AIR: 500,000 Models

All over the U.S. next week more than half a million teen-age youngsters will go to work with jig and band saws on 500,000 model planes. Not toys—these will be planes for the Army, Navy and OCD. The model-planes program is to provide gunners and spotters with accurate miniatures of 20 types of planes, including U.S.Japanese, German, Italian and British. The Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics and the Office of Education are joint sponsors of the idea.

The 500,000 models will have to be precise to the last detail. Every test that is used to train spotters, gunners, etc. requires exactly scaled models. In training gunners, for example, it is necessary to teach them to recognize whether a ship is going at maximum or at cruising speed, and the only method they have of estimating range is the size of the plane in their ring sights. Since the models are built on the precise scale of 1 to 72 (one inch represents six feet of the actual plane), the model looks to the gunner at 35 feet exactly the way the real plane will look to him at just under half a mile.

The Navy expects to give its whittlers more variety in the future by sending out working drawings of 30 or 40 other types. And the Navy does not expect to accept all the models sent in, figures on having to reject about 20% out of the first few thousand models. To keep itself from being flooded with worthless models, the Navy will work through local authorities, is likely at first to confine model making to school,under direct supervision. All models will be painted black, since recognition experience is supposed to come through knowledge of design and outline of planes, not through colors or insignia.