's only so much overtime money you can pump into a life-starved Great Depression formed labour force without seeing it come out of the hose at holes marked "Get a life." Is it entirely a coincidence that the first signs of the Baby Boom are to be detected in the American birth rate towards the end of 1944?

So what happened to that labour force from the inside? Well, it expanded in a way that labour rarely gets to expand. Some people moved to California, but the more creditable side of New Deal intervention in the contracting process was that jobs also tended to move to them. And they were accommodated. Needing all the labour that might be available, employers, insanely enough, trained their staff instead of folding their arms and insisting that they would hire people if there were only people with the right skills to hire.  Roy Fedden famously detected that America had turned into a nation of engineers, and pushed Britain to become one, too. Fedden was ...strange, and wrong, as usual, but also right. 

First, there were a lot of engineers in the United States, but not nearly enough. Very Serious People cared a lot about the issue, supporting an entire journal within the IEEE stable,  the Journal of Engineering Education, which I didn't pay as much attention to as I ought back when you could take volumes right off the shelf in UBC's old main library. But enough reminiscing, here's some notes!

From Stephen L. Tyler, “The Chemical Engineer in National Defence.”Ibid, 32 (Sept. 1941-June, 1942): 154-8.

(155-6) A survey undertaken by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers shows the following enrollments in American Chemical Engineering programmes

Degree	1941	1942	1943
B. Ap. Sci.	2104	2454	2590
M. ASc.	337	325	349
PhD..	57	74	88

Despite these enrollments, Tyler continues, an “extreme shortage” is expected in the next few years. Yeah. You know what? I heard that from a university administrator once. It didn't end well for me. But enough about my bitterness. Here's some British numbers:

National Certificates in engineering, per Engineering, Jan 2/42

Level	Degree	1938	1939	1940	1941
Ordinary	Mechanical	1449	1833	1556	1505
	Electrical	917	1133	843	664
Higher	Mechanical	502	632	602	514
	Electrical	379	421	370	278

 If Britain didn't have enough engineers, and I think we're conceding that for the sake of the argument, then certainly America didn't. 

In the same number of said journal (like I said, I didn't give it the attention I deserved when I could actually get at it), Alfred H. White sings the praises of “Research as a Field For Engineers,” Ibid., 199-201. (200) There are 14,980 engineers current working in research in the US, “over ten percent of our graduates” (201). That's less than 141,000 American engineers of all types. So when Roy Fedden tells us that Consolidated Aircraft had over 800 engineers, he's either telling us that almost 1% of all American engineers worked for a single aviation supplier at the height of WWII, which is unlikely, or that America solved its engineer shortage problem very quickly. 

The answer, and here I'm going to have to wave to handwritten notes that aren't going to be in this posting, is the latter. The "engineers" at Consolidated were a huge drawing office of men overseeing production drawings coming and going from secondary contractors, and the scare quotes signify that less than half of Consolidated's engineers had a university degree at all.

So what does the other kind of "aeronautical engineer " have in his (or even her) background?  Boeing School consist of? Principal T. Lee, Jr. fills some pages of Aero Digest, June 1941: 70–3. 202 discussing what a Boeing School graduate knows and does. In his“Principles of Vocational Training,” he notes that his school finds that he can give his students a complete theoretical understanding of internal combustion engines with 60h of instruction, and 680 hours of workshop work. This qualifies them in engine overhaul and services, although presumably it would be their engineering drawing instruction that turned out to be more important, and Lee doesn't tell us how much of that his students got. 

For me, the main point is that palaces of higher learning like the Boeing School sprouted up all over America between 1939 and 1944. Employers were desperate for skilled hands, so they paid tuition and supported an entire industry of higher learning. The graduates didn't have a B.Eng, but they most certainly were ready when Kelvinator pivoted from making propellers back to refrigerators. 

And another thing:

The inside scoop about the story of the engineers of the Atlantic Alliance during World War II is North American engineers going blind peering at the drawings sent them from Europe for this, that, and the other thing. Barnett (if we still care) decides that that proves that British (and presumably French, Swedish and Swiss) engineers couldn't draw, or something. In a brilliant 2000 Technology and Culture article, John K. Brown argues that this systemic problem is actually a reflection of different national design styles. American drawing offices produced production drawings while Britain offices produced design drawings. Production drawings are more numerous, cover more perspectives, and have more dimensions. They result in a general trend towards increasing first costs in American manufacture, reducing design diversity while promoting mass production, and result from the reduced discretion of the American tool room. (See Hounshell's account of the disastrous changeover to the "first" Model A.)  This raises the drawing room to the status of the “brain” of an American firm, privileging administrative and managerial control over the autonomy of the skills and promoting the convergence of engineering and management. This reflects traditional American emphasis on deskilling and a production economy.

In contrast, British reliance on design drawings exalts the creativity of the engineer, but also of the high skill labour in the tool rooms, where drawings were transformed into prototypes by an aristocracy of labour.

It is far from clear that American production control practice was labour-saving in general, but in the Second World War context of industries rapidll failing forward in search of war-winning performance, it was potentially catastrophic. The catastrophe, however, did not occur. By and large, American labour forces, overcame these difficulties, in part by adapting British products to their own practices, in part by embracing an American version of design-centric production, within the military-industrial complex, at least.

Which is the point of American military production in World War II --convergence with European design-central practice.

Hey, wingnuts! I found where European socialism got into yer unions. Can I have my cheque, now? (Okay, technically, John Brown figured it out, but I bet he hasn't taken credit for the idea, so the way seems clear for me! (John K. Brown, “Design Plans, Working Drawings, National Styles: Engineering Practice in Great Britain and the United States, 1775–1945.” Technology and Culture 41, 2 (April, 2000): 195-238.

The coming and going of the Great American Boom was linked to the rise and fall of an American aristocracy of labour. It's a theory, anyway.

*Here’s an interesting one. Everyone knows that the US Navy was at least more professional in the air than the Royal Navy, this being reflected in its much larger had a much larger air arm than the FAA. Actually, no. According to Swanborough, the USN possessed on 1/9/39 140 Grumman F2F and F3F fighters; 41 JF amphibians; 268 Curtiss SOC floatplanes; 83+ Curtiss SBC biplane divebombers; 129 Douglas TBDs; 130 Vought O3Us, SUs, and Corsairs; and 124 Vought SBU biplane divebombers. This is a synoptic account and errors are likely, but I get in the range of 439 floatplanes, etc., and 397 carrier fighting planes.The Fleet Air Arm is now better counted. Here, I get 114 Gladiators, 51 Seafox, 165 Sharks (of 223 delivered), 150 Skuas (from another source), 604(!) Swordfish, 162 Walrus, at least 4 Roc, and some 54 obsolete types. In other words, 868 combat aircraft not including the Sharks, and 216 floatplane types.

USN: 439/ 497 (914); FAA 216/868 (1084, or 1310 inclusive). The US Navy did have a bigger air force, but that counts its flying boats, which were more important to the navy, it would seem, because it was dreaming of being (sigh) a strategic air force. The real takeaway here is that all the world's naval air forces were a bit small to be truly professional.

**And, yes, the recorded music industry, and others, too. But mainly automotives.