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Title: Slipstream: the autobiography of an air craftsman
Author: Eugene E. Wilson
Release Date: May 3, 2023 [eBook #70689]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLIPSTREAM: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF AN AIR CRAFTSMAN ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
SLIPSTREAM
Books by Eugene E. Wilson
AIR POWER FOR PEACE
SLIPSTREAM
_The Autobiography of an Air Craftsman_
[Illustration:
_John Haley_
EUGENE E. WILSON]
SLIPSTREAM
_THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
AN AIR CRAFTSMAN_
_by_
EUGENE E. WILSON
Whittlesey House
MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC.
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO
SLIPSTREAM
Copyright, 1950, by the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. All rights in
this book are reserved. It may not be used for dramatic, motion-,
or talking-picture purposes without written authorization from
the holder of these rights. Nor may the book or parts thereof be
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles
and reviews. For information, address Whittlesey House, 330 West 42d
Street, New York 18, New York.
PUBLISHED BY WHITTLESEY HOUSE
A division of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
_Printed in the United States of America_
_To
my wife_
Preface
To the world at large, Berlin Airlift headlines only highlighted
another crisis in the “cold war.” Yet behind those headlines lay an
epochal event: commercial air transports—not combat aircraft—had
become the spearhead of United States foreign policy.
This dramatic incident brought renewed hope to air craftsmen who,
nearly a half century earlier, had embarked on a starry-eyed crusade
to utilize the airplane for the benefit of mankind. In World War I,
they had helped smash the German Kaiser, only to find Hitler rising
phoenixlike in his boots. Two decades later, they had strafed Hitler
to earth, only to discover a colossal portrait of Joseph Stalin
looming beyond a smoke curtain. Still later, as atomic bombs and
lethal bacteria became weapons, they were asking themselves, “what
next?” when the Berlin Airlift came up with the answer: air cargo,
air commerce, air industry, air finance—air power for peace!
In December, 1943, we air craftsmen had our frustrations dramatized
at a banquet staged in honor of the Wright brothers on the fortieth
anniversary of Kittyhawk. Orville Wright, mouselike in a dinner
jacket and obviously uncomfortable, had sat through a barrage of
clichés microphoned by air power advocates. When finally called on
to respond, he refused point-blank. Later, in an anteroom off the
banquet hall, he gave vent to intense bitterness: evil men had seized
upon the airplane to make it the most lethal weapon in history; he
hated everything about the airplane; he rued the day he and his
brother had invented the thing.
We manufacturers, who had engineered their fantastic contraption
into a decisive instrument of World War II, echoed Orville Wright’s
concern. Our lives had been a kaleidoscopic drama of “the five
Ms”: men, management, money, materials, machines. Across our stage
had walked the big names of a bloody quarter century involving two
world wars. The setting had been fogged by haze from smoke-filled
Washington hotel rooms and highlighted by klieg lights in
Congressional investigating committees. Sucked by our own slipstream
into the maelstrom of politics, we had all but lost sight of the
dim off-stage shape of One World being remorselessly forged by air
transport. Whether this should be a world of peace in our time, or
whether it must wait on centuries of slavery, would depend on what we
Americans did with the airplanes we had created.
Following the 1918 Armistice, we had carelessly taken a wrong
turning. After the Italian General Douhet in his book _Command of
the Air_ had extolled the virtues of the air bombardment of civil
populations, Brig. Gen. William Mitchell raised the air power banner
at home. Later Alexander P. de Seversky, a former Russian combat
pilot, spread the Douhet gospel in a best seller, _Victory Through
Airpower_. When the American press followed this lead, air force in
war became the major role of the airplane.
This Douhet doctrine is, of course, the negation of the philosophy
expressed in the great body of international law which developed
following the Dark Ages. Chivalry, a concept devised by Christendom
to protect civilization from destruction by the Four Horsemen,
had introduced the era in which differences were resolved through
conflicts between military forces, rather than the destruction of
civil populations. Behind the morality of the principle lay the
practical consideration that it spared the conqueror the expense
of rebuilding establishments which he himself might otherwise have
battered down.
If Douhet, in our time, mistook air force for the foundation of air
power, our British cousins, in the Elizabethan Era, had not failed
to look at sea power through the correct end of the telescope. After
fifteenth-century geographic discoveries had placed Britain at the
crossroads of maritime commerce to America, Asia, and Africa, her
merchants and mariners recognized freedom to trade as the guarantee
of prosperity. The basic requirement for freedom to trade was a
superior fleet, utilized to guarantee, hopefully through measures
short of war, the right of all and sundry to proceed upon their
lawful occasions. Having seen the vision, the English mustered the
courage and enterprise to seize control of the sea and employ it
to build Pax Britannica, a period of spiritual as well as material
progress, motivated by the Christian ideal, such as the world had
not hitherto known.
In the early 1930’s, after American commercial air transport had
revealed its potentialities, we Americans likewise stood at a
crossroads. Had we but recognized our opportunity and displayed
the courage and enterprise to foster a forward-looking air policy,
we might have so directed our superior technology in the air as
to match Pax Britannica with Pax Aeronautica. History discloses
that the peaceful progress of civilization has always been paced
by discoveries in transport. Had we recognized the revolutionary
character of air transport, we might have removed enough of the
causes of war to have avoided World War II. Instead, we hamstrung our
own air power and provided our enemies with a favorable opportunity
to seize control of the air.
The performance of air transport in the war revealed that the air is
like an ocean that affords uninterrupted access to any spot on land
or sea. Experience proves that the airplane, contrary to widespread
belief, is inherently an economical vehicle. It demands no costly
investment in fixed rights of way; its right of way is the air, which
is free and infinitely flexible. Since the speed of the airplane
permits it to transport goods a maximum of ton-miles for a minimum
of initial investment, airline ownership of property of any kind is
at a minimum. During the thirty-year life of air-mail service, the
United States Post Office Department has recovered through sales of
air-mail stamps alone more than it has paid out to the airlines for
carrying the mails. While segments of the airline transport system
have been subsidized in the interests of national security, the
system as a whole has proved self-sustaining. The Postmaster General
regards air mail not as an expense but as an investment. He recently
stated publicly, “Probably no investment made by this government
ever returned greater national benefits in commercial and cultural
progress, and national security.”
It therefore seems a pity that, at the moment when providence has
placed in American hands the instrument with which to speed world
recovery, we should lack the wit to recognize the opportunity, and
the initiative, courage, and enterprise to exploit it. Where the
mission of the Air Force is to enforce the peace, the major role
of the airplane is in air commerce, the key to world recovery.
Responsibility for utilizing air power for peace resides with the
people of the United States.
To air craftsmen, Orville Wright’s reaction served to emphasize the
fact that all of us had been sucked up by the slipstream of our own
propellers and whirled about like withered leaves or bits of waste
paper. Yet underneath we knew that this apparently confused and
wasteful process had accelerated progress. As engineers, we realized
that when an airplane is earthbound with its engine revving up, the
engine’s power is all wasted in noise and heat. In free flight, on
the other hand, an airscrew converts upward of 80 per cent of its
power into “effective forward thrust,” leaving but 20 per cent as
“slip.” Our slipstream is therefore an efficient machine measured
by any standard. To permit aviation to soar to new heights we must
cast off its shackles. To this end we must needs understand its
fundamental import.
My own thinking along this line began one November day in 1918,
while watching the vaunted German High Seas Fleet surrender to the
famed British Grand Fleet. At that time I was chief engineer of the
battleship _Arkansas_, one of five American vessels that comprised
Adm. Hugh Rodman’s Sixth Battle Squadron of Sir David Beatty’s Grand
Fleet. Beatty had a secret weapon, a force of aircraft carriers. Some
observers ascribed the German surrender to knowledge of this fact,
yet Beatty himself realized that victory had been won, not by the
ironclads which, since Jutland had not come into decisive action, but
by the battered nine-knot tramps, the doughty drifters and trawlers,
the troop-carrying liners and the wallowing tankers—merchantmen that
had been keeping the life blood coursing through the Empire’s veins.
Watching this triumph of sea power, even as the shadow of an airplane
flitted across the gun turrets of the Grand Fleet, I had sought to
draw an analogy between sea power and air power but had dismissed
the idea because there had been no such thing then as commercial air
transport.
The war over, Rear Adm. William Adger Moffett, founder and
first Chief of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, called me in from
general service to specialize in aircraft engine production and,
incidentally, to lend him a hand in his fight with Brig. Gen.
William Mitchell, Assistant Chief, U.S. Army Air Service. This
conflict between belligerent giants was more than a revival of the
old Army-Navy Game. To the admiral, an inspiring leader and astute
politician, the task was to prevent Mitchell, a brilliant pilot and
ardent air enthusiast, from monopolizing all aviation—commercial,
naval, and military—under an administrative setup resembling the new
British Air Ministry. This separate and independent department, in
the opinion of the admiral, had already begun to wreck British naval
aviation and thus undermine British sea power.
Amid the rough and tumble of interdepartmental politics, I discovered
the fundamental precepts of aeronautic technology: the power
plant was the heart of the airplane; progress in its development
could be measured in terms of “pounds per horsepower”; the key
to technological progress was competition within the private
manufacturing and transport industries; under pressure of free
competition, the “impossible” got done today—the fantastic took a
little longer. It was no accident that the airplane had been invented
in America or that it had here attained its maximum development.
Technological leadership stemmed directly from the concept under
which our government had been created, the creative idea of the
dignity of the individual and his innate right to liberty under just
law.
In Washington, the struggle over the separate air force climaxed
in the summer of 1925. The big Navy rigid airship _Shenandoah_,
barnstorming over western country fairs, was destroyed in Ohio by
a line squall. General Mitchell, previously exiled to San Antonio,
Texas, seized upon the crash as a favorable moment for hurling
charges at both the Army and the Navy of their treasonable neglect of
aviation. President Calvin Coolidge, in order to sift the charges,
convened a public inquiry by a board of distinguished citizens under
the chairmanship of Dwight W. Morrow. Testifying before the Board,
Admiral Moffett took sharp issue with Mitchell on the question of
the independent air force, but took advantage of the opportunity to
outline the basis of a constructive national air policy.
The Morrow Board, while disapproving the Mitchell proposal for
the time being, did recommend a separate air corps status in the
Army for military aviation. It took strong exception to the idea
of including air transport in any military establishment and urged
instead its orderly development under civil authority and preferably
by competitive private industry. The Board’s recommendations were
approved by the President and transmitted to Congress where they were
quickly implemented by the Air Corps Act of 1926 and the Air Commerce
Act of the same year. These acts fixed responsibility for aeronautic
development upon the several government agencies concerned.
General Mitchell was convicted by an Army court-martial of “conduct
unbecoming,” but was permitted to resign. He died ten years later,
having become firmly established in the public mind as a man of
vision martyred by reactionaries. Admiral Moffett followed up
the Morrow Board findings with a recommendation for legislation
establishing a five-year development program for naval aviation. The
Army followed suit. The Post Office inaugurated contract air mail. In
the favorable climate induced by the Morrow Board policy, American
aviation attained the world leadership which it held until after the
air-mail contracts were canceled in the middle 1930’s.
Having become interested in naval aviation as a career, I qualified
as a naval aviator and later became Chief of Staff to Rear Adm.
Joseph M. Reeves, Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet.
There I helped commission the new aircraft carriers _Saratoga_ and
_Lexington_, equipping their air squadrons with the new aircraft we
had created in the Bureau of Aeronautics. During fleet maneuvers we
developed the new tactical concept of the carrier task force, and in
January, 1929, by delivering a successful attack on the Panama Canal
from a point 150 miles at sea, we demonstrated the revolutionary
strategy of a mobile-based, long-range, naval air striking force,
the first American strategic air force. Yet while we succeeded in
our demonstration, we failed to impress upon the high command the
revolutionary character of the idea. Twelve years later at Pearl
Harbor, the Japanese did a better job of selling. Paradoxically
enough, Admiral Reeves, as a member of the Roberts Board, went out to
Honolulu to investigate the wartime effectiveness of his peacetime
concept.
Meanwhile, in January, 1930, I resigned from the Navy to accept
a position as chief executive of a subsidiary of the United
Aircraft and Transport Corporation, the Hamilton-Standard Propeller
Corporation. Within a year I found myself responsible for two
additional subsidiaries, Sikorsky and Chance Vought, the one a
builder of large flying boats, the other a producer of shipboard
aircraft. In private industry, I enlarged my experience in the
so-called “aviation game.”
When in the middle 1930’s the air-mail contracts were suddenly
canceled, American aviation received a body blow. Repercussions
from the punitive Congressional investigations sponsored by
Senators Gerald P. Nye and Hugo Black—now Mr. Justice Black of
the United States Supreme Court—interfered with both military and
commercial development and halted progress. While American aviation
was being kicked around as a political football, Messrs. Hitler,
Mussolini, Hirohito, and Stalin seized the favorable opportunity, so
unexpectedly handed them, to inaugurate their bids for world dominion
under the Douhet doctrine of victory through air force.
The American aircraft manufacturing industry, its domestic market
impaired by the abandonment of the Morrow Board policy, was forced
to fall back on foreign sales. For a while we existed by selling
our superior commercial air transports abroad, and in our frantic
struggle to survive, each manufacturer risked everything to develop
improved types of possible interest to our government. Early in 1939,
when many companies were all but out on their feet, orders from
France and England arrived in the nick of time. It was thanks to
those orders that when the American aircraft-expansion program was
finally undertaken we were able to expand swiftly.
However, this shot in the arm was all but neutralized by the workings
of our own Arms Embargo Act. In order to deny France or England
access to American arms, Hitler had only to make them belligerents—in
other words declare war on them. After he had done so, we repealed
the act, and still later President Roosevelt called for 50,000
airplanes. The first news we aircraft manufacturers had of this
decision came by way of a radio fireside chat. This released a flood
of production, the magic of which surprised us as much as anyone
else—a flood on which American air power reversed the tide from sure
defeat to certain victory.
Upon our entry into the war, I found myself president of United
Aircraft Corporation. In the razzle-dazzle of the wartime Washington
merry-go-round, I watched the expansion of air transport until it
became a decisive factor in the war. Hurdling the Himalayan Hump and
leapfrogging submarine-infested sea lanes, it delivered important
persons and critical cargoes to decisive points inaccessible to other
forms of transportation. Believing that this performance presaged the
advent of expanding air commerce, we manufacturers began investing
our earnings in bigger and better transports.
One day Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal sent for me. At the time
when some critics were still harping their cry, “too little and too
late,” he gave me private instructions to cut back production. His
problem had become “too much and too soon.” The cutback brought us
face to face with the nightmare that had haunted our dreams since the
outbreak of war. Following the Armistice of 1918, our government had
so ruthlessly canceled war contracts that the aircraft industry had
been all but destroyed. When I pointed out this danger, the secretary
suggested the only possible solution: the aircraft industry must take
its story to the public. He advised that I undertake to lead the
industry in our campaign for survival.
This made it necessary for me to relinquish the presidency of my
company and accept the chairmanship of the board of governors of our
trade association. The first step was to decide on an industry policy
and obtain agreement on a program. Out of the history of aviation
I drew the analogy between sea power and air power and formulated
a program of peace through air power. We took for our objective
the appointment of a new Presidential advisory commission to hear
testimony in public and recommend a new air policy revised to conform
with technological developments. As the basis for our operations we
covenanted to cooperate with one another in the public interest in
matters pertaining to policy but to continue to compete vigorously in
our business operations.
In an effort to crystallize aeronautic opinion, I published a book
called _Air Power for Peace_. This study, an objective technical
treatise, patterned on Adm. A. T. Mahan’s _The Influence of Sea Power
upon History_, disclosed that, despite spectacular war performances
by Army and Navy air forces, the Mahan doctrine still prevailed:
victory had again rested with those who had secured to themselves—and
denied to their enemies—freedom of communication by sea. No overseas
assault could have been mounted nor could our own supply lines have
been secured without first subduing German submarines in the Atlantic
and sweeping Japanese sea power from the Pacific. Yet in both actions
an important new strategic factor had developed: command of the
air over the sea had become vital to command of the sea itself.
It was the carrier task forces that had proved to be the decisive
instruments in both oceans. Furthermore, brilliant, though limited,
success by military air transports had disclosed that air power was
an integration of air force, air transport, aircraft production, and
in fact all that went to make us strong in the air. Yet, until air
transport could assume the full burden of overseas trade, victory
in war and prosperity in peace must still rest with him who is
strong enough—and wise enough—to retain command of the sea. Russia’s
submarine fleet later gave added strength to this conclusion.
Meanwhile, as spokesman for the aircraft manufacturers, I addressed
organizations of all kinds, seeking to interest the molders of public
opinion in the air power problem. Our association and our members
participated in a nationwide program of public information. The key
to our effort was our endeavor to promote the public interest as the
means of serving our own enlightened self-interest.
Yet for all our effort, we were unable to get full cooperation from
the two other elements of integrated air power, air transport and
the armed forces. The Army Air Force, fighting for its autonomy,
tangled with naval aviation in a jurisdictional dispute. The airline
transport operators, jockeying for individual advantage under the
policy of so-called “reasonable regulation,” split wide open on such
questions as “the chosen instrument.” Government agencies, fearful of
the possible loss of their prerogatives, gave less than enthusiastic
support to our plea for a public policy-forming board. The
appointment of the commission therefore lagged, while both airline
transport and aircraft manufacturing suffered crippling losses.
Convinced that this situation called for a new book on aviation, a
sort of bible of air-power, or at least its gospel, I decided to
write _Slipstream_. In December, 1946, in order to gain freedom to
express my personal points of view without compromising my company, I
resigned from United Aircraft.
While it was Mahan, the historian, who first revealed to the world
the decisive influence of sea power upon history, it was Richard
Hakluyt, author of _The English Voyages_, who inspired Englishmen
to exploit sea power to their commercial advantage. By collecting
the journals of the world’s leading merchants and the adventure
narratives of its greatest navigators, and by editing them so as both
to entertain his readers and stimulate them to seek their fortunes
on the high seas, he influenced the course of history. There are no
such journals and narratives of contemporary aviation. Although the
whole record is comprised in the lifetimes of a single generation of
still-active men so that no protracted research is needed to reveal
the intimate background, much of it already tends to become dim, even
in the minds of men who wrote the record. Unless it be set down now
it may be forever lost, and that would be a pity, for the fantastic
story holds lessons that apply equally well to other technological
developments such as atomic energy. In undertaking to set forth the
intimate narrative of events which, in the last quarter century,
have helped shape the destiny of American aviation, I am impelled
to proceed partly because of deep convictions and partly because my
unusually varied experience gives me a somewhat broader point of view
from which to judge the impact of events.
