For this reason the production of the Liberty engine was centered in the Detroit manufacturing district, since in this district was located the principal motor manufacturing plant capacity of the United States. James G. Heaslet, formerly general manager of the Studebaker Corporation and an engineer and manufacturer of wide experience, was installed as district manager. The problems incident to the inspection and production of the Liberty engine were placed in charge of a committee consisting of Maj. Heaslet (chairman); Lieut. Col. Hall, one of the designers of the engine; Henry M. Leland; C. Harold Wills, of the Ford Motor Co.; and Messrs F. F. Beall and Edward Roberts, of the Packard Motor Car Co. With them were also associated D. McCall White, the engineer of the Cadillac Motor Co., and Walter Chrysler, of the Buick Co.
The creation of this committee virtually made a single manufacturing concern of the several, previously rival, motor companies engaged in producing the Liberty engine. To these meetings the experts without reservation brought the trade secrets and shop processes developed in their own establishments during the preceding years of competition. Such cooperation was without parallel in the history of American industry, and only a great emergency such as the war with Germany could have brought it about. But the circumstance aided wonderfully in the development and production of the Liberty engine.
Moreover, the Government drew heavily upon the talent of these great manufacturing organizations for meeting the special problems presented by the necessity of filling in the briefest possible time the largest aviation engine order ever known. Short-cuts that these firms might have applied effectively to their own private advantage were devised for the Liberty engine and freely turned over to the Government. The Packard Co. gave a great share of its equipment and personnel to the development. The most conspicuous success in the science of quantity production in the world was the Ford Motor Co., which devoted its organization to the task of speeding up the output of Liberty engines. In addition to the unique and wonderfully efficient method of making rough engine cylinders out of steel tubing, the Ford organization also perfected for the Liberty a new method of producing more durable and satisfactory bearings. Messrs. H. M. and W. C. Leland, whose names were indissolubly linked with the Cadillac automobile, organized and erected the enormous plant of the Lincoln Motor Co. and equipped it for the production of the Liberty, at a total expense of approximately $8,000,000.
Balanced against these advantages brought by highly trained technical skill and unselfish cooperation were handicaps such as perhaps no other great American industrial venture had ever known. In the first place, an internal-combustion engine with cylinders of a 5-inch bore and pistons of a 7-inch stroke—the Liberty measurements—was larger than the automobile engines then in use in this country. This meant that while we apparently had an enormous plant—the combined American automobile factories—ready for the production of Liberty engines, actually the machinery in these plants was not large enough for the new work, so that new machinery therefore must be built to handle this particular work. In some cases machinery had to be designed anew for the special purpose.
To produce every part of one Liberty engine something between 2,500 and 3,000 small jigs, tools, and fixtures are employed. For large outputs much of this equipment must be duplicated over and over again. To provide the whole joint workshop with this equipment was one of the unseen jobs incidental to the construction of Liberty engines—unseen by the general public, that is—yet it required the United States to commandeer the capacity of all available tool shops east of the Mississippi River and devote it to the production of jigs and tools for the Liberty engine factories.
Then there was the question of mechanical skill in the factories. It soon developed that an automobile motor is a simple mechanism compared with an intricate aviation engine. The machinists in ordinary automobile plants did not have the skill to produce the Liberty engine parts successfully. Consequently it became necessary to educate thousands of mechanics, men and women alike, to do this new work.
It was surprising to what extent unfriendly influence in the United States, much of it probably of a pro-German character, cut a figure in the situation. This was particularly true in the supply factories furnishing tools to the Liberty engine plants. Approximately 85 per cent of the tools first delivered for this work were found to be inaccurate and incorrect. These had to be remade before they could be used. Such tools as were delivered to the Liberty plants would mysteriously disappear, or vital equipment would be injured in unusual ways; in several instances cans of explosives were found in the coal at power plants; fire-extinguishing apparatus was discovered to be rendered useless by acts of depredation; and from numerous other evidences the builders of Liberty engines were aware that the enemy had his agents in their plants.
Difficulty was also experienced in the production of metals for the new engines. The materials demanded were frequently of a much higher grade than the corresponding materials used in ordinary automobile motors. Here was another unseen phase of development which had to be worked out patiently by the producers of raw materials.
LIBERTY ENGINE READY FOR TEST AT THE LINCOLN MOTOR CO., DETROIT, MICH.