America's Munitions 1917-1918

by Benedict Crowell; United States. War Department

The production of the Liberty engine so captured popular attention that the public never fairly understood nor appreciated the extent of another production enterprise on the part of those providing motive power for our war airplanes. This was the supplementary manufacture of aero engines other than those which bore the proud appellation of "Liberty."

Let the production figures speak for themselves. In those 19 months, starting with nothing, we turned out complete and ready for service 32,420 aero engines. Of these thousands of engines less than one-half—the exact figure being 15,572—were Liberty engines. The rest were Hispano-Suizas, Le Rhones, Gnomes, Curtisses, Hall-Scotts, and some others, a total of 16,848 in all—built largely for the training of our army of the air.

This production would have been even more notable had the war continued, for at the date of the signing of the armistice the United States had contracted for the construction of 100,993 aircraft engines. Of these 64,100 were to be Liberty engines, so that the total plan of construction of engines other than the Liberty would have produced about 37,000 of them. The total cost of carrying through the combined engine project would have been in the neighborhood of $450,000,000.

While at the outbreak of the war American knowledge of military aviation may have been meager, still it was evident from the start that we would be able to go ahead with certain phases of production on a huge scale without waiting for the precise knowledge of requirements that would come only from an exhaustive study of the subject in Europe. In the first place we knew that we must train our aviators. For this purpose there was at the start no particular need of the highly-developed machinery then in use on the western front. The first aircraft requirement of the early training program was for safe planes, regardless of their type, and motive power to drive them. Later on, when we were better prepared, would come the training that would afford our aviators experience with the fighting equipment. So at the start there was no reason why we should not proceed at once with the construction of such training machines as we knew how to build.

An aviation program for war falls into these two divisions—the equipment required for training and that required for combat. While our organization, particularly through the Bolling commission which we had sent to Europe, was making a study of our combat requirements and while we were pushing forward the design and production of the Liberty engine, we forthwith developed on an ambitious scale the manufacture of training planes and engines in this country.

The training of battle aviators, on the other hand, also separates into two parts, the elementary training and the advanced training. The elementary training merely teaches the cadet the new art of maintaining himself in the air. Later, when he has mastered the rudiments of mechanical flight, he goes into the advanced training, the training in his fighting plane, where he requires equipment more nearly of the type used at the front.

For the elementary training we had some good native material to start with. The Curtiss Airplane Co. had been building training planes and engines both for the English and Canadian air authorities. This was evidently the most available American airplane for our first needs. The Curtiss plane was known as the "JN-4" and it was driven by a 90-horsepower engine called the Curtiss "OX." In the production of this equipment on the scale planned by the Signal Corps, the embarrassing feature, the choke point, was evidently to be the manufacture of the engine. The Curtiss plant at Buffalo for the manufacture of planes could be quickly expanded to meet the Government demands; but the Curtiss engine plant at Hammondsport, N. Y., could not develop the production of "OX" engines up to our needs and at the same time complete the orders which it was filling for the English and Canadian air services.

Consequently, contracts were awarded to the Curtiss Co. for its capacity in the production of "OX" engines, and then the American aviation authorities came to an agreement with the Willys-Morrow plant at Elmira, N. Y., for an additional 5,000 of these motors. Ordinarily it would require from five to six months to equip a plant with the large machine tools and the smaller mechanical appliances necessary for such a contract as this. But the Willys-Morrow plant tooled up in three months and was ready to start on the "OX" manufacturing job.