Demobilization

Next to the manufacture of ordnance, the production of airplanes and balloons and their accessories was the largest war enterprise of American industry. A hundred thousand workmen toiled in the aircraft factories, the business of which was represented by over 5,000 war contracts with a face value of several hundred million dollars. For the airplanes themselves, the contracts involved the War Department in the sum of $196,000,000, but this branch of the industry was but a small part of the entire air program. Merely for motor trucks the Air Service entered upon commitments reaching a value of $45,000,000. The investment in flying fields, balloon schools, and other physical installations erected during the war in the United States was, on November 11, 1918, approximately $75,000,000. Nearly 20,000 men had been trained to fly, and the Air Service numbered all its officers and men at 175,000—an organization larger than the regular army establishment in 1916. On Armistice Day the Air Service had spent $43,000,000 in the production of spruce for our own airplane factories and those of the Allies. For this investment it had to show a great logging equipment, including sawmills, three railroad systems (with 130 miles of trackage), hotels, and the housing for thousands of woodsmen. It was heavily involved also in plans for the production of other raw materials used in the manufacture of airplanes—$30,000,000 invested or obligated in the development of a chain of chemical plants for producing “dope,” the varnish that stretches and waterproofs the fabric of airplane wings; and $8,000,000 tied up in the fabric itself or in raw cotton for weaving into fabric. The Service spent over $25,000,000 for gasoline and oil. The largest enterprise of all was the production of airplane engines, the contracts for which reached a total value of $450,000,000.

These figures are cited to show the enormous size of our air project, to show, also, how small a part of a balanced air program is the manufacture of the airplanes themselves, and, finally, to controvert and refute the widespread, the almost universal, impression to-day that the whole air program of America in the war was a failure, a scandal, and a blot on the fair name of our war industry.

The average American, if he has not examined the record of our war aircraft program, probably holds the opinion that a billion dollars or more appropriated for aircraft vanished into thin air during the war, and that all we had to show for the enormous expenditure was a few hundred airplanes of inferior design. To this day such statements are still being made by irresponsible journalists and other careless critics of the conduct of the war. Against such assertions we oppose the statement that the production of aëronautical materials during the war was as successful as any other great branch of war industry, that we got value received for our money—“war value,” that is—and that the losses incurred were the natural and inevitable losses to be expected by any nation unprepared for war. The general charge of shocking waste and failure reposes upon nothing more substantial than rumor and muddy impression. Behind the rejoinder we are able to marshal the facts, which are, with the demobilization of the industry virtually complete, now to be evaluated as a whole.

In the first place, how much money did we actually spend in the prosecution of the great aircraft program? A billion and a half? A billion? Not at all. The war appropriations for the air were widely advertised; the acts of Congress covering back into the Treasury the unexpended balances, the transfers of air service funds to other purposes, and the recoveries and reimbursements from the sales of surplus materials were not so well advertised. The well-advertised appropriations came to a total of $1,691,854,758. But the greater part of these appropriations was made when the Air Service was a branch of the Signal Corps, and a considerable sum went for the procurement of signaling materials not connected with aircraft at all. Moreover, when the armistice came, several hundred million dollars of these authorizations were as yet untouched by those procuring the aircraft, and Congress revoked all such appropriations. When the subtractions are made on account of the Signal Corps’ proper business and on account of revoked appropriations, we find that the net appropriation on account of the air program was $1,158,070,773.

But this vast sum is still far above the sum actually spent. On the day of the armistice there were great unexpended balances in practically all the appropriations granted to the Air Service, and these balances remained great after the liquidation of the industry. Since the unexpended balances eventually will be recovered into the general funds of the Treasury, it is proper to subtract them here; and by making the subtraction, we find that the war expenditure for the aircraft program was approximately $868,000,000. Yet even this was not net expenditure. From this amount there is still to be subtracted the millions received from the sale and transfer of surplus materials, the reimbursements on account of overpayments to contractors, and other items. The full subtraction of these credits leaves us with a net war expenditure for aircraft of approximately $720,000,000.

