The actual production of training planes by months was as follows:
| Primary training planes, SJ-1, JN-4D, Penguin. | Advanced training planes, JN-4 and 6H, S-4B and C, E-1, SE-5. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1917. | ||
| April | ||
| May | ||
| June | 9 | |
| July | 56 | |
| August | 103 | |
| September | 193 | |
| October | 340 | |
| November | 331 | 1 |
| December | 423 | 20 |
| 1918. | ||
| January | 700 | 29 |
| February | 526 | 199 |
| March | 756 | 178 |
| April | 645 | 81 |
| May | 419 | 166 |
| June | 126 | 313 |
| July | 236 | 427 |
| August | 296 | 193 |
| September | 233 | 132 |
| October | 212 | 320 |
| November | 186 | 297 |
| December | 162 | 259 |
| Total | 5,952 | 2,615 |
THE SERVICE PLANES.
It was not until we took up the production of fighting, or service, airplanes that we came into a full realization of the magnitude of the engineering and manufacturing problems involved.
We had perhaps a dozen men in the United States who knew something about the designing of flying machines, but not one in touch with the development of the art in Europe or who was competent to design a complete fighting airplane. We had the necessary talent to produce designs and conduct the manufacture of training planes; but at the outset, at least, we were unwilling to attempt designs for service planes on our own initiative. At the beginning we were entirely guided by the Bolling mission in France as to types of fighting machines.
In approaching this, the more difficult phase of the airplane problem, our first act was to take an inventory of the engineering plants in the United States available for our purposes. With the Curtiss Co. was Glenn Curtiss, a leader of airplane design, and several competent engineers. The Curtiss Co. had been the largest producers in the United States of training machines for the British and had had the benefit of assistance from British engineers, and so possessed more knowledge and experience to apply to the service-plane problem than any other company. For this reason we selected this plant to duplicate the French Spad plane, the story of which undertaking will be told further on.
Orville Wright, the pioneer of flying, was not in the best of health, but was devoting his entire time to experimental work in Dayton. Willard, who had designed the L. W. F. airplane and was then with the Aeromarine Co.; Chas. Day, formerly with the Sloane Manufacturing Co., and then with the Standard Aero Corporation; Starling Burgess, with the Burgess Co., of Marblehead, Mass.; Grover C. Loening, of the Sturtevant Co.; and D. D. Thomas, with the Thomas-Morse Co., were all aviation engineers on whom we could call. One of the best experts of this sort in the country was Lieut. Commander Hunsaker, of the Navy. In the Signal Corps we had Capt. V. E. Clark, who was also an expert in aviation construction, and he had several able assistants under him.
The Burgess factory at Marblehead, the Aeromarine plants at Nutley and Keyport, N. J., and the Boeing Airplane Co. at Seattle were to work exclusively for the Navy, according to the mutual agreement, taking their aeronautical engineers with them. This gave the Army the engineering resources of the Curtiss, Dayton-Wright, and Thomas-Morse companies.
Quite early we decided to give precedence in this country to the observation type of service plane, eliminating the single-place fighter altogether and following the observation planes as soon as possible with production of two-place fighting machines. This decision was based on the fact, not always generally remembered, that the primary purpose of war flying is observation. The duels in the air that occurred in large numbers, especially during the earlier stages of the war, were primarily to protect the observation machines or to prevent observation by enemy machines.
The first service plane which we put into production and which proved to be the main reliance of our service-plane program was the De Haviland-4, which is an observation two-place airplane propelled by a Liberty 12-cylinder engine. As soon as the Bolling mission began to recommend types of service machines, it sent samples of the planes thus recommended. The sample De Haviland was received in New York on July 18, 1917. After it had been studied by various officers it was sent to Dayton. It had reached us without engine, guns, armament, or many other accessories later recommended as essential to a fighting machine. Before we could begin any duplication the plane had to be redesigned to take our machine guns, our instruments, and our other accessories, as well as our Liberty engine.