The Packard announcement set at rest rumors that the company planned construction of a plant costing several million dollars, as well as reports that the company was going into the production of airplanes. "Our efforts," Mr. Ferry said, "will be confined to the engine, or power plant end of the aircraft industry. We will continue to build the water-cooled type we have been producing for years." The new Diesel plant will be primarily an assembly plant, although some machine work will be done there. The bulk of the machine work, however, will be done in the present Packard machine shops. Although no approximation of selling price on the new Diesel was divulged, it was intimated that the engine will retail at a price competitive with or slightly under the price of present gasoline consuming air-cooled engines of that horsepower range. Captain Woolson will have complete charge of the Diesel plant, it was announced. 3. Effect of Oxygen Boosting on Power and Weight [From P. H. SCHWEITZER and E. R. KLINGE, "Oxygen-Boosting of Diesel Engines for Take-Off," _The Pennsylvania State College Bulletin_ (April 1, 1941), vol. 35, no. 14, p. 25.] _Practical Conclusions_ Airplanes require about one third more power during the take-off than in flight. In diesel-engined airplanes the size of the engine could be reduced by 25 percent by feeding oxygen into the intake air during the takeoff. Applying the results of the experiments to a transport plane, Fig. 31 shows the possible weight saving with various oxygen boosts. The curves are based on 6000 cruising horsepower and an estimated engine weight of 2 lb per hp. For the take-off 8000 hp are necessary. To supply the additional 2000 hp, 200 lb of oxygen are fed into the intake air during the take-off. The volume of 200 lb of liquid oxygen is approximately 20 gal. Standard liquid air containers of 55 litre capacity weigh 75 lb. Therefore the weight of the oxygen and container is 350 lb while the possible saving in engine weight is 4000 lb. The weight per take-off horsepower is thereby reduced from 2 to 1.54 lb. The calculation is shown in Table 1. [Illustration: Figure 38.--Effect of Oxygen Boost on Power and Weight. (Cruising horsepower 6000, takeoff horsepower 8000.)] Oxygen addition may be used for starting diesel engines. The raising of the oxygen concentration from the normal 21 per cent to 45 per cent was found to be equivalent to a raise of approximately 10 cetane numbers as far as starting is concerned. Five per cent increase in oxygen concentration eliminated exhaust smoke completely. TABLE 1 Normal horsepower 6000 Take-off horsepower 8000 Normal fuel consumption 0.4 lb per hp-hr, or 53.5 lb per min Normal air consumption 900 lb per min Normal oxygen consumption, 21 per cent oxygen 189 lb per min concentration