Page 33 - Volume 13 Number 5

In the weeks that followed, every effort was made to implement the changes necessary to boost production. Chief among these was the immediate construction of a large final assembly area costing $200,000 and measuring 205 feet in length and 126 feet in width. It was scheduled for completion in December with workers occupying the floor space late that month. As of January 1940, the facility was fully operational.
The sudden surge in orders experienced by the Stearman Division was only one example of the tremendous boom in Wichita’s airframe manufacturing industry. Local journalists speculated that 1940 could be the year that the city’s aeronautical enterprise would break the old record of building nearly 1,000 airplanes in 1928. “Can this figure be claimed today and can it be truthfully said that the aviation industry here is at an all-time high in productivity,” one newspaper reporter asked. He speculated further that additional orders for Stearman, Beech and Cessna airplanes were anticipated and that workers at all three plants, as well as at smaller companies and subcontractors in Wichita, were laboring at a fever pitch to deliver aircraft to the U.S. military.
As the war in Europe intensified and diplomatic relations between the United States and the Empire of Japan became increasingly strained, President Franklin
In 1940 U.S. Navy N2S-series trainers were photographed during final assembly in the new facility built at the south end of the factory. (Courtesy Archives of the Wichita Area Chamber of Commerce)
MAY 2019 KING AIR MAGAZINE • 31