While engaged on this task, I was disturbed to note that matters
were going from bad to worse. In the summer of 1948, however,
help came from an unexpected source. The Russians imposed their
blockade on Berlin. The American public, aroused now to the need for
preserving American air power, clamored for action. The Republican
Congress voted a Congressional Aviation Policy Board; President
Truman countered with his own Air Policy Commission. Before this
latter organization, known as the “Finletter Board,” the aircraft
manufacturers presented a well-prepared case. The airline transport
operators, having suffered disastrous losses, were demoralized almost
to the point where they were willing to accept a subsidy such as
that long paid to the merchant marine. The Air Force, having earlier
won its autonomy, made a vigorous plea for funds to provide a strong
strategic air force.
Under the circumstances, the Finletter Board, whose report was
published under the title, “Survival in the Air Age,” naturally gave
priority to the military aspects of aviation. The Congressional
Aviation Policy Board supported a long list of recommendations made
by the Finletter Board and recommended legislative action, little
of which has been forthcoming. But military appropriations, easily
the immediate answer to the air power problem, were passed largely
because the public had been convinced that this country must maintain
a technically superior aircraft-manufacturing establishment under
private management. Thanks to these appropriations, the aircraft
industry has survived the ordeal of reconversion.
Meanwhile, bureaucratic muddling had all but wrecked the airline
transport industry when, in the summer of 1949, Senator Edwin C.
Johnson of Colorado, chairman of the Senate Interstate and Foreign
Commerce Committee, commenced hearings to inquire into its ills. Out
of the welter of testimony before this committee—evidence replete
with inconsistencies and strongly flavored by self-interest—someone
familiar with the intimate history of aviation could crystallize
his convictions as to what must be done to make American air power
a force for peace. Believing that these convictions should be
expressed, even though they might prove distasteful to some of
the customers of the aircraft manufacturers, and desiring to avoid
embarrassment to my former associates, I resigned the chairmanship
of the board of governors of the Aircraft Industries Association and
severed my last connection with the industry. Now, I should at least
be able to view the whole subject of air power objectively.
Out of the twisting and turning of our slipstream, air policy
is revealed, not as so many believe, as a code book of detailed
administrative procedures, but as a course of public conduct. It is
no technical complexity of materials, money, management, or machines,
but rather a simple expression of the spirit of men, one that can be
stated in words of one syllable, “Air Power For Peace.”
Contents
PREFACE. vii
CHAPTER
ONE. It’s Anybody’s Fight 1
TWO. The Power Plant, the Heart of an Airplane 12
THREE. Its Vital Spark 19
FOUR. A Backward Art 28
FIVE. Toil and Trouble 38
SIX. What the Doctor Ordered 47
SEVEN. Calvin Coolidge’s Town Meeting 58
EIGHT. Dwight Morrow Advances the Throttle 71
NINE. The Gospel According to Aunt Lucy 82
TEN. The Take-off 93
ELEVEN. A Lone Eagle Sets the Standard 102
TWELVE. A Change in Status 109
THIRTEEN. A Salt’s Solution 115
FOURTEEN. Germ of a Big Idea 121
FIFTEEN. Creation of Strategic Concept 129
SIXTEEN. Maneuver for Position 135
SEVENTEEN. Frigate Birds 144
EIGHTEEN. Another Turning 149
NINETEEN. Necessity, the Mother of Creation 160
TWENTY. Igor Sikorsky Spans Two Gaps 172
TWENTY-ONE. The Courage of Conviction 185
TWENTY-TWO. Review of Some Fundamentals 196
TWENTY-THREE. A Yankee Peddler 204
TWENTY-FOUR. A Chill Sets In 213
TWENTY-FIVE. An Unfavorable Climate 224
TWENTY-SIX. A Spark Is Struck 229
TWENTY-SEVEN. For What Is a Man Profited? 237
TWENTY-EIGHT. Off the Beam 247
TWENTY-NINE. For Survival 260
THIRTY. Toward Public Inquiry 271
THIRTY-ONE. Before the Bar of Public Opinion 290
THIRTY-TWO. The Hand on the Stick 296
INDEX. 311
SLIPSTREAM
CHAPTER ONE
It’s Anybody’s Fight
It was a day in March of 1924 when I first stepped across the
threshold of the anteroom to the office of Rear Adm. William
Adger Moffett, Chief of the new Bureau of Aeronautics in the Navy
Department at Washington. The anteroom lay at the center of the
extreme after end of the top deck of the third wing of the temporary
frame structure which then housed, and in fact still houses, the Navy
Department. Through the windows I could see the greening lawns of
the Mall and the budding cherry blossoms along the rim of the Tidal
Basin. Directly below, the Reflecting Pool, a square-cut sapphire,
mirrored the tip of the Washington Monument and the cottony clouds of
a blustery day. I handed my orders to the admiral’s secretary and, as
she disappeared through a door to the left, I glanced around.
To the right of the secretary’s desk, a latticed, swinging half door
of the type once common to saloons of the preprohibition era bore a
gilt-lettered sign reading “Assistant Chief of Bureau.” To the left,
on a similar door, the letters spelled “Chief of Bureau.” As it swung
open, the secretary waved me toward a stiff-backed chair and said,
“The admiral will see you in a few minutes, sir.”
Lifting my sword off its hook, I stripped the white lisle gloves from
my hands, dusted a bit of lint off my two and a half gilt stripes,
and sat down in the chair. Most young officers bearing such orders as
mine would have thrilled at the thought of duty in Washington, but I
was vaguely uneasy. That sword, standing on the tip of its scabbard
between my knees, seemed, in a way, to point up my doubts. Forged
into its blade was a quotation from one of Teddy Roosevelt’s slogans,
“The only shots that count are the shots that hit.” Judged by that
standard, I had not scored too well since graduation from Annapolis
in 1908. Having set out on a career in gunnery, I had let myself be
diverted from it.
I had been appointed to the Naval Academy from the state of
Washington and had been admitted at the age of sixteen. Having
grown up in the Pacific Northwest, where I enjoyed the great
outdoors, hunting and fishing with my father, I had drifted onto
the Naval Academy rifle team, where I found fun in competition
that made a sport out of a branch of my profession. Rifle shooting
had intensified my interest in gunnery and had helped me to win my
sword. The opposite side of its blade carried the words, “Class of
1871 prize for excellence in practical and theoretical ordnance
and gunnery.” It was out of this background that I had determined
to specialize in gunnery, but circumstances had deflected me into
engineering.
After the close of the national rifle matches at Camp Perry in 1909,
during which the Navy rifle team had won the military championship,
I had been assigned to duty on a four-piper, a coal-burning
torpedo-boat destroyer, the _Hull_, then attached to the Pacific
Torpedo Flotilla based on San Diego, California. Just before I had
reported to the ship, there had been an accident to one of the
boilers; and since, up to that time, it had not been customary to
assign officers to the engine room of destroyers, the subsequent
court of inquiry had not been able to hang an officer for the
explosion. Until the case could be reported as completed, the Navy
Department could find no way to close its file, thus leaving an
annoying piece of unfinished business. To guard against future lapses
of this kind, someone had to be made Chief Engineer, and since I, a
passed midshipman, was the junior officer aboard the _Hull_, I was
handed the accolade.
Early in 1911, my Annapolis June Week Girl, Genevieve Speer,
and I had been married at her home in Joliet, Illinois. We had
later commuted between the Hotel del Coronado and less commodious
accommodations in the Navy Yard town of Vallejo, California, until
the summer of 1913, when we had been ordered back to our beloved
Annapolis for duty, in compliance with my request for instruction in
the new postgraduate engineering school, which had just been opened.
The course included a year at Annapolis and another in New York at
Columbia University, and was directed by Dr. Charles Edward Lucke,
Dean of Mechanical Engineering and a pioneer in his profession.
Dr. Lucke, who had just published his monumental work _Engineering
Thermodynamics_, found his Navy charges none too susceptible to
his teaching techniques. Finally one day he discovered the reason;
we were, to use his expression, “an aggregation of photographic
memorizers.” And so far as I was concerned he was probably right—to
win my sword I had memorized all the textbooks on ordnance and
gunnery. The doctor had now to start from scratch to teach us “to
reason from a set of facts to a logical solution.”
This was an era in which college professors made a mystery of
science; it gave them a feeling of superiority over the practical
man. The latter similarly looked down their noses at the theorists.
The term “engineer” was used to designate the driver of a railway
locomotive or, in New York City, the superintendent of an apartment
house. Dr. Lucke was of the opinion that, if the time ever came
when the practical man and the theorist combined their talents as
professional engineers, they would set the world on fire.
“As engineers,” he stated for the opening gun of his new approach,
“we deal with the application of combustion to industrial purposes.”
And having thus stated the role of the engineer he went on to develop
the fundamental requirements for combustion:
“The fuel and oxygen,” he advised, “must be present in the
proportions necessary to chemical combination; they must be
intimately mixed; they must be brought to the ignition temperature
and retained there until combustion is complete.”
And having expounded this truth he went on into one of his excursions
into philosophy:
“That,” he said, “might be taken as a prescription for life. And
remember,” he warned, “that whereas material things respond always
in the same way to the same stimuli, that is not true of the human
spirit. As engineers you will deal quite as frequently with the
spiritual as with the material and must understand both.”
The doctor, who exercised a strong influence on some of us, inspired
us to do creative work. My first opportunity came shortly after
graduation from Columbia in 1915, with my assignment as Chief
Engineer of the battleship _Arkansas_. The “_Old Ark_” had been
commissioned three years earlier with Comdr. William Adger Moffett
as her Executive Officer, and still retained the marks of his
leadership. In fleet athletics and in the gunnery competitions she
had won honors. In engineering, however, she had, like other ships
with the new turbines then replacing reciprocating engines, earned
a reputation as a “coal hog.” To overcome this, I had worked out
a scheme for using the waste heat of auxiliary exhaust steam for
distilling sea water, thus saving about one-third of the daily port
consumption. For this development I had narrowly escaped being
disciplined because I had not previously obtained permission from the
Bureau of Engineering.
After our entry into World War I, the _Arkansas_ was assigned to the
Sixth Battle Squadron of the British Grand Fleet and had been present
at the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet. It was there, on the
afternoon of November 21, 1918, that the shadow of the airplane had
first fallen across my path.
The Sixth Battle Squadron had returned to its anchorage east of the
great Forth Bridge. Adm. Sir David Beatty, Commander in Chief of the
Grand Fleet, on his flagship _Queen Elizabeth_, had swept through
the American Squadron. And as the “_Q.E._” passed us, so close
aboard that one could have heaved a spud onto her decks, Beatty had
stood on his bridge, gold-visored cap cocked over his right eye,
bulldog chin jutting out over the bridge screen, hand raised to his
visor in acknowledgment of our cheers. As these died away, _Q.E._’s
searchlights had begun flashing a bridge signal that burned itself on
my memory:
FROM: COMMANDER IN CHIEF GRAND FLEET
TO: BRITISH EMPIRE
BRITAIN HAS THIS DAY WITNESSED A DEMONSTRATION OF SEA POWER WHICH
SHE WILL FORGET AT HER PERIL
Then as the flagship had slid by, her turrets topped by fighter
aircraft poised for take-off, she had uncovered to our view the loom
of a hulk lying down toward May Island. It was the aircraft carrier
_Argus_, latest addition to the world’s one and only carrier force.
And I had thought that, even as British sea power had triumphed, the
shadow of air power was darkening the fleet.
I had learned details of the _Argus_ from an enthusiastic naval
aviator, Godfrey de Courcelles de Chevalier, class of 1909, one of
our big boat pilots from the Northern Bombing Base, who, detailed
to observe carrier operations, had been billeted on the _Ark_.
The British Admiralty, fearful lest the Hun decoy Beatty into the
Skagerrak and hit him below the armor belt with torpedoes carried by
shore-based aircraft, had mounted fighters on every available ship,
and had augmented this defense with aircraft carriers. Most of these
had been converted from old battle cruisers and, like other vessels,
could only launch aircraft. Their fighting planes were expected to
return to prepared air fields on shore, such as the Grand Fleet base
at Turnhouse, whence they would be lightered off to their vessels.
But the _Argus_, originally built for the Italian Line as the _Conte
de Savoia_, had been the first flattop capable of receiving aircraft
aboard as well as launching them. And she had carried torpedoplanes
with which to hit the Hun below his own belt. This force had been
Beatty’s “secret weapon,” and, some thought, had helped persuade the
Hun to surrender without firing a shot.
After the German surrender, the _Ark_ had been ordered home, and
I had been assigned to the Naval Training Station, Great Lakes,
Illinois, as Officer in Charge, Aviation Mechanics Schools. Here
again I was to encounter Dr. Lucke and Capt. William Adger Moffett.
During the war, Captain Moffett had commanded the training station
and used it to show the Navy’s colors to the Middle West. One of
those rare personalities, a naval officer with a flair for public
relations, he had made many friends on the North Shore, but after the
Armistice, was sent to the Pacific in command of the _Mississippi_,
one of the few battleships with an airplane catapult aboard. Dr.
Lucke had offered his services to the Navy upon the outbreak of
the war and had established a chain of aviation mechanics schools,
operated on the new principle of line production in education. One of
these had been located at Great Lakes and, at the end of the war,
Captain Moffett had succeeded in consolidating them all there.
When, after the Armistice, Dr. Lucke had sought a regular officer
as his relief, he had recommended me to the Navy Department. I had
accepted the appointment with enthusiasm because the station was near
my wife’s former home in Joliet. After we had been there on duty a
year or so, Captain Moffett had returned for a visit with his friends
and had surprised me one morning by calling on me in my office.
He had completed his tour of duty at sea and was headed for
Washington on a new project. As Captain of the _Mississippi_, he
had been hampered in his catapult work by the lack of direction
in Washington. Aviation activities were scattered all over the
Department: engines in the Bureau of Engineering; airplanes in the
Bureau of Construction and Repair; guns in the Bureau of Ordnance;
and Operations in a branch of the Office of Naval Operations. Moffett
had decided to go before Congress with a proposal to create a new
Bureau of Aeronautics in the Navy Department and expected to be made
its first Chief.
And that morning at Great Lakes he had asked me point-blank if I
would accept duty in his new bureau in charge of the Engine Section.
I had first shied away from the idea, but he brushed my objection
aside. He would have me ordered to sea duty in aviation, he said,
and then bring me ashore to his bureau. Accordingly, in 1921 I was
ordered to New York to put the seaplane tender and kite-balloon
ship _Wright_ into commission, with duty as Chief Engineer, a job
which had turned out to be that of wet nurse for a lot of dizzy,
heavier-than-air and lighter-than-air pilots. As a “Kiwi,” the
current name for a nonflying officer, I had found my young charges
willing to concede me all the responsibilities of the organization,
provided no one interfered with their authorities.
Our first “cruise,” nominally to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, strewed
aircraft all along the Atlantic Coast after forced landings, with
dense concentrations at Palm Beach. All failures in this outfit were
classified as “mechanical”; the term “cockpit failure” had not yet
been created. On analysis, I had discovered that practically all
forced landings and delayed starts were chargeable to a few pilots.
But when I posted the figures on the wardroom bulletin board, this
act had been considered hardly cricket. Fed up with the vagaries of
this school of aviation thought, I had looked around for a change of
duty, and found it during the summer of 1922.
That year, the National Rifle Association of America had decided to
enter a team in the international free rifle matches at Milan, Italy,
and extended me an invitation to compete for the squad. Here was
an opportunity to escape the razzle-dazzle of naval aviation into
something I knew about. Better still, it afforded an opportunity for
my wife and me to make a joint European tour. At Milan, our team won
the championship of the world. By that time, my wife had obtained
tickets to the last performance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau,
an event destined to shape my outlook.
We had been billeted in the home of Antone Lang, the Christus of the
play, and had been stirred by the devout spirit shining in the faces
of the villagers. The play, too, had moved us deeply as a revelation
of the fundamental tenets of our Christian faith. Though spoken
wholly in German it had remained for us a vital religious experience.
During the evening following the performance we had talked with
Antone Lang in his parlor and obtained his autograph on a photograph
of himself in his role. And when we had come to settle with Frau Lang
for our lodgings, we had been astonished to find them so absurdly
cheap. Upon our offer to contribute to a local charity—this at a time
when inflation had put the exchange rate up to several thousand marks
to the dollar—Frau Lang had set a limit of twenty-five marks. At my
exclamation of surprise she had hurried to explain, “We need honest
work, not charity. Today there is nothing that money can buy!” I had
left with a deep impression of the disaster of inflation and the
folly of war.
Upon our return from Europe, I had avoided the Bureau of Aeronautics
and obtained an assignment as Executive Officer of the destroyer
tender _Bridgeport_, a converted former German merchantman. Under
command of Capt. R. Drace White, I had enjoyed a year and a half of
pleasant duty, trying to make a yacht out of a floating machine shop,
and had just begun to feel at ease, when Adm. William Adger Moffett
reached down into the Caribbean to pluck me off my happy home and
install me in his bureau.
Thus it had been that, thanks to Dr. Lucke and the admiral, I was
diverted from gunnery into engineering and then into aviation. Now as
a buzzer sounded, and the admiral’s secretary smiled her signal to
enter the sanctum, I hooked on my sword and pushed open the door, not
with the enthusiasm of an aviator but with the reservations of the
professional seaman.
Inside his sunny corner office, Admiral Moffett leaned against the
old-fashioned high desk at which he stood when signing out papers.
That desk, I thought, was a relic of the days of high stools and
celluloid eyeshades, and must have been dragged out from some old
storeroom by the admiral for the sake of sentiment. He was like that,
a curious mixture of sentimental attachment to the days of sail
and nervous enthusiasm for the airplane. Over his shoulder draped
the silk cord of a pince-nez, poised on the bridge of his nose.
His double-breasted blue-serge civilian suit, cut to look like the
new uniforms, bespoke revolt against the executive order which had
instructed officers on duty in Washington to stow their regimentals
away with moth balls in sea chests.
This order was a manifestation of the “return to normalcy,” under
which slogan, Senator Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge were to
be sledded into the White House and the Vice-Presidency later the
same year. For the American people, disillusioned after their recent
crusade to make the world safe for democracy, had now turned their
backs on Europe to devote themselves to something they knew more
about—how to make money fast. During the existing reaction against
all things military, the Administration deemed it wise to keep
uniforms out of sight as far as possible. They were only permitted to
be worn by officers reporting for duty, as I was at that moment.
