AVIATION: Again, Brewster

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Badgered Brewster Aeronautical Corp. is about to be orphaned again: for the sixth time in two years, it is faced with finding—or accepting—a new management. Reason: even Miracle Man Henry J. Kaiser whom the Navy persuaded to take over Brewster a year ago—without remuneration—could not stand the gaff.

Last week President Kaiser, announcing his resignation, alleged that "the production emergency . . . task has been accomplished." But, since Brewster's Navy Corsair contract is still only one-third completed, some other observations in Kaiser's explanation to stockholders were more pertinent. Fact is that Brewster is in a financial wilderness compounded of 1) Navy allegations of overcharges; 2) Brewster allegations of Navy underpayments; 3) British and Brewster counterclaims on terminated dive-bomber contracts; 4) a strong feeling on the part of Brewster's underprivileged stockholders that everyone has been underpaying them. Besides that, and despite Kaiser, the company has not been able to lure the Navy into placing any more orders, not even an experimental one of the kind that would be most endearing to H. J., the man who talks of revolutionizing the postwar air.