The First Wave

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For some U.S. businessmen, a taste of V-E day came unexpectedly last week. It arrived in the form of a wire from the Army Air Forces ordering an overall 15% slash in plane production. Reason: the Army has almost enough Flying Fortress and Liberator bombers to finish off Germany, will go into the stepped-up war against Japan with a new line of both bombers and fighters (see U.S. AT WAR). If the cutback goes through as planned, it will be the first actual downturn in the plane program since the war began.

Many of the plants hit by the sweeping cutbacks, such as Douglas, Consolidated Vultee and Lockheed, had a cushion: some of the manpower and facilities will be shifted to making planes for the Pacific war. But for Henry Ford's Willow Run, there was nothing to soften the blow. Three days after the cutback came, Willow Run began to lay off its 22,000 workers, thousands at a time. By the end of July all will be gone. Then the vast, $100,000,000 plant will be closed up tight. WPB, caught flat-footed by the Army's announcement, had no other work for it.

Blessing in Disguise. To Detroit's automakers, badly pinched for manpower, this was a blessing. The Willow Run shutdown—and the other cutbacks—will free upwards of 70,000 workers in the Detroit area. For the first time in three years, Detroit will have labor to spare.

Last week WPB, hustling to make up for lost time, gave the automen another leg up. It handed out high priorities so that they can build $35,000,000 in new plants, spend another $45,000,000 for rehabilitation of tools. This will give them room to assemble cars, or do war work that will still occupy auto plants.

Old Face, New Job. To hustle reconversion along still faster, Home Front Czar Fred M. Vinson last week put an old face into a new job. He named gorilla-shouldered Robert Roy Nathan, 36, as his deputy to take the place of Major General Lucius Clay. Businessmen were quick to note the significance: General Clay was Czar Jimmy Byrnes's deputy for war production; Nathan will be Fred Vinson's deputy for reconversion. Among other duties his job will be to see that the Army does not overestimate its needs, thus postpone reconversion work.

Bob Nathan is an old hand at tilting with the Army. As chairman of WPB's planning committee back in 1943, he demanded billions for war when the services were content to ask for millions; fought to spend the money to expand the supply of raw materials when the Army wanted to spend it on plants, even though there were no materials in sight to keep the plants running. Later, he was drafted into the Army, given a medical discharge seven months later. WThile in the Army hospital, he wrote a book, Mobilizing jor Abundance, (McGraw-Hill—$2) which briefly charted the road from war to peace, much as Nathan must now do.