The admiral turned to shake hands with me and hand me my signed
orders. His was the aristocratic bearing of the Southern cavalier.
“Glad to see you aboard,” he greeted me warmly. “You are to relieve
Lt. Comdr. B. G. Leighton as Chief of the Engine Section—an important
department. I’m sure you’ll do well at it.” His was the accent of
Charleston, South Carolina, but without the drawl. He clipped his
words like a nervous Yankee.
“Aye, aye, sir,” I replied, acknowledging the order in the
conventional manner, “but what I don’t know about aircraft engines,”
I added, “would overflow the library of Congress.”
“Well,” grinned the admiral, “you have one advantage—you know you
don’t know anything, which is more than I can say for some people in
this Department.” He reached for his pipe and struck a match. (I was
to learn that he smoked more matches than tobacco.) As the pipe went
out he glanced at me.
“Leighton tells me you are not too happy about coming here for duty.”
“It breaks my sea cruise,” I explained, “and I don’t like to give the
Selection Board an excuse to pass me over.”
“The last Board picked you up,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And a year ahead of time,” he went on.
“Yes, sir.”
“I am not supposed to discuss the proceedings of the Board,” he
continued, “but I was a member of it and, confidentially, I served
notice on them that I would not approve a list that failed to reach
down through you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I needed you here, and you can depend on me to look out for you in
the future.” He fumbled with his pipe.
“There’s a lot going on around Washington,” he volunteered. “That
fellow Billy Mitchell over in the Army Air Service makes a lot of
trouble for me. But back in ’twenty-two at the Limitation of Arms
Conference I set him back on his heels. He tried to take over the
chairmanship of the session on aviation, and the first subject on
the agenda was reparations. This country was scheduled to get one of
the latest German Zeppelins, converted to a merchantman, and I didn’t
intend to let the Army beat me to that punch.” He paused to glance at
a silvery model of a rigid airship, standing on top of his cluttered
desk.
“And so,” he went on, “when Mitchell breezed in with a secretary, all
ready to take the chair, I inquired by what authority he pretended
to assume the chairmanship. He mumbled something about rank. ‘Since
when,’ I demanded, ‘does a one-star brigadier rate a two-star
admiral?’ That stopped him, and the Navy got the _Los Angeles_.”
He moved close to me, tapping me on the forearm with his pipestem.
“It isn’t just the old Army-Navy dogfight, though of course there
is a lot of that in it. But these overzealous knights of the air
actually believe that the airplane has already obsoleted the Navy.
It isn’t their own idea but the nonsense preached by that Italian
General Douhet in a book called _Command of the Air_. And on his
say-so, these wild-eyed enthusiasts want to scrap the Army and Navy,
on no other grounds than their personal opinions, unsupported by
experience or fact.” He paused.
“And the old fogies over in Operations are no help to me, either,” he
added. “They lay themselves wide open to Mitchell. If they had let me
handle the publicity on the bombing off the Virginia Capes, I could
have made a monkey out of him.” He began pacing the room.
“If the Navy doesn’t hurry and build up its own air force,” he
rattled on, “it _will_ be obsolete, just as Mitchell claims. Without
an air force, the fleet would be a sitting duck. Mitchell knows
that, and his game is to concentrate all aviation in a separate and
independent air force under his command. With that setup he can
emasculate naval aviation just like the British Air Ministry is doing
in England. Meanwhile I am taking advantage of that to catch up with
our own carriers. Give me a little time and we’ll leave them in the
ruck.” A flush had crept up around his ears.
“So that’s why I had to create this Bureau—and why I had you ordered
here. We’ve got a fight on our hands to keep Mitchell from sinking
the Navy, and the country along with it.” He paused to cock his eye
at me.
“Of course,” he said, “if you don’t like a nice knockdown, drag-out
fight, I can send you back to General Service.”
My thoughts flashed back to my last night aboard the old
_Bridgeport_, a Caribbean night beneath the stars when the crew had
given me a farewell “happy hour.” Floodlights had glowed on the
boxing ring, rigged on Number Three hatch. Brown-faced, white-shirted
sailormen had looked up at the two gloved lads in boxing trunks
whom the referee had called to the center of the ring for final
instructions. And then as he had sent them back to their comers with
a slap on each back he called after them, “Remember, now: break clean
and come up fightin’. It’s anybody’s fight.”
CHAPTER TWO
The Power Plant, the Heart of an Airplane
Down on the second deck of the third wing, I looked through the
doorway into a long room that housed my new billet, the Engine
Section. Three flat-topped desks stood deployed as a line of
skirmishers; two typewriter desks closed the blank files. At these
desks secretaries had begun to tap out their daily stints of paper
work. Around three of the peeled walls, battered tables sagged under
a load of assorted aircraft-engine parts—dusty, oily, and, for
the most part, heat-blackened examples of unfortunate mechanical
failures, some of which, no doubt, had led to loss of life.
Across the near side of the room, on either side of two doors, stood
three engines on wooden horses. The bigger one was a Liberty, the
smaller a Hispano-Suiza, and the third a new star-shaped contraption
on which hung a label, “Lawrance J-1, single-row, air-cooled radial.”
The first two I recognized as war surplus, but the third I suspected
to be the pride and joy, the hope and fear, of the Engine Section of
BUAERO. Here was the Navy’s first promising postwar development, a
project destined to exercise a controlling influence on the future of
aviation.
Around the room, marred woodwork and grease-spotted floors joined
with a musty smell to give the room the down-at-the-heel appearance
of all those temporary wartime structures, themselves so expressive
of the popular hope that war itself is but temporary. Drab enough at
best, the old tenements had deteriorated swiftly with the slashing
of appropriations for defense. Now as I stood in the doorway,
someone slapped me on the back and I turned to find Lt. Comdr. B. G.
Leighton, retiring Chief of the Section, greeting me like a long-lost
brother.
“Am I glad to see you,” he whooped, saluting me with an exaggerated
flourish. Under his enthusiasm the drabness faded out like a
morning fog under a warm sun. Waving an airy hand at each of his
secretaries, Leighton introduced me to them with, “Ladies, meet your
new boss.”
Tossing an armful of homework on the right-hand desk, and waving
me to a battered chair, he slid into a swivel-seated one behind
it. There he sat grinning like an ape, peering at me around three
mountains of paper work heaped up in trays marked, “Incoming,”
“Outgoing,” and “Hold.” Though still in his early thirties, Leighton
had gray splashes around his temples with laugh wrinkles twinkling
at the corners of his eyes—those early-bird aviators tended toward
premature grayness. Now, clasping his hands behind his head and
hoisting long legs so as to rest his feet on the battered old desk,
he grinned his pleasure.
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” he quoted, “but now that I’ve
finally got you here, I hardly know where to begin.”
“Begin at the beginning,” I countered. “It’s all Greek to me.”
“Well, in the beginning of power-driven flight,” he commenced,
“before the Wrights could take the hurdle from the glider to the
airplane, they had first to find an engine whose weight was light
enough, in proportion to its power, to get the contraption into the
air. And since nothing suitable existed, they had to design and build
their own. Thus from the beginning,” he went on, “the power plant
has been the heart of the airplane. Subsequent progress has been
almost entirely a matter of getting more horsepower for less weight.
When you want to lift yourself up by the bootstraps,” he added with
a grin, “you start reducing, and begin exercising your muscles.
The history of aviation can be measured by that ratio, pounds per
horsepower.”
At the turn of the century, Leighton pointed out, gasoline engines
were just coming into use. The Wrights, in designing their little
20-hp 4-cylinder model, had naturally followed the current automotive
practice. They had arranged the cylinders in line and had cooled the
engine with circulating water.
“It is only now,” Leighton explained, waving a hand in the direction
of the Lawrance air-cooled radial near the door, “that we are
spreading our cylinders like the petals of a daisy and cooling them
directly by air. And this section,” he added with obvious pride, “is
the foster parent of an innovation but recently classified by the
engineering intelligentsia as ‘impossible.’ As for that obsolete
term,” he went on, “we have a saying in the Section that goes like
this: ‘The impossible we do today; the fantastic may take a little
longer.’” He grinned as he watched me for the effect of another one
of his phrases.
Leighton went on to point out, however, that back in 1914, the year
the war broke out in Europe, this country had practically no military
aircraft engines. The Wrights had not thought of the airplane as a
weapon carrier. Over in Europe, however, where men had long been
accustomed to look at things through military binoculars, the
Germans, the French, the Italians, and the British had concentrated
on military power plants. In the commercial field, the United States
had a fair-to-middling engine in the Curtiss OXX, rated at less than
90 horsepower. This one later went into wide war use in the Curtiss
Jenny training planes. But when, in April, 1917, the war had engulfed
the United States, it caught us with our britches down around our
ankles. We had no high-powered military engines of any kind, nor had
we any designs for them. And even had we had the designs, there were
no production facilities in this country nor the know-how for using
them.
Quite undismayed by this, we had indulged in our usual penchant
for adopting slogans as substitutes for elementary strategy. Our
politicians boldly declared their intent to “darken the skies over
Germany with clouds of aircraft.” The headline figure had been 25,000
planes. But if anyone had any idea what we expected to do with them,
other than darkening the skies, such information had been kept
secret. There was a suspicion in some quarters that our bold brag had
been designed to screen the simple citizens from the unhappy fact
that we had no power plants with which to fly those clouds into the
air.
That had been a period of childlike faith in the magic of mass
production. Then the government, in a frantic effort to buy time,
had called in the automotive industry. A handful of citizens, whose
heads contained all that was known in this country about high-powered
engines of any kind, had been locked in a smoke-filled room of the
Willard Hotel in Washington, and there held incommunicado, until they
gave birth to the Liberty engine.
The Liberty, conceived in a crisis, and literally bulldozed into
production, had proved surprisingly effective in postwar flying,
especially after the usual bugs had been engineered out of it.
Actually, few if any engines had been used in front-line combat. Yet,
keeping in mind the fact that we had only remained in the war twenty
months, and that it usually takes at least two years to construct
and test an experimental model, the production of several thousand
engines had been little less than magic.
The Liberty had been rated at 400 horsepower on a dry weight of some
835 pounds, or at the rate of a little over 2 pounds per horsepower,
a striking advance over contemporary practice. And although under
the interallied agreement, we had been denied the right to build
front-line planes of our own design, we had installed the Liberty in
the British de Havilland observation plane and made quite a job out
of it. Dubbed “flying coffins” until after correction of the bugs,
these had passed through the initial stage of unpopularity, to become
“the good old DH,” and pretty much the standard for “cross-country”
airplanes.
But during the war, failure by the automotive industry to meet the
fantastic goals set by politicians had aroused a storm of criticism
in the United States. Hardly had the ink dried on the Armistice
before the government, convinced that “munitions racketeers” had
profited out of the war, had turned its wrath upon “malefactors of
great wealth” by ruthlessly canceling war contracts, with little
regard for its contractural obligations. Having now made the world
safe for democracy, it felt at liberty to destroy its expensive
and unnecessary war industry, venting its spite meanwhile on the
industrialists.
Manufacturers, who before final accounting had anticipated profits,
now found themselves facing losses instead. Some, the less
well-financed, had gone into bankruptcy; others had reorganized and
kept in business. Overall, it was estimated that representative
suppliers of war goods had taken a write-down of nearly a billion
dollars, or about one-half their “apparent” net worth. The automotive
industry, licking its wounds, had gone back to do private business
with its individual customers, resolved to leave future government
business to the naïve.
Judged in retrospect, the venture had proved a fiasco. It would have
been bad enough had industry earned its reputation for profiteering,
but to have gained the reputation after losing its shirt must be
counted a public-relations failure of the first magnitude.
Meanwhile, the giant aircraft industry had just withered on the
vine. A handful of the hardier “old-line” aircraft manufacturers,
pioneers still obsessed by undiminished zeal for aviation, still held
on. Among such engine builders had been the Curtiss Airplane and
Motor Company, of Buffalo, New York, and the Wright Martin Aircraft
Corporation, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, now reorganized as the
Wright Aeronautical Corporation, of Paterson, New Jersey. Of the
automotive industry, Packard alone kept a finger in the pie.
During the war, Wright Martin had followed the other alternative to
engine construction; they had bought a license to manufacture the
famed French Hispano-Suiza engine. And although this procedure had
been advanced as promising quicker returns, wartime experience had
developed the complexities of putting foreign models into production.
Designed around the European idea of handwork by skilled craftsmen,
they had to be redesigned to conform to the American technique of
machine-tool production. And so experience had demonstrated the
necessity for having domestic types in production and ready for
expansion.
After the Armistice, the new Wright Aeronautical Corporation
continued to develop the Hispano type, under the aegis of the Navy
Department. Using the method of “run’em, bust’em, fix’em, and run’em
again,” financed by the Engine Section, Wright had developed its
temperamental wartime Hispano into a rugged, 200-hp Model E-4. Wright
had also developed a 300-and later a 500-hp-model Hispano, but since
Congress had appropriated limited funds, and on a hand-to-mouth basis
rather than for a long-term program, they had found the going rough.
As long as the surplus of wartime Liberties and Hispanos hung over
the market, manufacture bogged down.
And to add a further complication, Leighton had shown a lively
interest in the new air-cooled engine developed by Charles Lanier
Lawrance. Charlie, while a student in Paris, had discovered the new
3-cylinder 60-hp Clerget, a fixed radial engine designed to overcome
the deficiencies of the old Gnome-Rhone types with their rotating
cylinders and gyroscopic effects. The Navy had at that time a demand
for 180- to 200-hp engines, and suggested that Lawrance consolidate
three of the 3-cylinder engines into a single 9-cylinder type.
Lawrance, with no production facilities of his own, had enlisted
those of the de la Verne Machine Company, in New Jersey, and had
begun his own development under the “run’em and bust’em” technique.
In this he had looked for guidance to Capt. A. K. Atkins and Lt.
Comdr. S. M. Kraus, of the Bureau of Engineering. When, later,
Admiral Moffett created BUAERO, he placed Kraus in charge of
Procurement and assigned Leighton as Chief of the Engine Section.
Meanwhile, Chance Vought, a clever airplane manufacturer
in Long Island City, had built a smart little, two-seater,
catapult-observation plane around the new engine, a craft that
carried as much load as the Army DH using the Liberty engine, yet
took up half as much space. And space was a critical factor within
the narrow confines of a battleship or a cruiser’s decks.
With this increased demand, the Bureau was confronted with the need
for bringing in an experienced aircraft manufacturer to fabricate
the Lawrance engines, and had selected Wright. But since the new
Lawrance was a direct competitor with Wright’s own Hispano E-4,
Leighton had been obliged to bring pressure to bear and had finally
forced consolidation of what he deemed the best design with what he
considered the ablest manufacturer. Wright’s purchase of Lawrance
had but recently taken place and I was to have the job of making the
marriage productive. This, according to Leighton, was the big project
of the Engine Section, if not, indeed, of BUAERO.
Meanwhile, he discussed other assorted possibilities, like the
Aeromarine Airplane and Motor Corporation, of Keyport, New Jersey,
and the Kinney Manufacturing Company, in Boston. Of the automotive
people, only Packard retained an interest in aero engines. Leighton
admitted that mine was a slender reed on which to lean. “The heart of
the airplane,” he summed up, “has damaged muscles and leaky valves.”
I concluded that it would have ceased beating entirely save for the
grim courage of B. G. Leighton and his Engine Section.
“The air-cooled engine,” Leighton asserted, “is the Navy’s white
hope. There is less sense in liquid-cooling an aircraft engine than
in air-cooling a submarine. The weight of the Liberty radiator, water
pump, plumbing, and water runs about three-quarters of a pound per
horsepower, or say 300 pounds. Now there’s an old design adage that
says ‘it takes a pound to carry a pound.’ In other words, each of
those plumbing pounds takes another pound of wings and tail to lug it
around. But with the air-cooled engine we can throw away the plumbing
and convert that dead weight into pay load, with a smaller airplane.
On board ship, you’ve got to keep ’em small or leave ’em off.”
By the end of my first day in the Engine Section, I was a bit
groggy. Leighton had tossed engineering terms around with complete
abandon, terms that I must pause to translate, even as he moved on
into new flights of technical verbiage. Yet from that first day’s
talk I gleaned the fact that the power plant is the heart of an
airplane, that aeronautical progress is paced by an engine’s “pounds
per horsepower,” and that the air-cooled engine, as yet quite
undeveloped, offered the greatest promise of usefulness to the Navy.
Meanwhile, with the Engine Section as the focus of that development,
no dull moments loomed on the horizon.
CHAPTER THREE
Its Vital Spark
Next morning we resumed my indoctrination, as we did on subsequent
mornings. Leighton began by expounding the advantages of air-cooled
over liquid-cooled engines, especially from the viewpoint of naval
aviation. The Army could, of course, spread out all over the
prairies, but the Navy must ride on the “backs of the fleet.”
“If,” I interposed, “it is as clear-cut as that, what has been
retarding the development?” Leighton heaved a sigh.
“Inertia and politics,” he replied. “If you have gained an impression
that engine development is all engineering, you are in for a shock.
All the engineers in the industry insist that, theoretically,
it is impossible to build an air-cooled engine to compete with
liquid-cooled, and their politicians keep busy making the prediction
come true.”
“Politicians?” I inquired.
“Some of them,” Leighton replied, “are right here in the Bureau, but
they are influenced by the liquid-cooled engine builders, and it is
easy to understand the position of these fellows. They’ve already got
a big stake in liquid-cooling: production facilities, engineering,
and know-how—especially know-how. Naturally they aren’t scrambling to
obsolete their own designs.” Leighton paused.
“Before you finish your shore cruise,” he added, “you’ll get a
bellyful of engineering politics.”
It developed that when Admiral Moffett had first created the Bureau,
he expected to bring under his wing all aviation functions such
as personnel, matériel, and operations, but vested interests had
thwarted him. The Bureau of Navigation (“BUNAV,” it was called)
charged with responsibility for personnel had hung on for grim death
to its prerogatives with respect to naval aviators. While conceding
to BUAERO the privilege of recommending assignments, it reserved to
itself the authority to turn BUAERO down whenever Admiral Moffett
seemed to be getting a little too big for his britches. Again,
Naval Operations (OPNAV) had held strict control of all aviation
operations. As a concession, they had detailed naval aviators to
liaison jobs in BUNAV, OPNAV, and on flag duty in the fleet—where
they had carefully preserved the functions of these young specialists
in the formaldehyde of an “advisory” capacity.