This figure, indeed, is an estimate; but it is a close estimate. It is an estimate because, at the time this is written (July, 1921), the liquidation of the war aircraft industry is not yet quite complete. Four contractors’ claims are still unsettled, and surplus worth less than $18,000,000 remains unsold. Therefore, even if the estimated cost of settling the claims and the estimated recovery from the sale of surplus are grossly inaccurate, such errors cannot greatly affect the total estimate. The last official financial statement on the war business of the Air Service, dated April 23, 1921, showed that the net cost then was $738,133,972.28, leaving in the Treasury at that time an unexpended balance of $419,936,801.20, and this cost was still to be reduced by recoveries from the sale of surplus and by reimbursements of overpayments made to contractors in the settlements.

Thus we have, as the cost of the war air program, the figure $720,000,000—not half the billion and a half alleged by the critics to have been wasted. But what happened to the $720,000,000? Was it wasted? What did we get for it? The answers to these questions may be a revelation to those who have accepted the common misstatement that the whole project ended in a colossal failure.

First, airplanes. For the money spent the Army received, not a few hundred airplanes, but approximately 19,000. When the money was appropriated, those in charge of the air program, and the public, too, expected these funds to produce airplanes in numbers sufficient to darken the skies. Well, here was the sky-darkening cloud of them—19,000 planes, produced and delivered to the Army. And at least half this number consisted of “service” planes, as distinguished from training machines. The average value of an airplane without engine may be conservatively placed at $6,000. Thus, the planes delivered on the war orders were worth $114,000,000, a sum which accounts for nearly one-sixth of the total war expenditure made by the Air Service. In round numbers, the American industry produced 12,000 of these planes before the armistice, and afterwards, during the termination of the work, completed production on 1,500 that were unfinished. The remaining 5,500 were purchased from the French, British, and Italian industries. Those who criticize the administration of this branch of our war industry commonly lose sight of the fact that all the foreign airplanes procured by us were bought with the funds appropriated for the Air Service.

Planes, however, are a small item compared with some of the other materials procured with the $720,000,000. The American industry produced 30,000 aviation engines before the armistice and more than 11,000 afterwards on war orders during the termination of the industry—the exact figure, representing the total war production, being 41,590. Of these, 20,478 were Liberty engines, 15,572 of which were produced before November 30, 1918. The Liberty engines alone represented over 8,000,000 horsepower. In addition, from the $720,000,000 spent, we bought several thousand aviation engines in Europe. In all we received approximately 45,000 engines for our money. At $6,000 apiece—a fair average price—this procurement accounted for $270,000,000 of the money. Planes and engines together accounted for $384,000,000, or more than half the total expenditure.

This was all value received. But we have still to consider many important items of expense necessary to the prosecution of an air project such as ours was. It took, for instance, $190,000,000 to maintain the Air Service of the American Expeditionary Forces. The appropriation procured 1,100 balloons both before and after the armistice, at a cost, say, of $11,000,000. As we have noted above, $75,000,000 went into buildings for the Air Service in this country, another great sum into motor trucks, still another into fuel and lubricating oils, and upwards of $80,000,000 into the development of raw materials for airplane manufacture—spruce, dope, and fabric. This last was a necessary and justifiable expenditure, in that it sustained the airplane industry, not only of the United States, but of the principal Allies as well. Too, the development of raw materials was on a scale which anticipated great expansion of the manufacture of airplanes in 1919 and 1920. And so we can go, item by item, through the list of sub-enterprises in the aviation project and find that we received great value for our money and that almost the only wastes were the to-be-expected war wastes, largely due to our unpreparedness for war. These wastes were represented in the high prices paid for materials produced in such a hurry on such a scale. These high unit prices, of course, took care of the cost of creating almost the whole manufacturing equipment of the industry. However, we secured the materials.

