Manuscript Page 46

thousand change orders hit the plant. This meant that we had to revise and rebuild two thousand things we had already done because they showed up as inadequate on the test flight. In normal times those planes would not have been on the assembly line until after the first test flight. In war time there was not time to await the test flight. Planes were badly needed.

We finally finished the light bombers and crated and shipped them to the island of Martinique in the Caribbean. This happened about the same time as Germany overran France. I never heard what happened to those planes. The B19 flew and many of its best features appeared in the B29 bombers which bombed Japan a few years later.

Meanwhile our assembly lines became loaded with C54, C47 and R5D planes. These were all cargo aircraft. Our parts shortages began to clear up and our planes left in a steady stream for action all around the world. We really began to move planes and those planes along with other production began to make themselves felt on all war fronts.

Early in the war, there was great concern that the Japanese would strike the West Coast so we kept everything blacked out. No windows were showing light at night. No street lights were on and even traffic lights were not allowed to function. Automobile traffic was, at a minimum as we were conserving gasoline. Every effort was going into the production of the tools of war.

I had worked seven days a week, ten hours a day for almost two years when I finally got a day off. We took the baby and drove to San Diego, checked in at the U S Grant Hotel and I sacked out on the bed for a nap. When I awakened I was ill with what turned out to be virus pneumonia. This really knocked me out for two weeks and when I returned to work I was unable to climb one flight of stairs to my office without resting halfway up.

Even though the war was still raging in Germany and Japan we had virtually satisfied the great demand for airplanes and the pressure had lessened a great deal. I decided to take a job working on an experimental plane being built in the hanger formerly occupied by the B19. This was the "Big Hanger." At that time there was much speculation about jet propulsion but little was known about it and our engineers were rather skeptical of its practicality. They wondered how stable a plane would be if it was propelled by a strong jet in its tail. Would it begin to spin out of control? Our experimental plane was designed to test that stability. It was powered by two liquid cooled Allison engines mounted side by side between the wings with two drive shafts going to a gear box in the tail. Behind the gear box was a pair of three-blade counter-rotating propellers. There were bombays and racks underneath the big twelve cylinder engines. The landing gear was designed to fold into the side of the fuselage preserving the integrity of the wing's air foil. It was a very advanced design and drew much attention from aeronautical experts around the country.

My job on this project was to assemble and install the motor and flight controls. It was not a complicated job since all the castings and brackets had been drawn by engineers. I had to get the