But Admiral Moffett had proved a match for most of them. The only
high-ranking officer in the Navy Department with a flair for public
relations, and the one man trained from boyhood in a school of
practical politics, Admiral Moffett had shown a knack for getting
aviation appropriations from Congress. Not too long on logic, the
admiral had demonstrated a native intelligence and a knack with
phrases that had netted him dividends. “Of course the country
needs an air force,” he had said before a naval affairs committee,
“but let’s make it a naval air force, one that isn’t anchored to a
land base but can go to sea—on the backs of the fleet.” And that
expression “on the backs of the fleet” had become a byword in BUAERO.
From Leighton’s thumbnail sketch of BUAERO I noted that there was
little system or organization to it. Leighton conceded as much.
“We have no organization chart, let alone a bureau manual. Somebody
is supposed to be working on one but somehow it never gets beyond
the admiral’s desk. His organization is personal rather than
functional—based on loyalties. Every man or woman in this Bureau,” he
asserted with emphasis, “would go to hell and back for good old Billy
Moffett. And loyalty works both ways; the admiral’s most striking
quality is his loyalty to his subordinates. Sometimes I’m not so
sure about it to his seniors; he loves to needle the old whales on
topside.” Leighton smiled as if in recollection of specific instances.
“No,” he went on, “there is never a dull moment in BUAERO. It reminds
me of that old adage handed down from the days of iron men and wooden
ships, ‘When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, yell, and
shout.’ And that, my dear successor,” he concluded, “is BUAERO in a
nutshell—or should I say bombshell?”
The Bureau had set up as its number-one project, the job of “selling
aviation to the fleet,” and a fleet full of sales resistance at that.
The Bureau had designed catapults—big compressed-air guns, for
launching airplanes from the decks of battle wagons at sea. It had
designed or procured new seaplanes to be launched by these catapults.
It had trained aviators to man these planes, and incidentally, to try
to sell them to the ships.
In this they had met hard sledding because those unwieldy catapults
had cluttered up the decks, destroyed the symmetry of the ships’
silhouettes, and shed grease all over the precious teak decks.
However, the aviators had penetrated the cold front by learning how
to spot the fall of shot in long-range battle practice, and how to
signal the ship the correction that would put a salvo on a target.
Ships with planes had thus gained an advantage in the gunnery
competition over those that had none, and besides, their pilots had
been trained for deck duty and could share watches at sea or in port.
Meanwhile, BUAERO had pushed on with its plans to match the British
in carrier aircraft. Under the leadership of Kenneth Whiting, who as
Commander of the Northern Bombing Group at Killingholm, Scotland,
during the war had sent Godfrey de Chevalier down to the Grand
Fleet to observe carrier operations, the old electric-drive collier
_Jupiter_ had been converted to the experimental carrier _Langley_,
and pilots had been trained in deck landings, to gain experience
from which to design new carrier aircraft. Here, too, the air-cooled
engine offered important advantages, provided it could be made
dependable. That job was to become the first order of business for
the new chief of the Engine Section.
As a further extension of this carrier development, Admiral Moffett
had put over a master stroke at the Washington Limitation of Arms
Conference. At a time when the United States was making the fatal
gesture of scrapping all its latest vessels, to bring “peace through
disarmament,” the admiral had salvaged from the scrap heap the giant
battle cruisers _Saratoga_ and _Lexington_, and was now supervising
their conversion into the largest aircraft carriers in the world.
In this he had been greatly aided by Capt. Henry C. Mustin, who
had since died. Mustin, a wise man with a clear understanding of
the principles of war as they might be affected by aviation, had
drawn up a complete plan for the complements of the carriers.
They would have single-seat fighters to gain command of the air,
long-range scouts to obtain information of the enemy, torpedo
bombers for attacking enemy vessels, and rescue craft for recovering
pilots that might be forced down at sea. The larger craft would
demand high-powered engines and since, as yet, we had no air-cooled
engines above 200 horsepower, we must needs speed our high-powered
liquid-cooled development to the limit.
Leighton gave me his own quick estimate of the personalities in the
Bureau other than the admiral. The Assistant Chief was Capt. Alfred
W. Johnson, an old Queenstown destroyer skipper. Brought up in the
old school, he had been my skipper on the notorious Caribbean cruise
of the seaplane tender and kite-balloon ship _Wright_, and I loved
and admired him. We had both fought a losing battle against aviation
extravagance. The skipper, hoping to cut down useless paper work by
refusing to have a yeoman, had answered all his own correspondence
in longhand, expecting thus to shame his correspondents into doing
likewise, but only he had been shamed.
The Chief of the Matériel Division was Capt. Emory S. Land, of the
Corps of Constructors. Unlike so many constructors, Jerry was no
theorist but a thoroughly practical and competent leader. He had
played football at the Academy and still refereed college games. Able
to see both sides of an argument, forthright, and honest, he was an
ideal head for a division like Matériel that contained both naval
constructors and line officers. The old line-staff controversy was
likely to burst out at any moment, and it took a sense of humor to
break it up.
The Design Section of the Matériel Division, under which the Engine
Section was set up, was headed by a grand old man of aviation, Capt.
H. C. Richardson. “Captain Dick,” one of the early pilots, a member
of the crew of one of the NC boats of 1919 transatlantic fame, and
a skilled engineer, had inherited Design from “Jerry” Hunsaker, a
classmate of mine, when Jerry resigned from the Construction Corps
to go to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a professor. Jerry
had founded the Design Group, and had built up a large drafting room
and staff with which to carry on naval aviation design. His designs
were to be built experimentally at the Naval Aircraft Factory at
Philadelphia and then farmed out to the factory, or perhaps to some
willing private manufacturer.
It was right at this point that Leighton stressed a difference
between the Engine Section and the Design Section. There were but a
handful of people all told in the Engine Section: Leighton himself;
his assistant, Lt. Frank Maile, who had once served with me on the
_Old Ark_; Lt. Ricco Botta, a former Reserve officer and a skilled
engineer; Lt. (jg) Ralph M. Parsons, a former student under Dr. Lucke
and my assistant at the Aviation Mechanics Schools at Great Lakes;
and two secretaries. The senior secretary was Miss Alma Quisenberry,
a quiet, soft-spoken young woman from Nashville, Tennessee. And this
handful of people not only had no desire to design or build its own
engines but had a clear conviction that the hope for the future lay
in the Bureau’s placing its dependence for design, development, and
production entirely upon private industry.
In this respect, the Engine Section now stood quite alone. After
the Armistice, the Army Air Service had devised a plan for setting
up a great government production center at McCook Field, near
Dayton, Ohio. Army aircraft were to be designed by brain trusters in
government employ. The institution would be surrounded by a complex
of interested private manufacturers who would produce aircraft to
Army design and specification. The plan had fallen through, largely
because ambitious young men had preferred to risk their futures in
chancey private industry rather than rest secure in the dead end of
a government establishment. But the idea still persisted, and many
in both Army and Navy were still sold on nationalization for the
aircraft industry.
I could tell from Leighton’s development of this knotty problem that
he was still uncertain as to where I stood. Conceivably I might be
one who would want to build up a great engine-design group in BUAERO
and another big production group at the Philadelphia Aircraft Factory
and thus establish for myself quite a respectable empire. However,
I had developed a few positive ideas of my own on the subject,
and, curiously enough they had come out of the old rifle shooting
competitions. I now relieved Leighton on this subject, obviously so
close to his heart.
Under the rules for the national rifle matches, it was mandatory
for military competitors to use government-issue cartridges, which,
at the time, were produced solely by the government at Frankfort
Arsenal. In quality this ammunition was reminiscent of Chinese
firecrackers—many were complete duds, and of those that finally
went off, many more were just “fizzlers.” As to accuracy, there
were so many “droppers” in each bandoleer that the element of skill
was largely neutralized by the element of chance, thus undermining
the foundation of competition. And worse still, there seemed to
be nothing we could do about it. Army Ordnance, entrenched in its
monopoly, turned a deaf ear to all complaints.
Meanwhile the quality of the ammunition provided by competing
commercial companies for civilian matches had improved to the point
where Frankfort Arsenal had become a public scandal among the
shooting fraternity. At this point the National Rifle Association
had raised such a furor that the Ordnance Department was forced
down off its lofty perch and obliged to bring Frankfort into direct
competition with the private trade. Improvement at Frankfort was
immediate, but more important still, seeds were planted for a new
government-industry cooperation in ordnance that has since paid off
in two wars.
And so, having acquired my convictions at an early age and out of the
hard school of experience, I now set Leighton right on my position as
to the place of government in production. His relief was immediate,
though he felt that the situation in aviation was less critical.
“We have the saving grace,” he said, “of having strong competition
within the government. As long as the rivalry between BUAERO and the
Army Air Service continues keen, both of us will keep on our toes to
press development.”
My thoughts drifted back to the interview with Admiral Moffett
earlier in the day.
“But,” I countered, “suppose your friend Billy Mitchell should sell
his independent-air-force idea to the Congress and take over the
whole shebang, then what would become of your interservice rivalry?”
Leighton tossed both hands in the air in a gesture of helplessness.
“Do you know the gentleman?” he asked.
I had met the general at Great Lakes back in 1920 when he had come up
on a flying tour of inspection of the Aviation Mechanics’ Schools.
He arrived at the wheel of a roaring Stutz Bearcat touring car, with
the top down, the cutouts open, and a white-faced sergeant hanging
onto the seat beside him. He’d broken all records on the run up from
Chicago. Later the sergeant informed one of our CPOs that he had long
ago exceeded his life expectancy and was now on borrowed time.
At that time, our schools, organized as they had been by Dr. Lucke,
were going like a house afire, while the nearby Army schools,
at Rantoul, Illinois, were dragging bottom. At the close of the
inspection, the general had remarked, without the quiver of an
eyelid, “Keep working, Commander, and some day you may catch up with
the Army.”
As I opened my mouth to retort, he blimped the throttle and jammed
the words down my throat, with the roar of his exhaust. The last I
saw of him was a cloud of dust as he whirled away in the direction of
the main gate, his sergeant hanging on with both hands.
Subsequently, Mitchell had kept up a running fire against the Navy
until he finally badgered the Department into anchoring some obsolete
vessels in Chesapeake Bay, close to the Army air base at Langley
Field, Virginia. In a masterly display of showmanship for the benefit
of the newsmen, Mitchell had delivered a mast-high attack on the
undefended targets at short range. One phosphorous bomb dropped on
the fighting top of the old _Alabama_, where an alert photographer
snapped a dramatic picture of pyrotechnics that made the front page
with a convincing smash.
All this had come along with the drive for reduction in armaments
that had already set the Navy back on its haunches. Navy top brass,
fighting hard for survival, had recognized in Billy Mitchell another
Brutus, and some had even suspected Billy Moffett of a lean and
hungry look. An old walrus over in Naval Operations had been heard to
remark that Moffett was probably jealous of Mitchell for having first
thought of the separate air force. In any event, the Old Navy had
come to hate its own aviation almost as much at it hated Mitchell and
the Army.
“Mitchell,” I remarked, “is able, impetuous, and dynamic. He has an
attractive personality and is long on the qualities that keep men
willing to ride with him, hell for leather.”
Leighton shook his head. “He takes a lot for granted. The time
may come when airplanes will do the things he foresees, but first
some of us slaves will have to solve a lot of the impossible
technical problems that he now brushes off as unimportant. And one
thing is sure,” he added, “under the sort of department Mitchell
advocates, they just won’t get solved. Give him his autocratic
control, and he’ll set up an airtight government monopoly of
research, development, and production that will lay the dead hand of
bureaucracy on our new art and paralyze its glowing young spirit.”
All the smile had gone out of Leighton’s voice and deadly earnestness
replaced the half-banter with which he had discussed his job.
“Well,” he sighed, “there’s just one man standing between Mitchell
and the attainment of his personal ambition for power.” He paused.
“And that man,” he concluded, “is William Adger Moffett.”
“Do you think he’s got what it takes?” I asked. Leighton nodded.
“He’s got a mind like a steel trap. And believe me, he’s no
counter-puncher—he bores in like Old Battling Burroughs, the fleet
champion, and keeps leading all the time, though never with his
chin...”
“He’s our catalyst,” Leighton continued, “the mysterious reagent that
keeps all our atoms and molecules in a state of constant, frenzied
excitement. He’s the ignition system of BUAERO. We chiefs of section
are the explosive mixtures and when the admiral sparks us, we give
the pistons a wallop and they start the connecting rods oscillating.
That rotates the cranks, of which I am one,” he added with a grin,
“and the whole thing turns over like an aircraft engine—high-strung
parts whipping back and forth, between clearances the width of
a gnat’s eyebrow. And, to complete our power-plant picture,” he
concluded, “the whole thing would burn out except for the admiral’s
other function; he’s the lubricant, a high-grade product of some
refinery that created him and then threw away the formula. It all
looks a bit hectic and confused but, amazingly enough, it produces
results.”
“But,” I asked, “what if the Congress is more impressed by the
dynamic leader with all the right answers?”
“Then,” Leighton replied with finality, “the country will be lost.
Lost,” he repeated, quoting the punch line of an old Navy yarn about
the sailor man weaving his way back to the boat landing through a
line of telephone poles, “lost in an impenetrable forest.”
After returning to our hotel that evening, I reviewed the day’s
disclosures with my wife. We had both found that this was beneficial,
on general principles, and besides, since a Navy wife is nearly as
much subject to Navy Regulations as her husband, it seemed no more
than fair.
Apparently this Army-Navy dogfight absorbed every waking hour of
the combatants. Since the power plant is clearly the heart of the
airplane, then it followed that the Engine Section was a decisive
front in a major campaign. The technical issue of air-cooled versus
liquid-cooled involved the ancient conflict of government monopoly
versus private industry. And there was no question where Admiral
Moffett might stand on that. Though armed with authority, he showed
the wisdom to use it sparingly. With faith in the processes of
nature, he had the guts to let nature take her course. In this
respect he was the direct opposite of General Mitchell. Their
conflict went right down to bedrock.
As my job in the struggle, the admiral had assigned me the task
of creating a new line of engines. This I would do through fair
competition and in private industry. The problem was tough because
the industry was flat on its back. On the other hand, it was exciting
because the admiral’s convictions were my convictions, and well worth
fighting for. Maybe that was the reason he had reached down into the
Caribbean for me.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Backward Art
By the time the Japanese cherry blossoms had come and gone around
the Tidal Basin, my wife and I had settled in our apartment at 2301
Connecticut Avenue, and joined the social whirl—cocktail parties on
bathtub gin, formal dinners at home or abroad, evenings of bridge,
or just plain conversation. And wherever friends gathered, their one
and only topic of conversation was “shop.” While this was true of all
Navy parties, it was especially so in aviation circles. The burning
zeal these young pilots displayed for their profession was a constant
source of wonderment to us. In what they affectionately characterized
as their “old crates”—a description often all too accurate—they found
the beginning and end of everything. And if the airplane itself was
the object of their veneration, the “Aviation Game,” as they fondly
called it, was their religion. This seemed the more remarkable,
for the airplane was ever a jealous mistress, one that brooked
no liberties, a fact well known to the aviators who had solemnly
escorted all too many friends off to their last resting place, across
the river in Arlington.
Take young Hersey Conant, for one example out of many. Hersey, a
delightfully gay young bachelor, had gained the distinction of
coining a popular phrase, so to speak. At an afternoon cocktail
party, where the gin had just been lifted almost steaming off the
kitchen stove, Hersey had mixed it solemnly with orange juice and ice
and then held his glass aloft for a toast. Pausing before tossing
it off, he had said quite simply, “Let it age a second!” Here, it
seemed, was a suggestion the whole Aviation Game might take to heart;
but it didn’t.
For the very next day, Hersey had blithely taken off in one of the
fast Schneider-Cup seaplane racers for a short practice spin, and had
hedgehopped his way toward Norfolk, flying right down on the water.
Somewhere along the way, he stubbed his toe on one of the many fish
traps and pitched headlong into shallow water. When a crane salvaged
the wreck it was all wrapped up in a ball.
Old Navy families looked with jaundiced eyes upon the heedless
carryings on of the aviators. At a dinner party one night my wife sat
next to Capt. Claude C. Bloch, then Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance,
and one of the most promising of the younger captains. The day would
come when, as Commandant of the Naval District at Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941, he would receive a visit from the little yellow
men, but back there in the middle ’twenties, his promising career
still lay before him. Then, addressing my wife earnestly, he gave her
the benefit of his advice.
“Tell that husband of yours,” he said, “to keep out of the side
shows and get back under the main tent.” Well, I’d tried to become a
gunnery officer but fate had made a Kiwi of me.
And down in BUAERO, Leighton continued day by day to unfold to me the
fantastic story of naval aviation.
“Now that you are well fouled up in the slipstream of BUAERO,” he
remarked one June morning, “it is about time you looked over the
trade. If,” he went on, “you are going to risk your future on the
creative capacity of competition, then you ought to look over your
new tools. Frankly,” he added, “they aren’t too hot.” So Leighton
asked Captain Johnson, Assistant Chief, for permission to make the
trip in a cross-country DH, but the captain turned him down. Later
on he advised me in confidence that engineers were too scarce to be
risked unnecessarily in those flying coffins. And so we took off by
train.
At Paterson, New Jersey, we sought out the multistoried loft building
that housed Wright Aeronautical Corporation. President Frederick B.
Rentschler received us in his office, sitting solemnly behind his
desk. He looked to be a cool customer, a man of great singleness of
purpose. Facing him across the table, Bruce Leighton exuded buoyant
enthusiasm against a background of equal determination. Not having
previously learned from Leighton the sharp differences in opinion
between these two, I was unprepared for the sparring match that
followed.
Leighton led off with an inquiry as to progress with the new
J-3 model of the Lawrance air-cooled radial, which Rentschler
fended off with a report on the splendid dependability shown by
the liquid-cooled Hispano E-4 in its endurance tests. He had in
mind that if Leighton would recommend another production order of
Hispanos, Wright could use the time to get the Lawrance ready for
the next production order. A flush spread up around Leighton’s
ears as he rather testily replied that the Bureau was already
definitely committed to air-cooled engines in the 200-horsepower
size, and that it was Wright’s job to speed developments to meet
Bureau requirements. Rentschler seemed to have a quiet knack of
automatically tuning out any wave length he did not care to listen
in on. Now he passed up the Hispano-Lawrance issue momentarily to
develop the basic difference of opinion. He clearly felt that with
all Wright’s accumulated experience in liquid-cooled, they could
expect to make more rapid progress with them than with Lawrance
air-cooled.