We may pause here, too, to correct another misapprehension which has had some currency: namely, that not only was a billion shamefully wasted on aircraft but it was wasted by the so-called dollar-a-year men called to Washington and placed in charge of the aircraft program. The only dollar-a-year men connected with that program in a conspicuous capacity were the civilian members of the Aircraft Board—Mr. Howard E. Coffin, chairman, and Messrs. Richard F. Howe and Harry B. Thayer, the other two members. But the Aircraft Board was advisory only in function and possessed absolutely no administrative or executive powers. It acted as a clearing house in the effort to coördinate the aircraft production of the War and Navy departments. The actual work of procuring aircraft—designing, contracting for, inspecting, and receiving materials—was always in the hands of the uniformed services. The Aircraft Board had no control of the spending of appropriations, except that of the relatively insignificant appropriation of $100,000 granted to it by Congress to cover its office expenses.

The industry which wrote the records of aircraft production was attaining great momentum when the armistice was signed, although it had not yet reached capacity production. It had, however, in the final thirty-one days of active hostilities, produced 1,582 airplanes (1,081 of which were De Haviland service planes for use in France), 5,177 engines (of which 3,034 were Liberty engines), and 249 kite balloons. The business of terminating this industry was difficult. The liquidation plan adopted was essentially like that used by the Ordnance Department. Before the armistice the production branch of the Air Service was organized into eight manufacturing districts, with headquarters respectively at Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Dayton, Detroit, New York, Pittsburg, and San Francisco. Five thousand persons were employed by the district organizations. After the armistice the district production boards became district claims boards for the Air Service, and they conducted most of the actual work of terminating production and arranging settlements with the contractors. Their settlements went up for approval, first, to the Air Service Claims Board and, finally, to the War Department Claims Board.

The air service contracts outstanding on the first day of the armistice obligated the Government to accept completed materials to the value of $767,423,308.50. Completed materials and raw and semi-finished materials accepted by the Government in the settlement with the contractors after the armistice reached a value of $259,733,874.30. Thus the contracts and parts of contracts terminated in the liquidation accounted for a cancellation of work to the value of $509,689,434.20. In addition to accepting and paying for the materials, the Government paid in cash to the producers in settlement of their claims the sum of $94,013,776.51. Hundreds of contractors accepted the statutory $1.00 and relieved the Government of all financial obligation.

For the sole or leading purpose of creating reserves for future use by the Army, there was little or no production of air supplies after the armistice. Leaving aside all questions of the obsolescence of design, no major class of military supplies is less durable in storage than aircraft materials. Like an egg, an airplane or a balloon cannot be slightly bad and still be usable. It must be 100-per-cent perfect, or it is dangerous. The life of rubber is short even under the most favorable conditions. The rubber in balloon fabric does not escape this swift impairment. The rubber tires of airplanes deteriorate with equal rapidity. The laminated and glued joints of the wooden wing beams of airplanes expand, contract, and work loose in the varying humidity of the surrounding air and are soon weakened below the safety point. Propellers are also highly sensitive to changes in humidity and temperature. Storage batteries, when stacked together in storage, wear out in a few months, each cell apparently working upon and adversely affecting its neighbors. Bolted wing cloth, when left folded, becomes weak along the creases. Of all aviation supplies, engines are the least susceptible to deterioration in storage.

In view of these considerations, such production of aircraft and aviation supplies as was permitted after the armistice was undertaken almost solely in the interest of the contractors and their employees. Most of the factories were allowed to continue in operation under war contracts only until they had used up materials in process of manufacture when the armistice was signed. Even this operation was conducted at a reduced rate. The airplane contracts had called for a delivery of 27,000 planes in all. The production under these contracts, in exact figures, amounted to 11,754 planes before the armistice and 1,732 afterwards, a total of 13,486 airplanes produced by the American factories. Contract terminations canceled the production of about an equal number.

