AIR: Builder of Big Ships

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AIR Builder of Big Ships

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The big Consolidated boat was at 18,000 feet over the Atlantic and the oxygen was sobbing comfortably in the crew's masks. Then it happened. Somehow the automatic pilot jammed. With its right aileron all the way down, the 15-ton Catalina went into a violent left turn, headed for the sea. In the dizzy spiral dive the aileron carried away, took part of the tip of the wing with it. Then the left aileron ripped off. An operator in the United Kingdom heard the frenetic chirp from the Catalina's radio: "Both ailerons gone."

He heard no more, expected never to hear. One new Catalina was charged off as "lost on ferry." Six hours later the boat, with its truncated wing raffish as an empty tooth socket, turned up at a United Kingdom seaport, lurched to a landing. Somehow its pilots had straightened it out, just off the water, flown it in—with no banking controls. It was another incredible episode in the saga of the Catalina, which the U.S. Navy calls the PBY.

One man who was not amazed by this performance was the Catalina's builder, big, blue-eyed Major Reuben Hollis Fleet, chief executive and chief owner of Consolidated Aircraft Corp. Like all oldtimers in Consolidated's tightly knit hierarchy, he has long since ceased to be surprised at any feat a Cat performs. But he has not lost his capacity for pride. It has plenty to feed on in the Cat's nest in a sunlit stretch between crowded Pacific Highway and San Diego (Calif.) Bay.

For there, to "Rube" Fleet's eye (and to the eye of many a layman), is the most dramatic visual proof to be found in the U.S. that the tools to beat Adolf Hitler, no longer just "on order," are at work. In the yard, under the sun by day, under floodlights at night (in San Diego climate hangars are unnecessary), sits a score of ships getting their last touches. And they are not little ships. They are whoppers, all of them. Each represents thousands of hours of labor, each is a mighty ship of war. In the three big final assembly buildings, they come off the lines at a rate (military secret) of so many a day; no longer, as big bomber production was once appraised, at so many a month.

Saga. What first catches the layman's eye in the Cat's yard is not the wide-winged PBYs with their tapered tails, but the graceful, powerful forms, of immense four-motored bombers resting on tricycle landing gears. These are the newest brothers of the Cat: the B-24s. The British call them Liberators. These big bombers are 4,000 pounds bigger than Boeing's famed Flying Fortresses. The B-24 has already followed the Cat into the war in Europe.

Across the yard is ranked another group of giants, massive of hull, with long, tapering, twin-ruddered tails. These are Consolidated's big boats—PB2Ys, four-en-gined big brothers of the two-engined PBYs. Like everything else Rube Fleet turns out, they are built to Fleet's most important hallmark: long range. These giants, designed for naval patrol, can travel 5,200 miles—possibly more—on a single load of gas. They can cruise at 170 m.p.h. on 45% of the power of their four Pratt & Whitney 1,200-h.p. engines.