Leighton let a smile flicker across his lips and redirected the
discussion toward air-cooling. On the way up to Paterson, he had told
me about a contract Wright had with the Navy for the development of
a new 400-hp air-cooled radial called “P-1.” Intended as an out and
out replacement for the Liberty, the engine promised to save a lot of
weight although it was just an overgrown Lawrance as to design. Now
he asked Rentschler for a report on its progress.
Rentschler shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of hopelessness and
reported that George Mead and Andy Willgoos, the Wright engineers,
had encountered serious difficulties with piston scuffing. They were
struggling with the usual cut-and-try “fixes” but so far with little
positive success. Leighton thought that under the criticism of the
liquid-cooled partisans he might have specified too small a diameter
for the engine and suggested that if I agreed I might modify the
requirements if absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, however, he was
determined to push the new engine to the limit.
Rentschler shook his head in disagreement. He thought the problem
went deeper than Leighton had indicated. He had a tendency to
probe for fundamentals and it was his considered opinion that,
for Wright at least, liquid-cooling offered the better course of
engine development. Air-cooling, even though it might have inherent
advantages in weight saving, suffered a handicap from the point
of view of timing, and he doubted if these could be overcome. He
preferred undertaking a completely new design by Wright to trying to
get the bugs out of the Lawrance.
Leighton twisted in his chair as the flush spread up his neck and
flooded through the gray at his temples. He had detected a note
of arrogance in Rentschler’s suave statement—an inference of sure
judgment on the part of the civilian as opposed to the immaturity
of the naval officer. I made a note of this fundamental conflict as
Leighton set his jaw.
The Navy didn’t propose to let anything stand in its way in realizing
on the inherent superiority of air-cooling. Aside from the potential
weight saving there was the vital factor of dependability. One-third
of all Navy power-plant failures could be charged to liquid-cooled
plumbing—leaky water jackets, leaky hose connections, and what have
you.
“In other words,” he summed up, “in addition to saving the weight
of the plumbing we can eliminate the majority of engine failures by
going to air-cooled engines. We’re your customers,” he added, “and
that’s our position.”
Rentschler’s face was a mask. The muscles of his jaw flexed as he
faced Leighton. The latter broke the tension.
“What do you say,” he queried, “to our taking a look at the new
air-cooled engines?”
We took a slow-running freight elevator that dropped us to the
basement, where George Mead waited for us in the experimental
department. A solidly built fellow in his early thirties, with dark
bushy eyebrows, George had the serious mein of the well-trained
engineer but he combined this with unusual force and driving power.
No one in the aircraft industry could drive a project to completion
with such remorseless energy. Now he pointed to a large radial engine
mounted on a teardown stand with its ignition wiring partly stripped.
“There she is,” he remarked. The big engine was being torn down after
a full-throttle run. She was up to rated horsepower but still scuffed
her pistons. They were trying one more “fix” and if this one worked,
they intended to go back on an endurance run. No suggestion of doubt
entered Mead’s cheerful voice.
Rentschler stood noncommittal. An engineer must needs be an optimist;
his job is a creative one. Day after day he has to bow his head
against an avalanche of grief, from failures either in his own shop
or the field, yet still press on to correct the faults. There were
no margins for error in this aircraft-engine business; the machinery
was stressed right up to the limit. The trick was to keep it from
going beyond, and the penalty for failure might be somebody’s life.
Management had plenty of worries, too; Rentschler, there, must wangle
the financial problems and try to reconcile the conflicting interests
of the several departments of a complex organization.
Now while Leighton and Mead discussed the teething troubles of
their new baby with all the intense interest of a couple of young
mothers, I tried to pick out the fundamental factors of the situation
at Wright Aeronautical. BUAERO had taken the decision to stake
its future on the trade. Wright Aero was our best bet. We were
committed to air-cooled radials and the management of Wright was
still committed, subconsciously at least, to liquid-cooled in-line.
It wasn’t a matter of sentiment with them; they had a big investment
in their prior art. The big job from the point of view of the Engine
Section was to instill some of our own enthusiasm into Wright Aero,
and this would take some doing. As we left the factory to go to a
hotel for lunch, I realized I had my job cut out for me.
Next day we ran down to Keyport, New Jersey, for a look at
the Aeromarine Airplane and Motor Corporation plant. It was a
discouraging picture, acres of idle machine shops and a powerhouse
smokestack that gave out no smoke. The one bright spot there proved
to be Roland Chilton, the chief engineer, a keen Englishman whom I
mentally clothed in a costume for the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_. He
had the inventor’s talent for innovation, with the engineer’s knack
for making ingenious mechanical contrivances work and he had created
for Leighton the new Aeromarine Inertia Starter. This device, which
utilized energy stored in a fast-running flywheel to crank over
obstinate engines, had proved an outstanding success in the limited
quantities Leighton had bought. Leighton had tried to keep Aeromarine
alive in the hope that times might change for the better, but the
air-cooled radials would obsolete the Aeromarine liquid-cooled
in-line engines, just as they had set aside the Wright Hispano E-4.
A train ride to Boston took us to the plant of the Kinney
Manufacturing Company. Their main product was heavy-duty pumps, a far
cry from aircraft engines, but the management had shown a willingness
to gamble on the remarkable ingenuity of its aircraft engineer,
Warren Noble. His forte, like Chilton’s, was a unique capacity for
accomplishing the impossible through little-used mechanical devices
and principles. If anything, he was even more ingenious than Chilton,
but by the same token a little less productive; once he had made some
contraption work, experimentally, he lost interest in it. Production
for profit seemed to bore him. But at Leighton’s request, he had
undertaken to build a tiny, five-cylinder, air-cooled radial engine
for a miniature airplane—one intended to be folded up and parked
in a steel cylinder mounted on the deck of a submarine. The job,
which imposed every known restriction on the already complicated
airplane-design problem, intrigued Noble no end. His engine, with
its oil-operated valve gear, incorporated every other unconventional
device Noble’s fertile brain could conceive, and it ran. Beyond that
point, Noble’s interest faded.
We left Boston stimulated by talking far into the night with Noble,
exploring the realms of engineering fancy, but down in our hearts
we knew the little engine would never get anywhere. After all the
airplane itself was highly experimental and might never fly; the
outlook for quantity production of air scouts for submarines was
not encouraging. But it was worth the trip just to listen to the
conversation of one of the most facile engineering minds in the
business.
From Boston we moved out to the Army Engineering Division, then at
McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio, one of those government arsenal-type
establishments and about as far apart from Warren Noble as it was
possible to get while still remaining on the same planet. The chief
of the Engine Branch out there was Ed Jones, a former Air Service
major, now in civilian clothes, and a good solid citizen. He
displayed none of the usual Air Service antagonism to naval aviation,
and received us warmly.
His assistant, Sam Herron, was, like Chilton, a clever Englishman,
one who had done highly useful research in air-cooled cylinders
under Professor Gibson, in England, then the outstanding man in his
field. Sam Herron was probably better informed on this important
subject than anyone in this country and had done some good work even
under the handicaps of a government establishment like McCook Field.
Among other things “The Field,” as it was called by the Air Service,
had designed a 300-hp air-cooled radial engine which it had turned
over to the Curtiss Airplane and Motor Company, of Buffalo, after
competitive bidding, for construction of the first experimental model.
Leighton expressed lack of confidence in this procedure, which had
carried over from the war. When disorderly reconversion had forced
the automotive people out of aircraft production, “The Field” had
determined to establish a great engineering division at Dayton, and
to undertake its own design. After the government wizards had dreamed
up their pet projects, a manufacturer would do the rest. Leighton
argued that this procedure just divided the responsibility for a
development between the government and the industry.
“The government,” he remarked, “will claim all the credit for
everything that turns out well, and will hang the contractor for all
mistakes, especially its own.” That, he insisted, was not the road to
success.
“The only way to get progress,” he added, “is to put a good engineer
in a tight place where he will have to fight to survive. When it’s
‘root, hog, or die,’” he concluded, “they always do the impossible.”
A run over to Detroit brought us to the Packard Motor Car Company,
and another kind of setup. Here was one of the few remaining
automotive companies with a continuing interest in aviation. This
had probably resulted from the fact that Col. Jesse G. Vincent, a
Packard vice-president, had been one of the designers of the original
Liberty, and Capt. Lionel Woolson, Packard experimental engineer,
still retained his interest in aircraft. The company felt that much
of the aviation experimental work could be used in the automotive
engines and was willing to continue to participate as a public
service. In another emergency, in which the automotive industry must
again convert to aircraft production, they could do a better job at
it, against a background of continuing experience with aviation. The
one drawback to this picture was the air-cooled engine; Packard could
hardly be expected to show much enthusiasm for this.
Meanwhile, there was another consideration involved in continuing the
automotive industry on a stand-by basis with respect to aircraft.
“Automobile prices,” Leighton explained, “demand low-cost volume
production, a requirement that is just incompatible with the
high-quality, high-precision production required in aircraft. When
your automobile breaks down,” he added, quoting the old darky of
the ancient wheeze, “why there yo’ is. But when yo’ airplane engine
quits, where is yo’?”
And now as we moved on to Buffalo, Leighton gave me a quick preview
of the Curtiss Airplane and Motor Company. Here was one of the
“old-line” aircraft organizations. Though it had bid in the Army
air-cooled radial project, now called the “Curtiss Radial 1454,” its
heart lay in the liquid-cooled development. The Curtiss D-12 was now
one of the best in the world; both the Army and the Navy were using
it in fair quantities. Curtiss, he thought, was one of the smartest
engine builders in the country—sometimes he had wondered if they
weren’t a little too smart for their own good.
When we saw the R-1454, we were impressed. Herron’s cylinder was an
advance over anything we had seen at Wright. The valve-gear rocker
boxes enclosed the valves and provided forced lubrication for them
in place of the old Alemite fittings of our P-1. And the Curtiss had
a single carburetor in place of the triple type on the Wright, an
improvement made possible partly by the use of a gear-driven blower
that sucked the mixture from the carburetor and pushed it up to the
cylinders. This was geared low for rotary induction, and gave fine
distribution; someday it could be geared high for supercharging.
That evening we were dinner guests of the company at a hotel
overlooking Niagara Falls. Afterward, Arthur Nutt, chief engineer,
gave us a sales talk on the D-12. Roy Keyes, president of the
company, expressed no fear of competition from the air-cooled
radials. Curtiss, he confided in us, had bid in the Army 1454 just
to keep it under their control. He considered it unlikely that any
radial rock crusher could replace the D-12; in fact, he had no
intention of letting it.
That night, Leighton and I sat on the edges of our twin beds in
the hotel room and, smoking a last cigarette together, sized up
the situation. Curtiss, a good manufacturer, had a fine engine but
was keeping it under wraps. Wright, also a competent producer, had
an inferior engine and no enthusiasm for air-cooling as such. The
problem was to get the best features of the Herron-designed 1454 into
the second engine of our P-series at Wright. If we could sell them on
that and build up their enthusiasm, we might put a new set of valves
in the heart of the airplane and even build up its muscles. That
called for another visit to Paterson.
But when we returned to Wright Aero we found that a change had taken
place. Fred Rentschler had resigned from the presidency, leaving
Charles Lanier Lawrance, the daddy of the American air-cooled
radial, in his place. There was nothing left to worry about on the
score of air-cooled enthusiasm, though the company had lost an able
executive. Guy Vaughan, a dynamic and personable fellow, had moved up
from quality manager to factory manager. A former automobile racing
driver, Guy had plenty of zing. With George Mead to do a finished
engineering job, we could release the P-2 engine with all the latest
wrinkles in it.
Back at BUAERO, Bruce Leighton wound up his affairs in the Engine
Section. For three and a half years he had fought and bled there,
stacking up brief moments of triumph against hours of grief. As a
matter of fact, aircraft engines were one big pain in the neck.
Reports of poor performance in service streamed in under the heading
“Trouble Report.” If by some chance they performed well, that was
only as it should be and certainly not a subject for comment. The
art was still young, and even the best equipment could hardly be
classified as safe to fly. In the face of disheartening problems,
Bruce Leighton had never let his enthusiasm slacken; his heart and
soul were all wrapped up in what he himself characterized as “these
funny damned airplanes.” He had pioneered air-cooled engines in the
face of universal resistance; he had stood by private industry when
everyone else had plumped for government ownership. Now he was “off
to sea.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Toil and Trouble
The summer of 1925, like most summers in the nation’s capital, was
almost unbearably hot and sultry. Even after one of those violent
electrical storms had whirled up the Potomac and deluged the
blistered asphalt with a tropical downpour, its passing left the
whole town sweltering in a steaming heat, even more prostrating than
before the storm. It was sticky enough in the permanent buildings,
but in our temporary shack on Constitution Avenue, work became quite
impossible, and we often sent the Bureau staff home in the early
afternoons. And before that fateful summer could pass, lightning
struck twice in the same place—BUAERO.
When Bruce Leighton had passed out to sea, most of his small staff
went with him, having already overstayed their allotted period of
duty on shore. Luckily, Ricco Botta, a lieutenant who had come in by
way of the Naval Reserve, held over with me. A pilot, an engineer,
and a skilled mechanic he had now become the practical wheelhorse
of the Engine Section. Later on, Henry Mullinix joined up, bringing
just the right qualities to balance out our little organization.
Henry had been honor man in his class at Annapolis, had later led his
flight class at Pensacola, and had finally completed the aviation
postgraduate course at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with top
honors. And along with his intellect, Henry had a fine personality
and an admirable character. Our organization was rounded out by young
Lt. (jg) Ralph Parsons, who now handled the highly technical liaison
with the Aero Engine Laboratory at the Naval Aircraft Factory,
Philadelphia, while Henry, Ricco, and I concentrated on the task
of cleaning up the bugs in the engines and accessories under our
cognizance.
Take, for instance, the Lawrance J-1 air-cooled radial engine,
that coffee grinder on which all our hopes were based. It was so
rickety that Lt. C. C. Champion, a rising young West Coast pilot,
formally reported to BUAERO that, when embarking on a fifteen-mile
cross-country flight from the Naval Air Station at North Island,
near San Diego, to an emergency airport at Ream Field, down near the
Mexican border, his squadron always carried a whole “quiverful” of
spare push rods to replace those sure to be sprayed along the beach
of the Coronado Silver Strand. Our treatment for this sort of trouble
was to call in Charlie Lawrance or Guy Vaughan of Wright Aero and
give them a session of plain and fancy kidding, with just the right
amount of sting in it.
The magnetos for our air-cooled engines were something to write
home about. Here was the instrument that provided the vital spark
so essential to keep the engine ticking over, yet it had proved the
least dependable of the parts of the high-strung mechanism behind
which pilots risked their lives. And when we looked around for
more promising sources of supply, none was to be found. The Delco
Company, producers of the wartime Liberty battery-generator ignition
systems, could not be interested in a new development; the volume to
be expected was too small. The manufacturer of cheap truck magnetos,
to whom we now looked, was willing to brighten up the outside finish
but was unwilling to go further for the same reason—no volume. The
board of directors of the great General Electric Company had, we
were advised, studied the problem with ponderous care and finally
concluded there was more money in electric light bulbs. A small
privately owned company was willing to help, but lacked know-how. It
looked like a stalemate until the Army Engineering Division at McCook
Field discovered Scintilla.
Scintilla magnetos proved to be the answer to a maiden’s prayer. Made
in Soleure, Switzerland, they could be bought through Tom Fagan, of
New York, and at a reasonable price. However, since we could not
place full dependence on a foreign source that might be cut off in
time of war, we investigated the possibility of creating an American
source. The Swiss company had an excess of machinery and personnel
and was willing to export them, but the red tape surrounding such
a transaction, even back there in the days when the United States
government had faith in private enterprise, tied us hand and foot.
To cut through the tangle involved so many risks that we should have
been completely discouraged save that the other alternative was to
accept responsibility for the deaths of youngsters who daily risked
their lives in the air.
In dilemmas of this kind, resort might be had to what was politely
called “memoranda for file” but known privately as “the cover-up.” A
letter was prepared for the file covering the details of the proposed
transaction and carried through the whole system to be finally
approved by the Secretary of the Navy himself. Then, after the Great
Seal of the Navy Department had been attached, and the author had
privately retained a copy for his own use, the document was carefully
filed away against the day when some Congressional investigation
might be looking for a noteworthy scalp. When the spirit of cover-up
gets into a business organization, the evil finally shows up in the
financial results; in government it is just absorbed by the taxpayer.
It was through such a time-consuming process that we finally
succeeded in transporting a part of the Swiss company bodily to the
town of Sidney, New York, where it continued to be this country’s
source of dependable magnetos. And the time even came when I had
to flash the Great Seal of the Navy Department to keep from being
crucified for bringing it here. Later, when Charles A. Lindbergh
arrived in London, after having flown the Atlantic behind a Scintilla
magneto, it turned out that the General Electric Company had all
along had the license to manufacture the British Thompson Houston
Company’s magneto, but no one in Schenectady had recalled the fact.
Meanwhile, in addition to concentrating on the job of keeping engines
running, we had not neglected the other task of getting them started.
The Aeromarine Inertia Starter, created by Chilton under Leighton’s
initiative, though employing a quite novel principle—the utilization
of energy stored in a flywheel—had developed into the most dependable
and efficient device in our gear locker. When, therefore, Messrs.
Charles Marcus and Raymond P. Lansing of the Eclipse Machine Company
called on us with a view to interesting us in a line of electric
starters they had developed for the Army, we presented them with an
affable but none the less impenetrable front. Things electric not
only involved heavy lead storage batteries, heavy copper motors, and
everything else designed around “base metals,” but they always proved
undependable and difficult to maintain. My years as engineer officer
on a man-of-war had generated in me a sales resistance of many ohms.
On the day when we were honored with the visit from Charles Marcus
and Ray Lansing, I bolstered my disinterest with a glowing and
somewhat detailed account of the virtues of the Chilton starter
and was somewhat taken aback by Charles Marcus’s suave remark that
Aeromarine had infringed an Eclipse patent involving the fundamentals
of the Bendix drive. Marcus doubted that Eclipse could let Aeromarine
live at all, and his inference was that I should shift my enthusiasm
over to the Army-type starter.
Patents, I now pointed out, were outside the jurisdiction of the
Engine Section. If Eclipse elected to make trouble for us, that
was their privilege. If, however, they wanted to make our kind of
starters, that was also their privilege. The patent matter could
be left to the courts. I noticed an intent expression on Charley
Marcus’s face.