The post-armistice production of airplane engines was somewhat greater, both proportionately and in numbers of units delivered. This was due partly to the greater momentum acquired by the engine project, partly to the fact that engines could be stored safely and would retain good military value for years to come, and partly to the necessity of keeping the engine makers at work while their factories were turning to normal production. The total American production of aviation engines on the war contracts was as follows: deliveries to October 31, 1918, 28,509; deliveries thereafter, 13,081; total war production, 41,590. Of these engines 20,493 were Liberty engines, of which about 5,000 were produced after the armistice.

About 300 observation balloons were produced after the armistice before the manufacture could be terminated.

In one important particular the policy adopted in the demobilization of the war aircraft industry was exactly the opposite of that used in demobilizing the ordnance industry. In working back to a peace footing, it was the policy of the Ordnance Department to reserve complete manufacturing equipments and to set up stand-by plants for the manufacture of some of the most important materials in ordnance supply. On the other hand, in demobilizing the airplane industry it was the policy for the Government not to retain any manufacturing facilities whatsoever. There were strong strategic reasons behind both these policies. For field guns, for recuperators, for shell, and for other important ordnance, there is little or no normal commercial demand; and the only way the Ordnance Department could guarantee the future existence of facilities for producing these materials was to retain the equipment created during the war. But there is, or can be, some commercial demand for airplanes, and some day there will undoubtedly be a great commercial demand for them. It is important to the military welfare of the United States that this country take a foremost place in the improvement of designs and in the production of flying machines for commercial use. Only through the development of a great independent aircraft industry in this country can the Government be assured of the existence of facilities upon which it can rely to give this nation great power in the air. As conditions now are, the Government itself must be the chief customer of the airplane industry, and on the government orders the industry must live until commercial flying begins to develop on a scale comparable at least to the early development of railway transportation in the United States. If the Air Service were to have retained the war manufacturing facilities as government producing and stand-by plants, that act would have dealt a staggering blow to the infant commercial industry in the most uncertain period of its existence.

Only one exception was made. During the war the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation developed a plant in Long Island City for the production of Hispano-Suiza engines. This plant was purchased by the War Department and is being retained as a stand-by plant under the name of the United States Aëronautical Engine Plant. The future of this establishment, however, is uncertain.

Although it ruthlessly dispensed with the war manufacturing facilities, the Air Service retained in the demobilization a considerable part of the physical plant created for it during the war. Of the twenty-six flying fields used in the training of the war aviators, six have been retained as flying fields. These are the Bolling, Langley, Mather, and Kelly flying fields and the Carlstrom and March pilot training fields. The present equipment also includes three balloon schools, three balloon fields, one mechanics school (Chanute Field), one observation school, various stations for the defense of our island possessions and for the patrol of the Mexican border, nineteen supply, storage, and repair depots, and various other stations.

The storage of reserve supplies retained by the Air Service afforded some interesting problems, since nearly every class of supplies required special treatment in storage. Engines, for instance, were thoroughly covered inside and out with a heavy rust-preventing grease compound before being stored away in dry, cool concrete warehouses. Reserve balloons were dusted with talc, rolled carefully so as to put as little weight as possible on creases and folds, enclosed in sealed rubber envelopes, packed in wooden chests, which were then sealed up so as to be practically waterproof and air-tight, and then stacked in dry rooms in which air at a medium temperature circulates constantly among the chests. Even so, no long life for the balloons is expected. Wing fabric, both cotton and linen, was unbolted, rolled upon cardboard tubes, wrapped in paper, and suspended on racks in rooms heated in winter. Aviators’ fur and woolen clothing was stored in fly-proof and moth-proof tar-paper-lined rooms, the floors of which were thickly covered with naphthaline. Fabric was stripped from airplane wings before storage in order to permit the free ventilation of the wood; glued joints were given an extra coat of varnish; all metal parts were painted with red lead or white lead; and the wings were stored in racks designed to keep their edges straight. Thousands of propellers were stored at the aviation supply depot at Middletown, Pennsylvania, in a room in which moisture sprayers maintain a constant humidity and a thermostat a constant temperature.

