News Letter 1941 Jul-Dec - Air Force Historical Studies Office

WRIGHT FIELD LINKED WITH THE NATION
Anat ion-w ide te letype network has been 1inked
wlth a new taOulating system at Wright Field
to give the Materiel Division an automatic daily
report on Air Corps supply stores at depots all
aver the United States.
Nucleus of the new tabulating system is a battery
of specially-built card punching machines designed
to strike daily balances on Air Corps supply
stores. The machines operate automatically from
teletype tape bringing in reports from depots.
Designed especially for the Air Corps, they are
the first of their kind in the world.
The new machines do a job which would be
physically impossible under the old hand filing
system. They keep tab on all the Air Corps stocks
of airplane engines, propeller assemblies, airplane
tires, fuel pumps, landing gear struts and
the thousands of other items and parts which go to
IIBke up Army planes and equipment.
Link Depots With Wr ight Fie ld
Operated in conjunction with the new machines
is a teletype network, linking supply depots and
tactical bases with the Materiel Division. And
through the new system the Army now gets a daily
balance on all its equipment, which report 40,000
changes a day in balances on individual items of
equipment at individual air bases.
Biggest advantage of the new system is the fact
that the balances are received on teletype tape,
which is fed through the neWlY devised card
punching machine. This machine automatically records
each new balance on a card which is then
filed automatically. Thus the new plan makes it
possible to correct the record of any depot's
store of anyone of the 300,000 articles stocked,
as soon as the balance is changed by shipment to
or from the depot.
Prior to establishment of the new setup, the
Air Corps kept check on its stock by a system of
machine pos t ing in duplicate of stock record
cards at stations and depots. Once a year the
duplicates were sent in to the Materiel Division
headquarters at Wright Field, where they were
transcribed to tabulating cards, which in turn
were used for preparing reports for the supervisors
for purchasing -and distributing new stock
as required. The stock record cards were hand
filed at Wright Field, prior to punching of the
tabulating cards.
But the once-a-year balance became out-of-date
so quickly after it was taken, that it proved to
be to a large extent useless, except in normal
peace times when there was no great fluctuation in
requirements. The rapid pace of present Army Air
Corps expansion soon proved this system completely
inadequate.
With the new system, the Wright Fie Id Budget Office
receives at the close of each day's business,
the closing balances on hand of all items in which
any change has been made during the day, at each
of the several depots. And from the automatically
recorded tabulating cards, a report is available
each day to the supervisors, of the condition of
the stock of the day before, thus making pass ible
automatic stock replenishment at the depots as it
is needed, and e liminat ing much de lay and confusion
in replenishing stocks which had been largely
consumed since the last balance was received at
Wright Field under the former system.
To illustrate the working of the new system:
Suppose the Fairfield Air Depot, at Patterson
Field, Ohio, is asked to send three Allison engines
to Selfridge Field, Michigan. As soon as
the shipment is made an operator at Fairfield
punches a card in a card punch IIBchine showing t~
new balance in engines, resulting from this subtraction
from the Fairfield stock. The card is
fed into his teletype sending IIBchine, and the receiving
machine at Wright Field records the same
punches on a roll of teletype tape. The tape is
then fed into the new automatic card punching
nBchine which duplicates the first card punched at
Fairfield, and automatically files the new balance
card in its proper place, throwing out the old
balance card which it replaces.
Special
Advantage
A special advantage of the new system is in the
ref inement made poss ible by a "borrowing" pract ice
which has already been in use in the Air Corps for
years. To carry the engine example further: Suppose
Fairfield has a shortage of the Allison engines
desired by Selfridge Field. The Fairfield
operator teletypes a message to the Budget Office
headquarters explaining the Selfridge requisition
and the shortage. A check in the master file at
Wright Field on the Air Corps stock of engines
lIBy indicate that Middletown Air Depot, at Middletown,
Pennsylvania has an adequate stock of these
engines and can supply them to Selfridge Field.
The request is relayed from Wright Field to Middletown
via teletype,and soon transports are flying
the engines from Middletown to Selfridge
NOVEMBER f94/
29