“Commander,” he said quietly, “your approach is new to us and we may
find it difficult to conform at first, but from the point of view of
development and the public interest, it looks so sound to us, we’ll
play the game your way.”
The Eclipse Machine Company did play the game our way. They
developed a new starter for the Lawrance radial, and when, on its
first installation down at Pensacola, it developed the usual bugs,
the company moved most of its shopmen down to the air station and
campaigned the trouble so enthusiastically that they made more
character out of their defects than Aeromarine gained out of its
satisfactory equipment.
When, after several years, the patent matter finally came to trial,
the examiner for the court remarked that he could not recall a
similar case but thought everyone’s interests had been well served,
as a result of the Bureau policy, and especially so the interests of
the public.
Another perennial problem was spark plugs. It was almost incredible
how sensitive such little things could be. One might think that
the manufacturers should long ago have discovered all the secrets
of such a simple device, and reduced the product to some degree of
standardization. But everything in aviation was so high-strung, every
device so sensitive, it seemed that just changing one minor dimension
of a standard nut or bolt set in motion a whole chain reaction of
troubles. Pressing always for higher power on lower weight, we
created more and more troubles for ourselves. In this field we
came to lean on the BG plug, and on Roy Hurley, its salesman, who
was responsive to our suggestions and worked hard to improve his
product. Mr. Goldsmith, the proprietor of the company, and a jewelry
manufacturer, had turned to making spark plugs during World War I and
now subordinated his other interests to doing a good job for aviation.
And so we fired away, searching for better accessories of every
kind—a new fuel pump here, imported from France perhaps by Jimmy
Diamond—a new carburetor there, produced by Stromberg under the wise
direction of Leonard S. Hobbs—a new fuel developed by competing
oil companies and fortified by Ethyl under the direction of Dr.
Graham Edgar, of the Ethyl Corporation, and so on to cover the whole
field. And in the process we began collecting a little group of
sales engineers like Roy Hurley, Luke Hobbs, Tom Fagan, Ray Lansing,
and others, men to whom we passed on the demands of the operating
squadrons and with whom we connived to beat Old Man Trouble. To
facilitate operations, we urged these key technicians to visit
the flying units and get the word at first hand. We brought them
into close contact with George Mead, of Wright, Arthur Nutt, of
Curtiss, and Lionel Woolson, of Packard; and we keyed them in with
our competitors out at McCook Field, so that we finally had a team
of competitive yet cooperative agents, all working for the cause of
dependable and durable power plants.
And behind our day-to-day jobs of trouble shooting on the accessory
front, we had the major problem of engine development. Wright
Aero, in order to earn the money with which to carry on their own
experimental and development work, must first generate a reasonable
volume of steady profitable business. This meant that we, and others,
must buy enough airplanes to create the demand for new engines. But
before we could do this, the airplanes must have been conceived,
created, and tested. A number of aircraft had already been built
around the air-cooled radial, among them the Chance Vought UO and the
Curtiss TS, but the total was hardly impressive. Then Wright got a
real break when it found a new home in Reuben Fleet’s Consolidated
Army training plane.
Fleet, a former major in the Army Air Service, had created a new
company up in Buffalo which he called Consolidated Aircraft, and
had designed and built a new type of training plane. Using the
welded-steel tubular construction introduced to the United States by
Anthony Fokker, the Dutch manufacturer, Fleet had created an airplane
that was easy to build, easy to maintain and, more important,
extraordinarily safe. His welded-steel fuselages, unlike the old
stick-and-wire type of the Army Jenny or its Navy counterpart, the
N-9, wouldn’t splinter all to pieces in a crack-up nor punch holes
in the ribs of hapless student aviators. The Army had tested the
plane extensively and with such outstanding success that Fleet felt
impelled to try to sell it to the Navy with obvious advantages to all
parties.
This decision in itself was perhaps indicative of the audacity of
one of aviation’s immortal enterprisers, for none knew better than
Reuben Fleet what the handicaps were; as a former procurement officer
at McCook Field, Fleet had played the old Army-Navy game hard. And
it took a swashbuckler like Fleet to dare intimate that anything
designed for the Army could be worth hell-room to the Navy. And he
probably would not have got to first base either, save that he had
been smart enough to use the air-cooled radial Wright instead of the
war-surplus Hispano engine. The Engine Section, at least, could be
expected to favor the adoption of the Army PT, in order to increase
the use of the air-cooled engines. And Reuben Fleet was right on that
score.
But there were formidable obstacles. Naval air training was centered
at the Air Station, Pensacola, Florida, where the N-9 seaplane was
well established as a local favorite. Nearly every pilot in the Navy
had qualified on it and now cherished for it the affection of a kid
for his first pony. In order to keep the ancient aircraft flying,
the station had built up an assembly and repair department manned
entirely by civilians from the town of Pensacola—skilled carpenters,
riggers, and fabric workers, fully competent to overhaul the
stick-and-wire N-9’s. As a matter of fact, they could build them new
from the ground up, and this was where the rub lay. After an airplane
had been washed out in a crack-up, it was supposed to be stricken
from the list, an action that in due course would have absorbed all
the war surplus and led to new construction. But at Pensacola, there
were no washouts. In the local jargon, they just “jacked up the
number plate and built a new airplane under it.”
And so in addition to the natural reluctance of the old-timers to
make a change in type, there was the powerful vested interest of
the Pensacola workmen. This fact, however, was never brought into
the open. It appeared rather that the Consolidated NY had a nasty
flying characteristic, probably inherited from its Army ancestry: it
possessed an “abnormal spin” as compared with the N-9. If the “good
old N-9” lost flying speed and stalled, it whipped suddenly into a
spinning nose dive that would lead to a crash if the pilot did what
came naturally and opened his throttle. If, however, he “cut the
gun” and dived to regain flying speed, he could recover control.
The object of much of the student’s early training was to get him
to disobey that impulse and cut the gun in a spin. This, to our
old-timers, was a “normal spin.”
The trouble with the Consolidated NY was that it was difficult
to make it spin at all, and equally difficult to get it out of a
true spin. The old-timers, passing over the obvious advantage of
reluctance to spin at all, and the priceless benefit of a fuselage
that could not splinter and poke holes in a pilot, now stressed
the disadvantages of the new plane; how could you teach a pilot to
get out of a spin if you couldn’t get him into one? To combat this
argument and get the plane adopted so as to increase production of
new Wright air-cooled engines was the task of the Engine Section. And
the cockpit for the final contest was Admiral Moffett’s corner office
and a meeting of what was called officially a “Bureau conference.” In
the course of several contests here, I had begun to learn some of the
ins and outs.
As the heads of divisions and chiefs of sections of BUAERO flocked
into the admiral’s office that morning, each one took up his position
more or less according to rank; that is, with captains and commanders
on the admiral’s right. This suited me because I had come to learn
that the discussion worked downward according to rank and that
sometimes the last fellow to speak might turn the tide, especially
if he could present some reasonable compromise. I knew, of course,
that every man in the room had previously buttonholed the Old Man
in an effort to sell his own bill of goods in advance, but that the
admiral, who knew nothing about engineering and wanted to know even
less, would now stimulate acrimonious discussion and draw his own
conclusions from the discomfiture he saw on one man’s face or the
triumph he observed on another.
And as the contest raged this particular morning, everyone knew the
real issue, including the admiral, but no one mentioned it. Argument
and discussion raged about every irrelevant aspect, but everyone
ducked the matter of Pensacola’s vested interest. After a long while
the admiral turned to me.
“Hasn’t the Engine Section anything to offer?” he asked, well knowing
that of course it had.
“Well, sir,” I replied, “I’m afraid we’re too much an interested
party to bear weight here. We think that the adoption of the
Consolidated would lead to faster engine development and that this
fact alone would justify a favorable decision.” The admiral didn’t
bat an eye.
“If you’ve got a suggestion,” he said, “don’t be afraid to let us
have it.”
“Well, sir,” I went on, “it seems to me that what this conference
must decide is this: what do we really want to do—train pilots, or
kill them?” There wasn’t a sound in the room. The admiral glanced
from face to face and then stood up.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “if that’s your decision, it’s agreeable
to me. But remember now,” he added, “I’ll expect every officer in the
Bureau to pitch in and make this Consolidated airplane a success.”
As the conferees filed out through the door, I noticed the admiral
watching me and detected the quick jerk of his head that signaled me
to lag behind. He struck a match and took two puffs at his pipe.
“There’s a lot going on around here,” he remarked, using the very
words with which he had received me the morning I reported to him. “I
can’t keep track of all of it,” he added, and then with a grin that
drew down the tight corners of his mouth, “keep your eyes open. If
you see anything you think needs handling, take care of it, whether
or not it comes under your department.”
As we moved toward the door the admiral caught my elbow.
“That fellow Mitchell is on the rampage again,” he said. “The Army
has decided to order him to Texas to get him out of Washington. But
he’ll break out at the worst time, wherever he is.” He struck another
match and took two reflective puffs on his pipe.
“Keep your eye on him,” he concluded, “and be ready to lend a hand
with the counterpublicity.”
CHAPTER SIX
What the Doctor Ordered
The “Affair Fleet,” as the celebrated episode of the Consolidated
training plane came to be called in BUAERO, not only marked the
advancement of the Engine Section from the limited environment of
trouble-shooting into the more intricate realms of Bureau politics,
but it also forecast our early graduation into the more creative
field of aircraft engine development. And this important transition
dated from a visit to the Engine Section by an aircraft manufacturer,
Chance Milton Vought, president of the Chance Vought Corporation,
of Long Island City, New York, a man with a waxed moustache and a
fertile brain from which sprang the idea that touched off a chain
reaction destined to alter the whole course of aviation.
Chance Vought was perhaps the most colorful of the unique
personalities who made up the “airplane trade” as differentiated
from the “engine trade.” Unlike Glenn L. Martin, whose tastes then
inclined to rather dressy suits, Chance favored the tweedy look. With
dark hair and eyebrows and his blond moustache, he was our example of
sartorial perfection—except upon certain occasions.
After he had about completed one contract and had begun to feel
the pressing need for another, he would make his appearance in the
Bureau in a dilapidated tweed suit, under a moth-eaten coonskin coat,
wearing a lean and hungry look, and talking very poor. At least he
tried to make his look lean and hungry, but behind the façade still
shone the dapper first-nighter of Keith’s Palace Theatre. Of course
everyone was wise to the act, and since Chance himself was one of the
wisest, he knew they were, and the recurrence of the cycle of poverty
had become a source of amusement tending to soften up whatever sales
resistance might develop.
This was a period of one-man organizations, when a Don Douglas, a
Dutch Kindleberger, a Tony Fokker, or an Igor Sikorsky carried
under the crown of his hat all there was to know about aircraft
engineering. Most of these men dealt with the Design Section, located
in larger quarters up the corridor from the Engine Section, but as
time passed, and especially after the “Affair Fleet,” others like
Claire Egtvedt, of the Boeing Company, out in Seattle, and Chance
Vought began filtering into the Engine Section. And now as Chance
slid through our door, rigged out in his tramp regalia, the Section
gathered around my desk for a little plain and fancy kidding.
Although the room was warm, Chance was too much the showman to offer
to take off the coat. Instead, he posed his question.
“What’s cooking?” he inquired, biting his waxed moustache.
“Nothing’s cooking,” I countered. “In fact, I can report ‘eight
o’clock lights and galley fires out’ like any other good sailor.”
Chance grinned. “I’m running out of work,” he said, “and if I can’t
get a new contract soon I’ll have to close up shop.”
Henry Mullinix shook his head as he put in his oar. “Mr. Vought,” he
said, “you must know that your little UO, once the sweetest little
job in the air, has now become so overloaded it can hardly stagger
off a catapult. Surely you don’t expect the Bureau to buy any more
trucks like that?”
Chance bristled with indignation. “It’s the Bureau’s own fault,” he
snorted. “They’ve added everything to it from automatic toilets to
hot and cold running radios.”
Ricco Botta added his salt to the wound. “It’s still a kluck,” he
said, “no matter how you alibi it.”
As Chance opened his mouth to retort, I gave him the _coup de grâce_.
“Fact is, you’ve come to the end of your rope. If you want to do more
business with this Bureau,” I concluded, “you may as well make up
your mind to create something new.”
Chance sat silent, fingering his moustache. “Do you really mean
that?” he inquired.
“We’re your friends,” I replied. Chance sat quietly as if debating
his next course, and then, having made up his mind, he sprang a
bombshell.
“All right, my friends,” he said with a smile, “I’ve got a new
airplane on the boards—one that will set the world on fire. But the
new airplane calls for a new engine; I want three hundred and fifty
real horsepower but on an engine weight of not over 650 pounds.
If the Engine Section will give me that, I’ll give the Bureau the
world’s best airplane.”
The room became very still; all kidding had fled right out the
window. Chance had passed the buck right back to the Engine Section;
he’d written the prescription for a new power plant. And furthermore
we realized he was absolutely right in his choice of size; the Wright
200 air-cooled, which by now was being called the “Whirlwind,” was
only a zephyr. The Wright 400-hp P-2, later named the “Cyclone,”
was overweight for Chance. Something about halfway between seemed
to be the answer, and Chance had called the turn. The catapults on
the battleships and cruisers, together with their hoisting gear and
other equipment, had been designed to handle a limited weight, and
this, in turn, controlled the size of our new airplane. The weight
of the engine determined the final all-up weight of the aircraft,
and the power output was dictated by the necessity for getting the
plane up to flying speed before it reached the end of the catapult.
And while there was no such limitation on aircraft carriers, like
the new _Lexington_ and _Saratoga_, then building in the shipyards,
the over-all size of the airplanes would determine the number each
carrier might line up on her flight deck. The Vought prescription
would also lead to a new type of fighter, smaller than anything
around the P-2 but with higher performance.
Better still, Chance Vought’s new engine seemed to lie within the
realm of possibility. The 200-hp Whirlwind had a cylinder volume of
some 800 cubic inches; the bigger Cyclone, at 450 hp, had about 1,650
cubic inches. A Wright engine just between these two might displace
about 1,200 cubic inches, and conceivably be made to develop 350
horsepower. Chance had put the job up to us and we would put it up to
Wright.
“All right, Chance,” I said soberly enough, “you go on back to Long
Island and start work; we’ll get your engine for you.” Chance Vought
relaxed and grinned back at me.
“Meanwhile,” he inquired, “what will I do to keep the shop open?”
“Go call on Commander Kraus, over in Procurement,” I replied. “Tell
him about this discussion. Maybe he can scrape up an order for enough
UO’s to keep you ticking.”
As soon as Chance had left the room, I telephoned Charlie Lawrance
and Guy Vaughan, of Wright Aero, and asked them to take the midnight
train down for a conference the next day. They were not too
enthusiastic at first, fearing that a completely new engine on top of
their already heavy load might break them down. But we compromised
on a proposal to scale the P-2 model down to about 1,200 inches
displacement, without undertaking a completely new design. This was
not so crazy as it might sound, for while you couldn’t scale an
engine up with any hope of success, you could scale it down if you
were willing to accept a few compromises on weight. We were willing
and Wright was agreeable. Thus was born the Wright R-1200, or Simoon,
an engine that, though it never went into production, still had its
impact on naval aviation.
The reason why it never got into production appeared nearly a year
later in the person of Mr. Frederick B. Rentschler, former president
of Wright Aeronautical Corporation, who walked in on us one morning
carrying a dilapidated cowhide brief case and looking even thinner
than when I had first met him on that visit with Bruce Leighton, a
year earlier. I recalled that in his argument with Leighton over
air-cooled versus liquid-cooled he had shown dogged singleness of
purpose and ability to reason logically. He had resigned from the
presidency of Wright Aero shortly afterward, and for reasons which I
had not learned. Now he began to tell me.
It seemed there had been some disagreement on financial policy
between him and Dick Hoyt, chairman of the board. Hoyt had wanted
to declare a dividend out of earnings from the Army contract for
Hispano H engines; Rentschler had insisted on retaining earnings
for investment in engineering development. Finally Rentschler had
resigned. It had been rumored that he and Hoyt had disagreed over
the acquisition by Wright of the Lawrance engine, but Rentschler
now made no reference to this. After his resignation from Wright he
had intended going back to Hamilton, Ohio, to his father’s foundry
business, the firm of Hooven, Owens, Rentschler. His father had been
certain that the aviation business held no future, but aviation had
got into his blood. During a spell in the hospital, he had made up
his mind to stay in the game and had given consideration to what he
might do to help out.
It was his considered opinion that we needed more competition than we
could possibly get under present circumstances. The Curtiss company
had no serious interest in air-cooled engines; on the contrary, they
were committed to liquid-cooled. Wright, he thought, was unlikely
to progress as rapidly as we required, especially under its present
management. He knew the inside thinking of both Curtiss and Wright,
and was certain that an ultimate merger of the two companies was
not an impossibility; as a matter of fact, if the Wright air-cooled
engine got threatening, Curtiss might move toward merger and control.
The import of his remark was not lost on the Engine Section.
For in taking the decision to support the air-cooled program in
competition with the more advanced liquid-cooled development, we
had counted heavily on competition in private industry as the
vital spark. This merger idea, somewhat new in that era of private
initiative, was of course wholly unexpected by such business amateurs
as then comprised the Engine Section. The threat to our whole
air-cooled program was so immediate, however, that we listened with
rapt attention to our visitor.
He now proposed to organize a company to design and construct
air-cooled aircraft engines for the Bureau. He had interested the
Niles Tool Company in his project, and had their approval to his
taking over certain vacant loft areas in the huge plant of the Pratt
and Whitney Tool Company, of Hartford, Connecticut. That company,
having expanded its facilities to meet excess demands in World War
I, now rented the extra space for use as a tobacco warehouse. He had
received assurances as to the necessary capital; Pratt and Whitney
had idle funds it could advance to a new enterprise willing to
rent its excess facilities. The company had extra machine tools and
trained supervision and Hartford was a fine labor market for the
machinists and craftsmen so necessary for precise aircraft-engine
production. He proposed to select a small group of the most
experienced engineers and production men in the business and to build
around this nucleus the best organization in aviation. Competition
from such a group would give the Navy the superior engines it so
badly needed.
As Rentschler completed his airtight proposal, I was struck by the
sheer logic of his presentation. He’d apparently thought it all
through and made himself letter perfect. But there was one big
drawback which I now pointed out to him.