The aircraft contractors’ claims proved to be fairly easy to adjust except one, the so-called castor bean case. This proved to be one of the most vexing settlements which came before the War Department Claims Board. From its humble position as an unwelcome medicament of the nursery, castor oil jumped during the war to the eminence of being an indispensable lubricant for the rotary engines used in driving airplanes. The prospective demand in 1918 for castor oil far outstripped the world supply. We needed 6,000,000 gallons by July, 1919. The Air Service therefore took the unprecedented step of attempting to grow castor beans in America, although castor beans, in merchantable quantities, had never been grown here before. Still, in the Southern States we had the correct climate, and no obstacle seemed to stand in the way of a successful crop.

Accordingly, through twenty-three prime contractors, the Air Service arranged with some 12,000 southern farmers to plant castor beans in 100,000 acres of land. Glittering prospects were held forth: thirty bushels an acre was only an average yield, and the Government would pay handsomely for the beans. Thus castor beans won 100,000 acres of good American soil away from rice, cotton, and corn, even at the war prices of these commodities. About planting-time in 1918 all was ready—fields, husbandmen, and tools—all except seed. After all, the farmers had to have seed; and to get seed the Government seized a cargo of castor beans from India, originally committed to a more sinister purpose. These beans the Government distributed among the 12,000 prospective producers, who planted them; and then, as the cartoonist so aptly says, the fun began.

Certain of the growers, like suburban gardeners, watched for bean shoots that never appeared. Some of these alien beans seemed to derive a sort of floral madness from the heady gulf loam and sent up veritable trunks twenty, thirty, and forty feet in air. But never a bean pod crowned such luxuriant growth. Whether because of the growers’ lack of experience, unfavorable climate, or, more likely, defective seed, there has seldom been an American crop failure more nearly total than this. By gleaning every bean, the producers managed to gather 181,000 bushels, or 1.8 bushels to the acre.

As soon as the fell result was known, 12,000 angry farmers besieged the Government with demands for reparation. The claims aggregated millions. Not only did the farmers hold the Government responsible for the crop loss, but they also, dozens of them, put in claims for property damage and restoration costs, maintaining that in clearing their lands after the bean crop they had had to use stump pullers and dynamite to rout out the enormous stalks. One farmer sarcastically credited the War Department with his winter’s supply of firewood, which he said he had been able to cut from his bean patch. The War Department finally settled the claims for a total of $1,540,638, which was at the rate of $8.50 a bushel for the beans received. Thus ended the first lesson in the American cultivation of the castor bean. It will be some time yet before the Department of Agriculture will have to create a branch to gather statistics on the domestic castor bean crop.

The work of demobilizing the Air Service of the American Expeditionary Forces ramified into several main branches: the cancellation of our foreign contracts and the settlement of our accounts with the governments of the Allies arising from the mutual purchases of materials; the sale of the installations and surplus movable property acquired by the Service during the war; the salvaging of worn-out equipment; and the shipment to the United States of airplanes and other equipment retained by the Air Service for future use. Most of the surplus property of the Air Service abroad went to France in the bulk sale of all surplus A. E. F. property, although some was taken by other governments in Europe in smaller purchases. These sales were consummated by the United States Liquidation Commission, which also concluded the financial settlements of our air service accounts with the Allied governments. These transactions are to be explained in some detail in a later chapter. The disposition of all aircraft materials retained by the A. E. F. was accomplished by the Air Service itself.

The A. E. F.’s production center before the armistice had been at the great flying field at Romorantin, near Tours. Here all new airplanes acquired by the A. E. F., either from the American industry or from the factories in Europe, had been received, assembled, equipped, and dispatched to the front. It had taken more than 10,000 officers and enlisted men to do this work. After the armistice Romorantin was made the concentration depot for all American air service supplies in France, and here all materials for return to the United States were boxed and forwarded to the ports. About 1,000 airplane engines were shipped to the United States and 2,097 planes, of which 347 were German, 1,139 British and French, and 611 American De Havilands.

