![]() Wolfe was the primary advocate for the Heavy Press Program. ![]() Seventeen presses were originally planned with an expected cost of $389 million, but the project was scaled back to 10 presses in 1953. As Cold War fears developed, American strategists worried that this would give the Soviet Air Force a crucial advantage and designed the Heavy Press Program to help win the arms race. The next two largest units were captured by the United States and brought across the Atlantic Ocean, but they were half the size at 16,500 ton. The Soviet Union captured the largest German press to survive the war, with a capacity of 33,000 ton, and were suspected to have seized the designs for an even larger 55,000 ton press. Because of the shortage of aluminum, German aircraft manufacturers used forged magnesium structural components, formed to shape in closed-die hydraulic presses. Nazi Germany held the largest heavy die forging presses during the war, and translated this advantage into high performance jet fighters. The Heavy Press Program was motivated by experiences from World War II.
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