We would welcome competition, but current appropriations would hardly
support Wright Aeronautical, let alone a new company. We had tried
to make such progress through good leadership as might approximate
the benefits of strong competition, and had so far succeeded fairly
well. Wright Aeronautical had spared no efforts to make dependable
air-cooled engines, but Curtiss had not been pushing their R-1454.
This had left us with but one source of supply and made us vulnerable
to criticism by Congressional investigation, which might charge us
with supporting a monopoly. This took us into the field of policy,
which was the province of the chief of Bureau, so we decided that
perhaps we had best put the proposal before him.
When we were ushered into the admiral’s sunny corner office, I
noticed a newspaperman, George S. Wheat, sitting in one of the
easy chairs. Quite a crony of the admiral’s, he had worked for
Wright Aeronautical back in the period when Rentschler had been its
president. I now associated him, therefore, with Wright, and was
somewhat surprised when he made no move to leave the room. It didn’t
occur to me at the time that he might be a part of Rentschler’s
approach to the subject of the new company, and I didn’t learn the
facts until years later. Then George confessed that Rentschler, prior
to invading my office, had inquired about the new chief of the Engine
Section, and that George had described me as an opinionated somebody
who apparently knew where he was going. But in Admiral Moffett’s
office that morning, suspecting no connection between the two men, I
plunged into my statement.
The admiral listened attentively until I had finished and then made a
quick decision.
“This Bureau,” he began, “is wide open to criticism for supporting
an engine monopoly. We know it isn’t so, but that won’t prevent
our being smeared by headlines. I realize we haven’t the necessary
appropriations, but you leave that to me; I’ll wangle them out of
Congress. If you can work out anything reasonable with these men, go
ahead; I’ll approve whatever you recommend.”
As I turned to go, the admiral called me back. Some time earlier
he had instructed me to prepare a statement for his presentation
to a Congressional committee in support of his proposal to junk
the war-surplus Liberties and Hispanos and buy new engines. I had
given him a rather technical treatise, pointing out the superior
aerodynamic performance to be had with the new engines. This he had
promptly tossed back in my lap with a remark that Congress had no
interest in performance; they wanted to save cash. Now that incident
came to his mind and he inquired if I had made any progress.
“Yes, sir,” I replied, “I’ve looked up the records and found that
it costs about a thousand dollars to convert an old Liberty into
one incorporating all the new changes. After that we can get
seventy-five-hours flying time out of it before we have to put in
another converted one. For three hundred hours flying time, we
spend four thousand dollars on conversions. Meanwhile we can get a
new Wright Whirlwind for about the same money and run it for three
hundred hours without overhaul.” The admiral smiled.
“That’s more like it,” he said. “Even I can understand that kind of
engineering, and so can a Congressman. It’s cheaper to scrap junk
than try to save it!”
“Exactly,” I replied.
“Well,” the admiral smiled, as he waved us out the door, “see if you
can dream up something like that on this new engine.”
When our party returned to the Engine Section, we gathered once
more around my desk. Rentschler asked what size engine we thought
he should build and I gave him the background of the Wright R-1200
Simoon, especially the basis on which Chance Vought had written the
prescription. However, I intimated, Wright had been working on that
nearly a year and might have a prohibitive head start.
Rentschler wasn’t so sure; Wright had a heavy load with two new
engines and the task of developing the third, the Whirlwind. A good
engineering outfit, with no production problems and only one project,
ought go places; starting off with a clean sheet of paper and no
commitments as to old tools or techniques, they might even have the
advantage. But they must be sure of their basic design principles.
The Wright R-1200, a scaled-down P-2, would suffer certain handicaps
inherent in the process; the new engine might generate the 350
horsepower on less weight.
It looked to me as though they should try the other way around.
Keeping the 650-pound weight Chance had specified, they might put
their advantage into greater power. Any airplane man would snap at
this advantage and thus become an ally. Furthermore, it seemed to
me, if by clever design the new company could build more cylinder
capacity into the engine and still keep the specified weight, and if
by cylinder refinement they could take out more power for each cubic
inch of displacement, they might gain an outstanding advantage. This,
in turn, might compensate for some of the time advantage Wright had
already gained.
This idea seemed to enlist just a tinge of enthusiasm from
Rentschler, who was most serious and calculating. Doing a job seemed
a fetish with him and he lacked humor where business was concerned.
He moved now to the question of an experimental contract. Since we
had given one to Wright Aero for the R-1200 Simoon, he presumed, of
course, we would do as much for him.
This was a matter on which I had to throw cold water. Wright, I
informed Rentschler, was a going concern complete with management,
production facilities, engineering, and experience. His new company
was still but a figment of his own imagination and I could not
recommend to Kraus that he risk public funds in support of anything
so ephemeral. Admiral Moffett had earlier obtained an appropriation
of $90,000 from Congress for an experimental engine. The best I could
do for Rentschler was to earmark the fund and hold it in reserve for
his project. If he built an engine that fulfilled our requirements,
the fund would be available to help compensate him; after that the
engine would stand on the same basis as the Wright—the best job would
take the business.
After this statement, Rentschler sat a long while in thought. I could
see he was greatly disappointed.
“Well,” he said finally, “if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it
is, but I think you’re pretty tough with me.”
I didn’t agree with him. The moment a contractor accepted a contract
with the government he was obliged to grant his customer some control
over the project. Such a division of authority was bound to slow a
development and might even compromise its integrity. But as long as
the contractor risked only his own money, then he had full authority
over how he spent it, and no one could interfere. Furthermore, in
this case, time was of the essence even more than usual, and when a
contractor is wasting his own money and time, he is less complacent
about it than if it belongs to Uncle Sam. The medicine might look
bitter to Rentschler, but in the long run it must prove more
effective. And more important than all, the moment he began risking
his own funds for our advantage we inherited a moral responsibility
to give him every reasonable assistance—and this we did.
From that date forward, Rentschler made it a point to visit the
Bureau from week to week to keep us advised of progress. His first
surprise was the news that he had collected a small group of men,
mostly drawn from Wright Aero, as the nucleus of his organization;
and he had shown rare judgment in picking the ablest of them. There
was Don Brown from the shop, Andy Willgoos and George Mead from
engineering, Jack Borrup and Charles Marks on the tooling side, and
so on, to include upwards of a dozen really competent men. The impact
on Wright Aero would prove severe and replacements would be hard to
find.
George Mead arrived in Washington early in June on a day when my
wife and I had planned to run over to Annapolis for the June Week
exercises—we had first met there and loved the little town. Going
back and forth in the car, George and I first discussed the design
principles for the new engine. Of course the enclosed valve gear
and rotary induction of the R-1454 were musts, but we rejected that
engine’s arrangement of accessories on the front end; we would tuck
ours on the rear out of the salt spray. We would split the crankshaft
in two pieces, as George had done on an earlier engine, and would
divide the crankcase similarly. As we talked, George sketched the
ideas on the back of an envelope and captioned them in his precise
printed letters. Later, we found some of our principles had already
been used in the British Bristol Jupiter, but for the moment we
glowed with the enthusiasm of creators of a new art.
Later, as the summer wore on and our engine problems eased up,
storm clouds appeared in another quarter. The Engine Section had as
one of its problems the Packard installation in the rigid airship
_Shenandoah_. Lighter-than-air had always been the admiral’s pet
hobby and we had spent a lot of effort on two jobs: preventing the
cooling water from freezing, and recovering water from the engine
exhaust to compensate for the expenditure of fuel. This, in turn,
avoided the need for valving precious helium gas—a critical factor in
lighter-than-air.
The chief engineer of the _Shenandoah_, Edgar W. Sheppard, was an
extremely able young lieutenant, who had served as my Number Two at
Great Lakes, and who now spent considerable time with us. From him I
learned disturbing things about the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst,
headquarters for the rigids _Shenandoah_ and _Los Angeles_.
In response to the criticism Billy Mitchell had leveled at the
Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations had scheduled a number of
western flights in the _Shenandoah_ for public relations purposes.
Prominent people and news writers had already been taken on junkets,
but the expedition scheduled for late August and early September
seemed correlated with the country fairs all over the West—and just
at the peak of thunderstorm activity. If there was one thing a
lighter-than-air pilot disliked, it was thunderstorms—and for good
reason. But the pilots had not dared make public confession of their
fear, lest they betray a weakness of lighter-than-air that might
retard its development. And so they gritted their teeth and tried to
suppress the jitters that kept them all on edge.
And now, as the _Shenandoah_ departed on her fateful cruise, all of
us in BUAERO followed her with anxious hearts. Suddenly a telegram
sent from a town in Ohio by one of her crew brought shocking news
of one of the greatest disasters in history. Turbulent currents of
a line squall had sheared the girders of the great silver ship and
split her into three sections. Parts had been free-ballooned to
safety, but many of the crew had lost their lives, among them Edgar
Sheppard. The ship had broken under his feet; in falling he had
seized a girder and held on, 6,000 feet in the air. One of his men,
hanging on precariously nearby, had called to him. When Shep extended
the helping hand, his own girder failed and he fell to his death.
There had been no parachutes. The whole Bureau was stunned.
And then lightning struck in another place. From down in San Antonio,
Texas, where Brig. Gen. William G. Mitchell, USA, had been exiled
to keep him quiet, newspaper headlines trumpeted charges at both
the Army and Navy—charges of “treasonable neglect.” The front-page
news struck the public like a clap of thunder, and the battle for
the separate air force was on in earnest. In BUAERO the whole staff
rallied around Admiral Moffett, and embers that had so long smoldered
now flamed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Calvin Coolidge’s Town Meeting
Billy Mitchell, handsome, dynamic, fast on the draw, and breathing
the spirit of the offensive, personified the knight of the air of
World War I. An outstanding pilot, a bold horseman, a soldier’s
soldier, a courageous crusader, he was the newsman’s dream of
dramatic copy. And now he assumed the lead in public opinion with the
same _sang froid_ he had displayed flying Number One of the First
American Air Force on its first flight over the St. Mihiel Salient.
With a fine sense of timing, he did that thing which every American
longs to do—he told off his superiors in no uncertain terms, and
with such sheer audacity that he almost got away with it. The public
supported him from the start; it looked like a sure thing for his
independent air force. Save for certain strategic errors, he would
have won in a glide.
By seizing upon the crash of the great rigid airship _Shenandoah_
as his take-off signal, Mitchell accepted the risk attendant upon
hitting the Navy while it was down. And since lighter-than-air craft
had become the personal hobby, and public responsibility, of Rear
Adm. William A. Moffett, Mitchell made an implacable enemy of a man
who, in the public mind, was no less devoted to the cause of aviation
than Mitchell himself. And so, when Bill Mitchell sang out, “Tally
Ho!” and started his power dive on Billy Moffett’s tail, he suddenly
found himself in a dogfight with an opponent quite as wiley as the
famous German Baron von Richthofen. Even this was a calculated risk
and might not have brought Mitchell down. It was Mitchell’s attack
on the Army that made him vulnerable. For while the Army might
view with tolerant amusement Mitchell’s assault on the Navy, it
could not countenance insubordination in its own ranks; mutiny is
inherently an unpardonable sin. Mitchell may have made a fatal error
in not resigning his commission before charging his seniors with
“treasonable neglect.” By such action he could have martyred himself
in the public eye and at the same time avoided the court-martial that
finally convicted him without having to let the independent-air-force
issue influence the trial. As it was, certain of his seniors, notably
the then Chief of Staff, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who would one day
use the Air Force to gain victory in the Pacific, seemed at the time
fairly to lick their chops as they assembled to convict General
Mitchell.
Over on the Navy side were many naval aviators who had suffered the
same frustrations that had aroused Mitchell to a frenzy against
the Army. Feeling themselves hamstrung by naval conservatism, they
too believed their only hope for advancing their beloved aviation
lay in a new deal all around. But steeped as they all were in the
ancient tradition of the West Point-Annapolis football feud, their
first reaction was to defend their Navy, and the second was to rally
around their chief, Admiral Moffett. For General Mitchell to expect
aid from them under the circumstances would have been something like
a Hatfield trying to induce a McCoy to join up on a squirrel shoot,
while the feudin’ and the fightin’ were at a climax. As it was,
Admiral Moffett kept his hotheads in line, including a few who openly
favored the separate air force.
Meanwhile Mitchell’s quick kick took the Navy high command completely
by surprise. And as the political football sailed end over end toward
the Navy goal, the only receiver ready was Admiral Moffett. A good
open-field runner himself, he was about to take the ball over his
shoulder on the dead run and might have sped to a touchdown save that
his teammates blocked him out. The Navy strategists decided not to
dignify Mitchell with any public recognition; they would just refuse
to play.
But in BUAERO, every typewriter began tapping out retaliatory
releases for the admiral. In spite of urgings by the latter, the
Secretary staunchly refused to comment on the Mitchell attack, even
as the press clamored for a reply. It was not until several days had
passed that the admiral finally succeeded in drawing a reluctant
consent to his own response. Then permission was granted only with
the express condition that the admiral should reply on his own
account and own responsibility.
Approval came at noon on a Saturday. By then the Bureau had closed
for the day and, in addition to the admiral, only two of us remained
aboard. One was the admiral’s faithful colored messenger, Brown, the
other, myself. We were waiting for the admiral in the anteroom to
his office when he steamed through the door under full power. On the
desk lay a copy of a statement I had drawn up for him. Seizing this,
the admiral scrawled across the bottom a blunt postscript, calling
William Mitchell a liar and ascribing his recent charges either to
hallucinations or delusions of grandeur.
I cut the mimeograph stencil for him on his secretary’s typewriter.
Brown ran off the copies on a machine across the hall. The admiral
waited impatiently until they were done, and then, seizing me by
the arm, hustled me out of the building and into my car. We drove
uptown to the offices of the Associated and United Press, where the
admiral himself handed his statement across the counter to astonished
reporters.
The statement hit the front pages of the New York papers. Its
publication released all the ancient grudges and conflicts in
aviation dating as far back as World War I. The old “airplane
scandal” was dragged out and dusted off by crank inventors, claiming
they had been robbed of their patents. The cry of “air trust”
echoed through the halls of Congress and counsels of investigating
committees, scenting headlines, began trying to get into the act.
Up to that moment some twenty-odd inquiries had been held on what
to do about aviation. With surprising agreement they had all
supported certain concrete recommendations; without exception they
had been promptly consigned to the ninth pigeonhole—the one next the
wastebasket. In 1924, during the excitement over the controversy
between the proponents of the airplane and the supporters of the
battleship, a Congressional committee, under the chairmanship of
Congressman Lampert, had found that aviation, instead of being
stifled by a “trust” was dying of neglect. The United States lacked
both a policy for aviation and the legislation necessary to implement
it.
The new controversy revived the ancient cry of “profiteer” against
manufacturers, already reduced to hungry remnants of a once highly
productive group. These now got together in their aeronautical
chamber of commerce and sent a delegation to call on the Secretaries
of War and Navy to urge that the two departments join in requesting
the President to appoint a presidential advisory commission to look
into the whole question. At the invitation of the President himself,
they later went to the White House to support this recommendation.
The President, who had always shown a Yankee sense of orderliness
and a willingness to accept responsibility for the conduct of his
administration, had been disturbed by the unseemly brawl. He now made
no attempt to deny Mitchell the privilege of stating his case to the
public, but since the charges reflected upon his own administration,
he accepted the industry’s proposal as a good way to sift them
out. He approved the idea of a sort of New England town meeting on
aviation.
His first step was to summon his wise and good friend, Dwight Morrow,
and his second was to invite him to head up the inquiry. He then
selected a group of men whose standing would warrant public support
but was careful not to include anyone who had an ax to grind. The
Commission included men from civil life who possessed knowledge of
aviation, men from Congress who had had experience in the field,
and men from the Army and Navy whose judgment would command public
respect and confidence as did that of all other members.
Two of the members, Howard Coffin and William F. Durant, were
engineers. From the armed forces were drawn Maj. Gen. James G.
Harbord and Adm. Frank J. Fletcher, both retired after distinguished
public careers. From Congress came three men, Senator Hiram Bingham,
of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, himself a military aviator;
James S. Parker, of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign
Commerce; and Congressman Carl Vinson, of the House Committee on
Naval Affairs, a Democrat and a man destined to play a statesman’s
role in the nation’s security. With Circuit Judge Arthur C. Dennison,
Dwight Morrow, the chairman, completed a compact panel well
constituted for the task in hand.
The Morrow Board held numerous public sessions and heard over a
hundred witnesses present a wide assortment of views and opinions.
Against the background of the Mitchell charges, the hearings received
public attention and were widely discussed in editorial columns.
Comment by the press was strongly favorable to the Mitchell cause and
to all outward appearances, the general seemed on the way to victory.
Behind the scenes, the Morrow Board studied the many records of
previous inquiries, and by sifting them carefully was able to bring
its own investigation to a close in about ninety days.
Over in BUAERO, we burned the midnight oil preparing the admiral’s
testimony. The spadework consisted in assembling the answers to
specific questions propounded by the Morrow Board. Such questions
were farmed out to different branches of the Bureau and then
assembled for final study. Final editing of these comments fell to
Lieutenant Commander Du Bose and myself but the larger issues were
debated all over the Bureau. The interested parties were pretty well
consolidated in opposition to the independent-air-force proposal, but
they were divided almost equally on another organization question:
should the admiral favor the formation of a corps of aviators,
generally similar to the highly regarded United States Marine Corps?
In support of this idea, many of the old-timers worked hard on the
admiral right up to the night before the Old Man was scheduled to
appear before the Board. Then as we gathered around the long table
for his final decisions, with that important subject all that
remained to be agreed upon, I put it up to the admiral.
“Sir,” I said, “here is a question that can’t be straddled.”
The admiral twisted nervously in his chair. Strong pressure had
been brought to bear on him by the leading old-timers, men whose
friendship he regarded highly, and, politician that he was, he would
have given almost anything to be able to accommodate them. But
underneath this issue lay certain fundamentals on which he had strong
convictions.
He had gone to sea in the old days when the Engineer Corps and the
line officers had fought so bitterly in the ancient feud between the
“black gang” and the “deck force” that the service had been shaken
to its foundations. As the only way out of an impossible situation,
the Department had finally amalgamated the conflicting forces by
absorbing the engineers into the line. The admiral, recognizing the
need for specialization, was firmly convinced that it should be had
without putting the specialists in a separate corps where corps
loyalties might transcend loyalty to the service. Now he had to face
that issue alone; there could be no agreement within his Bureau and
this time he could not induce them to persuade him to do what he
wanted.
