The Thomas-Morse pursuit plane is armed with two Browning machine guns synchronized with the propeller and carries 1,500 rounds of ammunition.

Uncertain as we were originally as to types of pursuit and observation planes to produce in this country, we were still more uncertain as to designs of night-bombing machines. These relatively slow weight-carrying planes were big and required the motive power of two or three engines, with the complications attendant upon double or triple power plants. They really presented the most difficult manufacturing problem which we encountered. Until the summer of 1918 there were only two machines of this type which we could adopt, the Handley-Page and the Caproni. We put the Handley-Page into production, not because it was necessarily as perfect as the Caproni, but because we could get the drawings for this machine and could not get the drawings for the Caproni, owing to complications in the negotiations for the right to construct the Italian airplane.

We were not entirely satisfied with the decision to build Handley-Pages, because the ceiling, or maximum working altitude which could be attained by this machine, was low; and, 12 months later, when we were in production, we might find the Handley-Pages of doubtful value because of the ever-increasing ranges of antiaircraft guns.

We secured a set of drawings, supposed to be complete, for the Handley-Page in August, 1917; but twice during the following winter new sets of drawings were sent from England, and few, if any, of the parts as designed in the original drawings escaped alteration. The Handley-Page has a wing spread of over 100 feet. Therefore, it was evident from the start that such machines could not have the fuselage, wings, and other large parts assembled in this country for shipment complete to Europe. We decided to manufacture the parts in this country and assemble the machines in England, the British air ministry in London having entered into a contract for the creation of an assembling factory at Oldham, England, in the Lancashire district. When it is realized that each Handley-Page involves 100,000 separate parts, the magnitude of the manufacturing job alone may be somewhat understood. But after they were manufactured, these parts, particularly the delicate members made of wood, had to be carefully packed so as to reach England in good condition. The packing of the parts was in itself a problem.

We proposed to drive the American Handley-Pages with two Liberty 12 engines in each machine. The fittings, which were extremely intricate pieces of pressed steel work, were practically all to be produced by the Mullins Steel Boat Co. at Salem, Ohio. Contracts for the other parts were placed with the Grand Rapids Airplane Co., a concern which had been organized by a group of furniture makers at Grand Rapids, Mich.

All of the parts were to be brought together previously to ocean shipment in a warehouse built for the purpose at the plant of the Standard Aero Corporation at Elizabeth, N. J. The Standard Aero Corporation was engaged under contract to set up 10 per cent of the Handley-Page machines complete in this country. These were to be used at our training fields.

Again, in the case of the Handley-Page, the engineering details proved to be a serious cause of delay. We found it difficult to install the Liberty engines in this foreign plane. When the armistice cut short operations, 100 complete sets of parts had been shipped to England, and seven complete machines had been assembled in this country.

None of the American-built Handley-Page machines saw service in France. There had been great delay in the construction of the assembling plant in England, and the work of setting up the machines had only started when the armistice was signed. The performance table of the Handley-Page shows its characteristics as follows: