Such an effort will mean serious modifications of our conventional 
      business habits and assumptions. It means appropriate transfer 
      of labor, intensive working on a three shift system, utilisation 
      of machine tool capacity wherever it can be found, and diversion 
      of material supplies from civil use. But such a program of action 
      duly pursued will prevent the long period of agony which would 
      be involved in a prolonged diversion of civil life to military 
      production without such a supreme effort decided upon and undertaken 
      now.
 
      
 
 
II
 
      The present scale of the present plans of production in the United 
      States do not meet these vital requirements. This is emphasized 
      particularly by the airplane situation.
 
      
 
 
(1) Air power today is measured and obtained by productive 
      capacity, not merely by the number of planes at a given moment. 
      Productive capacity means ability to turn out new models quickly, 
      and a relatively smaller number of new high performance, heavy 
      striking power planes can ground for a time a force superior 
      in numbers but inferior in essential qualities. Research and 
      experimentation are the backbone of any air program, for we need 
      not only greater capacity but greater capacity for building better 
      planes.
 
      
 
 
(2) By whatever yardstick we measure our effort against Germany's, 
      we are vastly inferior now and are likely to remain so through 
      1942. Our present actual production, for both U. S. and British 
      needs is less than a third of Germany' s exclusive of recently 
      occupied countries. Even our future maximum production now planned 
      for the middle of 1942 (about 2800 monthly) is less than "Greater 
      Germany's" present full capacity (about3000/3500). By the 
      middle of 1942 Germany may well add the capacity of the conquered 
      countries to
 
      
 
 
-2-