Family Affair

The first big batch of orders since the Korean war was placed last week by the Army Ordnance Department. From Detroit, where the staff of the tank arsenal runs the show for automotive ordnance, contracts went out for tank-type vehicles of the same family as the new light tank to be built by Cadillac (TIME, July 31). American Car & Foundry Co. (Berwick, Pa.) and the Massey-Harris Co. (Racine, Wis.) will build howitzer carriages, the International Harvester Co. (Melrose Park, Ill.) armament personnel carriers, and the Pacific Car & Foundry Co. (Renton, Wash.) gun motor carriages.

In their terms the orders showed the pattern which Ordnance will follow. No prices were fixed. After the companies get into production and establish actual manufacturing costs, final contracts specifying prices will be drawn. Colonel David Crawford, commander of the tank arsenal, guessed that on an order for 1,000 vehicles, for example, the price would be fixed at about the 300th vehicle.

Unlike the helter-skelter days of World War II, when a light tank might be powered by any one of four different engines, the parts and engine of the new vehicles will be standardized. They will be powered by the six-cylinder air-cooled Continental engine specially developed for the job.

The Ordnance Department has also established a new pattern of industrial mobilization. It has divided the U.S. into five areas, each designed to develop its own independent tank production system in case of all-out mobilization. Such decentralization, the department believes, will not only have strategic advantages, but will distribute the economic load of mobilization evenly throughout the country, and help prevent large-scale migration of skilled labor to a few industrial centers.

Colonel Crawford was confident that no new plants would have to be built, and no going plant converted, for the ordnance program. Said he last week: "Detroit will probably never become a major tank producing area, because its plants aren't built heavily enough to stand the handling of heavy tank materials. We're looking for several plants right now . . . We regret the loss of the Texas Continental [motors] plant. It was a beautiful layout, but I think they're making cheese in it now."

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