It was evident that we could not equip an airplane industry and furnish machines to our fliers abroad before the summer of 1918; and so we arranged with France for this equipment by placing orders with French factories for 5,875 planes of regular French design. These were all to be delivered by July 1, 1918. In the arrangement with the French factories we agreed to supply from the United States a great deal of the raw materials for these machines, and the contract for furnishing these supplies was given to J. G. White & Co. of New York City. This concern did a creditable job, shipping about 5,000,000 feet of lumber, much necessary machinery, and a multitude of items required in the fabrication of airplanes, all to the value of $10,000,000. The total weight of the shipments on this contract was something like 23,000 tons, this figure including 7,500 tons of lumber. The other tonnage consisted of tubing of steel, brass, copper and aluminum; sheets of steel, copper, lead, and aluminum; as well as bar steel, tool steel, structural steel, ball bearings, crank shafts, turnbuckles, radiator tubes, wire, cable, bolts, nuts, screws, nails, fiber cloth, felt, and rubber. All of this was in addition to approximately 1,000 machine tools, such as motors, lathes, and grinders. The orders for French planes were divided as follows: 725 Nieuport training planes, 150 Spad training planes, 1,500 Breguet service planes; 2,000 Spad service planes; and 1,500 New Spad or Nieuport service planes. The decision between the New Spad or Nieuport service planes was to be made as soon as the New Spad could be tested. These planes were to be delivered in specified monthly quantities increasing in number until the total of 1,360 planes should be placed in our hands during the month of March, 1918, alone. The contracts were to be concluded in June with the delivery of the final 1,115 planes. We also contracted for the manufacture of 8,500 service engines of the Renault, Hispano and Gnome makes, all of these to be delivered by the end of June. When the armistice ended the fighting, we had produced a total of 11,754 airplanes in America, together with most of the necessary spare parts for about one-third of them. While a large part of the American airplanes built in the war period were of the training type rather than the service, or battle, type, nevertheless it was necessary that we have a large equipment of training planes in order to prepare the swiftly expanding personnel of the Air Service for its future activity at the front. The nations associated with us in the war, however, had produced their training equipment prior to our participation as a belligerent, and at the time we entered the war the French, British, and Italians were producing only enough training planes to maintain their training equipment and were going in heavily with the rest of their airplane industries for the production of service planes.