Merely the packing of this equipment was a work of great size. It required, for instance, 7,500,000 board feet of seasoned lumber for the crates, besides large quantities of nails, bolts, clamps, wire cable, paint, and roofing paper, and also tools for the packers. A lumber mill employing 195 operatives was set up merely to resaw, tongue, and groove the lumber for boxes and crates.

The 2,000 airplanes returned to the United States represented practically all of the great aërial equipment of the A. E. F. which was saved for use after the war. The sales of our used airplanes abroad after the armistice, to either governments or individuals, were practically nothing. The remaining thousands of airplanes which had once borne the American insignia aloft were stripped of their salvageable materials and burned in great bonfires, the pyres of original investments running up into millions of dollars. This seeming profligacy was harshly criticized by those in this country who did not understand the conditions; but, when those responsible for the destruction had put in their defense, the criticism ceased.

The life of airplanes in use or in storage is short at best. Thousands of the A. E. F. planes had given considerable service, either at the training fields or at the front. The average life expectancy of these ships was probably less than three months. There was no sale for them abroad—France already owned many more airplanes than she could possibly use up, and the attempts of the Air Service to sell used planes to individuals ended in complete failure. To knock down these machines, box them, subject them once more to the deteriorating effects of the salt humidity of a transatlantic voyage, and to reassemble them in the United States, would still further impair their condition and still further abbreviate their average life. There was also to be considered the expense of maintaining soldiers in France to protect this matériel for several months, the expense of preparing it for shipment, and finally,—the chief cost,—the expense of transporting it to the United States. The question was whether it was good business to spend all this money for the sake of returning to the United States materials which at best would have a useful life of only a few weeks, and which, because of the surpluses of new or little used airplanes already on hand, might never be used at all. The War Department did not hesitate in its answer. It ordered the sale or destruction of all A. E. F. airplanes of this class; and, since sale proved to be impossible, the order meant their destruction.

Those in charge of the work, realizing that criticism would be likely to follow, proceeded most carefully. Only the newest, least used, and best conditioned planes were reserved for shipment home. The air squadrons with the Army of Occupation were given a plentiful supply of airplanes. The rest, destined for destruction, were given several inspections by different committees and boards of survey, in order that the Chief of the Air Service might have a plentitude of expert opinion on which to base his condemnation orders.

The Class D material, as this condemned property was called, was concentrated in three centers—Romorantin, Issoudun (where the A. E. F. had operated the largest flying school in the world), and Colombey-les-Belles (the demobilization depot for the zone of advance). Here were conducted the final inspections. Many of the condemned planes presented, to the unpracticed eye, a perfect appearance. Storage space in the zone of advance after the armistice had always been short, and these apparently good machines had suffered from exposure to the weather. They were water-soaked; glued joints had given away, wooden parts were warped, and so on. They would have had to be completely rebuilt to be safe. Others had broken struts and cross braces and other damaged parts. All such machines were set aside for salvage.

The condemned airplanes then passed from crew to crew, who dismantled them. All miscellaneous metal parts were stripped out and sent to the quartermaster depots for sale as junk metal. Engines were removed and saved, as were also propellers, landing gears, wheels, tires, axles, cowls, gas tanks and oil tanks, controls, instruments, radio apparatus, machine guns, bomb racks, and many other serviceable articles. Even complete wings, when in good condition, were removed and packed for shipment to the United States. The remaining débris, consisting of little more than the highly inflammable wooden construction members and dope-covered wing fabric, was piled in great heaps and burned. More than 2,300 airplanes were thus disposed of.

One hundred observation balloons were ripped up and used for tarpaulins, wagon covers, and the like. The rest of the A. E. F. balloons were returned to the United States.

Airdromes on leased lands, occupied by small aviation units of the A. E. F., were turned back to the owners of the property after troops had dismantled all the war structures. With the exception of these, the entire plant equipment of the Air Service in France, consisting of training stations, observation schools, supply depots, and the like, was taken over by the French Government. The American surplus of aircraft in England was disposed of by the British Government, acting as agent for the United States.