AMERICA has at last solved a hitherto insoluble problem in its gigantic task of winning the war in the air for the Allies. It has found the heart of the matter. It has found the engine.

And with the discovery of that all important organ, a flying victory becomes more and more a practical certainty.

This is not idle talk. It is not a dream., It is a reality on the way to accomplishment; The newly discovered aviation motor is literally an engine of democracy. Conceived in the minds of men of many interests working together, and to be constructed by a host of different manufacturers, each contributing his share, it is a symbol of co-operative effort. It will be fittingly christened the "U. S. Engine."

It is particularly fitting that the United States should throw the weight of its wings into the balance on behalf of the Allies. It was the destiny of those peculiarly American young men,—the Wright brothers—to give the world its first flying machine. It is to be the destiny of this Government, unless the calculations of the authorities at Washington are far astray, to bring such a preponderance of these same flying machines, developed, expanded and perfected, to bear upon the common enemy as will settle the issue between democracy and Kaiserism for all time.

OUR Government and its advisers are attacking the aviation problem from the viewpoint of standardization. The wonderful ability to produce, in quantity, like parts which will be interchangeable and conform strictly to a standard—the same ability which has made the American automobile industry the eighth wonder of the world—is now being applied in an even intensified form to the conquest of the air. If there is one watchword which governs the actions of the Aircraft Production Board, of those branches of the War Department which are concerned with aerial matters, of the whole machinery of government which is busying itself so industriously with the manifold uses of the internal combustion engine, that watchword is "standardization."

THERE is a glamour of romance about the creation of the new "U. S. Engine." It is one of those almost fairy book tales of American business achievement which are rapidly becoming a tradition in this country. I have said that many minds contributed to its creation. This is true, but primarily two men are responsible for its design. These two American citizens, J. G. Vincent and E. J. Hall, both engineers who had been intimately concerned with the improvement of automobile engines, were summoned to Washington soon after the formation of the Aircraft Production Board. They were lodged in a hotel room with the instructions to emerge with the design for an aviation engine which would lend itself to immediate production in quantity and meet the requirements even of the modern battle plane.

They emerged not only with a design which answered to these requirements, but with a motor which after being subjected to searching tests has surpassed in performance and promise anything heretofore adopted for flying. The method followed was to study the most successful European aviation engines, to select from each its best features whenever they could be incorporated in a design which could be standardized and produced in quantity, and to eliminate every unnecessary factor which would interfere with rapid and unvarying production.

The goal for the "U. S. Engine," which was ever in the minds of its producers, was a motor of maximum power and speed combined with the greatest adaptability for rapid manufacture. The first "U. S. Engine" was actually constructed thirty days after the engineers began their work on the blue prints. This is a measure of the spirit and an earnest of the accomplishment which prevails in the government flying service to-day.

Every portion of the new engine has been designed on the principle of standardization. The cylinders, the pistons, and every other part can be turned out in quantities by large numbers of factories and assembled into the completed motor either at the place of original manufacture, or at a central assembling plant. The cylinders are designed separately so that the engine may be produced in a series of four motors, respectively of four, six, eight and twelve cylinders. Not only does this unique arrangement simplify enormously the problem of supplying spare parts and of making repairs at the front, but through it the power of the motor can be varied by the addition of pairs of cylinders to meet the particular requirements of the airplanes in question. Thus, an eight-cylinder motor can be transformed into one of twelve cylinders with the addition of not more than one dozen parts.

THE new engine in its eight-cylinder form has a weight per horse power as low as has been achieved by the best European practice. As the number of the cylinders is increased, this low weight per horse power is reduced still more, until in the twelve-cylinder motor the "U. S. Engine" has a weight per horse power which I do not propose to reveal to the enemy, but which is so small as to be almost incredible. The principle of standardization is to be applied by the men in control of the air situation,—the men who will say how and where the appropriation of $640,000.000 recently made is to be spent—not only to the motors, but also to all parts of the airplanes.

THE industries of the country, already cataloged and indexed through the painstaking inventory of the Council of National Defense, will each be asked to play its respective part. The production of engines will fall very largely upon the automobile factories, although the typewriter and cash register industries will also be able to do their bit in the making of certain of the smaller metal parts. Factories which have been engaged in the production of shells will also be suitable for boring cylinders without interfering with their munition production. The making of the planes and wings will fall largely upon the furniture industry, and is expected easily to keep pace with the production of motors. The woodworkers, the wire mills, the instrument makers, and a host of other minor industries will have their appointed place in the production of the new armada of the skies, which is expected to put the navigation of the air even more firmly under the control of the Allied Powers than is at present the navigation of the sea.

THE same astonishing speed which marked the creation of the new engine design is marching forward with the progress of manufacture. Large quantities of aeroplanes equipped with this motor in one of its several forms are expected to appear within a few months. The completed planes will be ready contemporaneously with the graduation from the Flying Schools of at first hundreds and soon thousands of trained aviators.

IT may be said without revealing details of the government plans that the opinion is firmly held in authoritative quarters that America can strike for victory and peace most quickly as well as most effectively in the air. Every energy of the best trained productive minds in the country is being bent to this end. The results will go far to justify all the optimism which is a part of the American temperament. We have been woefully backward in making use of the inventions for modem warfare, the most successful of which are all of American origin. But at last we are awake to the situation as it involves air supremacy. We know that airplanes are the eyes of the modem army. We know that an army blind .is an army defeated, and that, conversely, an army keen of sight, Argus-eyed, is to be triumphant and victorious. We have set our hand to the plow; we shall finish the furrow evenly, cleanly and rapidly to the end.

HISTORY is being made more surely and more quickly, perhaps, than ever it was before. Men who are writing a golden page of it are the army and navy officers, the engineers, the manufacturers and the executives of American business who are co-operating to the fullest extent with the six members of the Aircraft Production Board: Howard E. Coffin, Chairman; Brigadier General Geo. O. Squier, Chief Signal Officer, U. S. A.; Rear Admiral D. W. Taylor, Chief of Bureau of Construction, U. S. N.; S. D. Waldon, formerly vice-president of the Packard Motor Car Co.; E. A. Deeds, formerly general manager of the National Cash Register Co.; R. L. Montgomery, Senior member of the firm of Montgomery, Clothier & Taylor of Philadelphia. With this Board there is acting in the closest harmony the Joint Army and Navy Board on Design and Specification, to which has been intrusted by the Secretaries of War and the Navy, respectively, all questions of design for all forms of military aircraft, excepting Zeppelins. This Joint Board has as members: Major B. D. Foulois, U. S. A.; Capt. V. E. Clark, U. S. A.; Lieutenant A. K. Atkins, U. S. N.; Lieutenant J. H. Towers, U. S. N.; Asst. Naval Constructor J. C. Hunsaker, U. S. N.; Capt. E. S. Gorrell, U. S. A.