Word: k-f
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...cargo planes to Kaiser's Willow Run plant. Fairchild thought it should be allowed to make the C-119's itself. Kaiser not only kept the C-119 contract but got another, for 244 of Kaiser's own Chase C-123 Avitrucs. But K-F's costs were so high ($1,300,000 a Packet v. Fairchild's $260,000) that the Air Force canceled both the C-119 and C-123 contracts (TIME, July 6). Now Fairchild has the field to itself, plans to roll into C-123 production at Hagerstown in the middle...
...their 12,200 workers at Willow Run, where the C-119 Boxcars were made on license from Fairchild Engine & Aircraft, their original designer. Auto production (250 cars a day) had already been halted in the plant a few days earlier, when a strike at Borg-Warner shut off K-F's supply of automatic transmissions and forced a layoff 'of 2,200 men. At week's end, there were only 1,000 K-F workers left, finishing up the last Boxcars and making auto parts for other manufacturers...
...aircraft cancellations came after Senator Styles Bridges' hearings had brought out that K-F needed $1.3 million to build a Boxcar that Fairchild itself is building for only $260,000 each (TIME, June 15). The Air Force denied that this caused the cancellation, but nobody believed it. The Air Force, fighting to restore some of the cuts in its 1954 budget, obviously wanted to drop an operation criticized as wasteful. Henry Kaiser and Edgar had done their best, before the hearings broke up. to acquit K-F of this charge. In a 22-page prepared statement...
Shop Practices. The contract was let by Lieut. General Orval Cook, then chief of Procurement and Industrial Planning, who admitted that he had done so without ever inquiring into what K-F's costs for making the plane would be. And he had no records of the Wright Field meeting at which he, McCone and others made the final decision to go ahead. They were using a wire recorder, said General Cook, but "the recording equipment failed . . ." K-F's costs a plane were originally estimated at $467,000. Soon they soared to $902,000, then...
...Force Auditor Sidney Solomon, who checked the books at K-F's plant at Willow Run, explained how money flew. For one thing, said he, K-F tried to charge off to the contract $715,631 of vacation pay for workers who had earned it from auto motive work. Other items disallowed: 1) $4.2 million of automotive costs, which would have eventually totaled $56 million if not eliminated; and 2) a charge to the Government for 65% of the cost of Kaiser's ads replying to Senator Bridges...