“You are all my friends,” he said, lifting his hand in a gesture to
include all present, “and I’m sorry not to go along with some of you.
The young pilots,” he added, “will think I’ve let them down. But the
time will come when they will thank me.” He paused, and then with
greater earnestness than I had ever heard in his voice, he concluded,
“I’d rather see those kids dead than inflict on them the misery I
suffered along with everyone else in the old days of deck force
versus black gang.”
Suddenly his face brightened as he said with a smile, “Hell, we
won’t secede from the Navy. If we are half as good as we think we
are, we’ll take it over!” Years later, when “Duke” Ramsey, Forrest
Sherman, and Arthur Radford, some of his “boys,” occupied the seats
of the mighty, I recalled this comment.
Next morning, while the admiral testified at the hearings, I sat at
my desk in the Engine Section, trying to concentrate on neglected
paper work. But up there in that committee room, decisive events were
taking place. The admiral was not impressive on the witness stand
of a formal hearing; his strength lay in the give and take of the
informal conference. He had little patience with the measured logic
of a man like Fred Rentschler; though his own conclusions might
derive from similar processes, his brain acted like chain lightning.
What looked like snap judgment might have been thought through, but
he was too impatient to develop the process for others. Now he would
be sitting up there before a solemn board, facing a press table of
partisan commentators sold on the Mitchell doctrine, and surrounded
by all the high dignitaries of the Navy Department, from Secretary
Wilbur and Admiral Hughes, the Chief of Naval Operations, down to
Bureau chiefs like himself, most of whom feared he might sell out the
Navy and go over to the Mitchell side.
For this had been a trying period for the Navy. Following the
Armistice, public opinion had favored the idea of peace through
disarmament and the Limitation of Arms Conference had all but
emasculated the service. Then the spectacular air attacks engineered
by General Mitchell had put the Navy further on the defensive. No
one in the high command had developed a flair for public relations
and now with Billy Mitchell on the offensive, the Navy had its back
against the wall. Much of the enmity aroused by Mitchell’s attack now
turned inward to BUAERO and even Admiral Moffett. Yet up there before
the Morrow Board, if the Old Man would just stick to his testimony
as we had written it and not start ad-libbing, he would come out all
right. If, however, he deviated it, some hawk like Congressman Carl
Vinson, of Georgia, one of the best informed men in Congress, would
dive on him at terminal speed.
Then, a little before noon, the admiral himself walked into the
Engine Section and slumped down in his chair. All jauntiness was
gone; he looked tired.
“They tell me I made a mess of it,” he said simply.
It seemed that when he had taken his stand against the independent
air force, Secretary Wilbur and others smiled their relief. The
newspaper men looked let down. Then on the subject of the air
corps, when Congressman Vinson cross-questioned him, he had, as an
afterthought, stated that his Bureau should have control of aviation
personnel and operations as well as matériel. Quick as a flash,
Vinson shot back, “So you do believe in the air corps after all!”
In the subsequent confusion, the admiral had not made his position
clear, but had left the matter in a snarl. Even as he finished
his jerky report, the telephone rang. It was Marvin MacIntyre, a
newspaper reporter who frequently dropped into the Bureau for a story
and who had become one of the admiral’s cronies. Years later, during
the Roosevelt Administration, Mac sat in the White House as Secretary
to the President, but back in those days he was just a good leg man.
“What happened at the hearing?” he inquired. “It looked to the press
as though the Old Man had something on his chest but, with all that
rank around him, got hemmed in.”
“Maybe,” I replied, anxious to keep the admiral’s standing.
“But that break with Vinson made him look bad,” Mac wailed.
“I can’t see why,” I replied. “All it meant was that he should have
a bigger voice in personnel and operations but with a little topside
cooperation, he doesn’t need an air corps for that.” The admiral
nodded vigorously. Mac shouted over the phone.
“Sure, sure, I get you. Good-by!”
With that the admiral departed, his head up, his step springy. But we
weren’t yet out of the overcast.
Next morning a group of us sat in Jerry Land’s tiny office attending
a conference called by the head of the Matériel Division. Bureau
business had all but ceased during the inquiry and even now we could
not get down to brass tacks. Now a civilian walked right into the
conference and brought our discussion to an abrupt halt. It was C.
M. Keyes, president of the Curtiss Airplane and Motor Company, and a
leader of the aircraft industry. The separate-air-force controversy
had agitated them too; many companies favored it, especially those
doing business with the Army. Navy contractors either disapproved or
kept mum. Clem Keyes, who now stood in our midst, had favored the
program.
“It looks like the Morrow Board will not recommend the separate air
force,” he said. “But there is one thing they will approve, and
there’s nothing you fellows can do about it.” He then went on to say
that he would appear for the industry at an early session and that
he would support the idea of a government agency to be charged with
responsibility for and authority over the design, development, and
procurement of all aircraft, whether for the Army, Navy, or civil
uses.
The news took my breath, for the thing we feared worst after the
separate air force was unified procurement supply and design. Admiral
Moffett had taken a strong position against it, but if the industry
supported the Army on that, then the Board might accept it as a
compromise. The only thing left for us to do was to block such a
recommendation. While Keyes went on to support the proposal, I slid
out the door and down to the Engine Section.
Here I put in a call for Fred Rentschler, in Hartford. I knew that
some weeks earlier, Kraus in Procurement had informally agreed to
Pratt and Whitney’s proceeding with the purchase of a lot of tools
and materials against a contract then being negotiated, and that
Pratt and Whitney had already committed itself in advance in the
interest of saving time and money. When I heard Fred’s voice on the
phone, I told him about Keyes’s visit and suggested that he might
reconsider his advance purchase order; I doubted that Admiral Moffett
would sign a contract now for the new engines, since the industry
proposed a new agency to do all its buying. I did not pretend to read
the admiral’s mind, and was talking unofficially, but thought he
should be aware of this possibility.
It didn’t take Rentschler long to get the point. Within an hour he
had been in touch with Chance Vought, Grover Loening, Bill Boeing,
and others who had taken similar risks. And when, next day, Mr. Keyes
appeared before the Morrow Board to speak as the sole representative
of the industry, Chairman Morrow advised him that there had been a
change of plan. So many industry members had asked to address the
committee that he could allow Mr. Keyes but a reduced period and that
period had now expired. Meanwhile the admiral knew nothing of my
action and the industry members who looked to the Bureau for business
were not talking.
And while we sweated out the hearings, Admiral Moffett moved on
another front. None appreciated better than he the influence of
public opinion on the whole controversy, and he had found much to
worry about in the approval given the Mitchell proposal in the
public press. He had, therefore, suggested to George Wheat, now Fred
Rentschler’s public relations counsel, that he would like to meet
the editorial writers and especially the aviation writers of the
metropolitan dailies in New York at an informal dinner where he could
talk with them, and he invited me to go along.
The dinner, held in a private dining room of the old Waldorf Hotel,
started out being a bit stuffy with the natural suspicions engendered
in newspaper men by industrialists giving away free food, but Admiral
Moffett broke the ice with some delightful personal reminiscences,
among them the intimate details of how he outsmarted Billy Mitchell
at the Washington Limitation of Arms Conference and won the German
rigid airship _Los Angeles_ for the Navy. Then as things loosened up,
one of the newswriters put the very question he wanted, by asking why
we opposed the idea of unified procurement, supply, and design. To
the layman, this looked like a natural way to avoid duplication of
effort, to prevent competitive bidding between the Army and Navy for
the same products and generally reduce expenses.
The admiral warmed to the subject. He recalled that he had once
had that idea and had investigated a few successful business
enterprises in the effort to find out how they handled it. He had
found his answer at General Motors. If any group could have effected
important economies by central purchasing, it would seem to be that
corporation. To his surprise, the several divisions of General
Motors had been decentralized and given complete autonomy. Matter of
fact, that had turned out to be the basic policy that had made the
corporation successful. G.M. divisions had been encouraged to compete
among themselves. No single all-powerful executive had been given
the job of deciding things. Instead, General Motors’ customers made
all the decisions. The financial statements of the several divisions
were good barometers of the effectiveness of their management. The
customer was always right.
Now, the admiral continued, with each G.M. division held responsible
for its own performance, common sense dictated that its officers
must have full authority over the tools and materials required
to discharge that responsibility. Control of purchasing was one
of the first requirements. Automotive line production called for
split-second scheduling of material receipts, and this could not be
surrendered to some independent agency without danger of breakdown.
Besides, while central purchasing might appear to reduce cost through
volume purchases, competition between the divisions might do at
least as well without endangering deliveries. That was all theory,
but obviously a company like G.M., in which central purchasing might
appear particularly attractive theoretically, must have come to their
decision to decentralize after experience.
Next day, on the train back to Washington, I felt depressed by the
almost universal acceptance of the Mitchell plan. Even though the
Morrow Board were to turn it down, public opinion would ultimately
force its acceptance. The admiral, however, was most cheerful. He
thought that if he now had just one man in the Bureau, he could turn
the whole thing to his advantage. The man he had in mind was Capt.
Henry C. Mustin, a pioneer naval aviator who had died in the service.
Henry Mustin, he said, was one of the few men in aviation who
combined vision and imagination with practical judgment. It was the
latter quality that Mitchell lacked; Mustin had had them all. Before
he died he had drawn up a detailed plan for the organization of naval
aviation. He had sketched the big carriers with their squadrons
flying overhead, their spare planes on deck and the personnel listed
down to the last ordinary seaman. That sketch now lay in his safe in
BUAERO. When we got back there, I was to get hold of Du Bose, his
Financial Division head, and help work out estimates of the cost
of creating such a force. We should spread this over a five-year
period—make a five-year procurement program for naval aviation.
“And,” he summed it up, “don’t figure too close. Use your
imagination.”
When, finally, the long-awaited report of the Morrow Board was
published, it came as a distinct letdown to many. The advocates of
the independent air force let out loud wails of “whitewash,” and
the press reflected its disappointment. However, in BUAERO there
was satisfaction. The Board rejected the idea of the separate air
force at that time. It did, however, recommend an Air Corps status
for the Army Air Services, something quite compatible with the Army
organization’s several branches such as Infantry, Field Artillery,
Cavalry, Engineers, Coast Artillery, and so on. The report made
separate recommendations for reorganization of the Army and Navy,
which would later be enacted into law in the Air Corps Act of 1926.
It referred to the need for waiving the requirement for competitive
bidding in cases where the public interest required it, a provision
that was later so garbled in the Air Corps Act that it became quite
impossible to procure aircraft at all without violating the law.
The Board especially turned thumbs down on the British plan of an
air ministry charged with responsibility for both military and civil
aviation. It took a strong position for the principle that historic
American tradition called for armed forces for defense only, and it
insisted they should be kept subordinate to the civil government.
However, it urged the orderly expansion of air transport, preferably
under private management and, to promote the orderly development of
civil aviation, it recommended the establishment of a bureau of air
commerce in the Department of Commerce, then under Secretary Herbert
Hoover. It further recommended the appointment of an additional
assistant secretary of commerce for air, to supervise the new bureau.
The Board recommended a policy of continuity of orders for the
aircraft industry and proposed a standard rate of replacement of
operating aircraft in order to retain a healthy industry. This, it
pointed out, must become the nucleus of rapid wartime expansion
and should be administered as a continuing source of technological
leadership.
If the report proved lacking in sensationalism, it was none the less
constructive. If now it could be implemented it might become the
Magna Charta of American aviation. President Coolidge transmitted
the report to Congress with his own approval and thus started it on
its way to being translated into the Air Commerce Act and the Air
Corps Act of 1926. These acts, in effect, placed the responsibility
for promoting aviation directly upon the shoulders of the government.
They made it the duty of those in authority to promote the orderly
development of the air forces, our air commerce, and our aircraft
industry; and thus, for the first time, enunciated a clear statement
of United States air policy.
As for General Mitchell, whose charges had led to the formulation of
this policy, he was tried by Army general court-martial and convicted
of violation of the ninety-sixth Article of War. He was sentenced
to be suspended from rank, command, and duty, with forfeiture of
all pay and allowances for five years. President Coolidge modified
the forfeiture of pay and accepted the general’s resignation, to
take effect February 1, 1926. Just ten years later, Billy Mitchell
died. But one day the United States Congress did create a separate
air force, and by then, General Mitchell’s name had been firmly
established in his countrymen’s minds as a man who had been martyred
for his vision.
During the last decade of General Mitchell’s life, Admiral Moffett
served continuously as Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and there
founded the technology of naval aviation. It has been said of the
contributions of the two men that “Bill Mitchell’s fumble set up the
play from which Billy Moffett went on to score.” Just at the peak of
his career, the admiral gave his own life to his country in the crash
of the rigid airship _Akron_.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dwight Morrow Advances the Throttle
The Morrow Board policy, for all its wisdom, might have lapsed easily
into innocuous desuetude save for the dynamic character of William A.
Moffett. Whereas the Army Air Service proclaimed it a whitewash and
a denial of their aspirations, the admiral recognized it for what it
was, a golden opportunity. And as usual, when it came to capitalizing
it, his timing was precise.
I was sitting behind my desk in the Engine Section one morning
engaged in shoveling the avalanche of papers from “Incoming” to
“Outgoing” and feeling much like a fireman on the floor plates of a
coal-burning destroyer under forced draft shoveling coal into the
insatiable maws of a pair of boilers, when the phone rang.
“This is Moffett,” came the admiral’s voice. “I want you to get hold
of Du Bose right away. Grab a taxi and come up here to The Hill.
You’ll find me in Congressman Butler’s office, Chairman of the Naval
Affairs Committee. Bring that estimate on the cost of the Mustin
plan. Got it?”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Wait a minute. Change that!” came the staccato bark. “Tell Du Bose
to bring the plan. You call up Marvin MacIntyre; tell him to come to
the Bureau. Then you write up a news release for him—one like this:
‘The greatest forward step in the history of aviation was taken
today when Congressman Butler, Chairman of the House Naval Affairs
Committee, announced approval of the Moffett five-year Naval Aviation
building program.’”
“Did he really approve it, Admiral?” I interposed.
“Of course not,” came the reply. “He hasn’t even seen it. But when he
reads his name in the afternoon _Star_ and looks at the editorial Mac
will get for us, he’ll think he invented it himself. Shake a leg now,
and send Du Bose on the run.”
“How did you work it, sir?” I insisted.
“At the hearing this morning,” the admiral explained, “Butler was
fit to be tied—said the public was clamoring for action on aviation
and wanted to know what to do. I told him he ought to approve my
five-year program. He wanted to know what it was. I told him the
program I’d been trying to sell him for five years. When I’d ask
Congress for money, they’d say ‘where are your men to man these
planes?’ When I’d ask BUNAV for the men, they’d want to know where
the planes were. Butler got all excited and sent me out of the
hearing to get the plan.”
The Moffett five-year building program went through Congress with a
whoop and a holler, and within a week the Army had one of its own.
With this final consummation of the recommendations of most of the
twenty-two inquiries that had investigated aviation, the throttle was
opened at last. This was true in spite of the fact that in writing
the Air Corps Act of 1926, Congress had crossed up the aircraft
industry. The manufacturers, having been promised relaxation of the
competitive-bidding requirement which had served to hamper research
and development, had in turn agreed to a provision in the Act under
which the Armed Forces could audit their accounts and thus control
profits. This was a privilege heretofore never conceded by private
industry, but Congress, lacking the nerve to go through with the
agreement in committee, had so garbled the language of the Act and
so complicated the procedure that no procurement officer could buy
anything without violating some law. However, public support of the
policy had been so evident that the more courageous procurement
people, like our own Sidney Kraus, were willing to accept the risk.
And so it seemed that almost overnight, aviation, released of its
tie-downs and wheel blocks, became airborne again. In BUAERO a
significant event was the completion of the first Pratt and Whitney
Wasp on December 24, 1926, just six months after its inception.
George had sent me a photograph of the new engine as a Christmas
card and it was a thing of beauty that was to become literally a joy
forever. It came out at exactly the 650 pounds Chance Vought had
specified but on block test turned up a nice 415 horsepower instead
of the 350 he had asked for.
Meanwhile the Wright Simoon also passed its tests at 350 horsepower
though it was already outmoded by the Wasp. In order to give the
Simoon the full benefits of an airplane designed to utilize the
engine’s qualities, Wright had put Hugh Chatfield to work on the
design and construction of their own single-seat fighter called the
“Apache.” On flight test the little craft had shown a performance
far superior to the current liquid-cooled pursuit, even in the
controversial characteristic of high speed at sea level where,
according to the critics, the air-cooled would always be at a serious
disadvantage because of its “large frontal area.”
Since that airplane would show to even greater advantage with the
higher power of the Wasp, we now wangled a deal with Wright. We
actually persuaded good-natured Charlie Lawrance to turn his pet
airplane over to Chance Vought for the installation of a Pratt and
Whitney Wasp with which Lt. C. C. Champion, who had now joined
the Engine Section, was to take a shot at the world’s record for
altitude. With the completion of Chance Vought’s own Corsair, we now
had a brilliant two-seater that compared favorably in performance
with the hottest fighters, and thus gave us a stable with which
to make an assault on all the world’s records in their classes.
The admiral, a highly competitive spirit with a keen appreciation
of the value of world’s records and racing competition, now made
participation in these events a major Bureau project.
The names “Wasp” and “Corsair” had been selected by the Engine
Section, in response to requests from Pratt and Whitney and Chance
Vought. Little did we know at the time what distinction they would
one day attain. The Wright Apache focused attention of other
manufacturers on the characteristics of the Wasp; and Boeing, after
testing an engine in a converted FB-1 fighter, immediately put a new
one in the works to be called the “F2B.” Curtiss made a conversion
of one of its single-seater Hawks, replacing the D-12 with a Wasp.
The first Wasp engine to be flight tested was flown in a Curtiss
Hawk and thus became a sort of monument to the reluctance Curtiss had
shown by their failure to develop their own R-1454 engine. It also
nearly became a monument to the failure of the Pratt and Whitney Wasp.
For on the one-hour endurance test over Long Island, Temple Joyce,
then test pilot for Curtiss and one of the best-known figures in
aviation, grew tired of the monotony of cruising back and forth
and decided to vary the routine with some acrobatics. But when he
pulled back the stick and booted the rudder to do a nice snap roll,
something snapped in the Wasp and Temp had to make a forced landing
on the Curtiss field. The competitive Wasp in a competitor’s airplane
had gone sour on its test flight! Consternation reigned in the Engine
Section—matter of fact, it really poured.
Examination disclosed that the crankshaft counterweight had sailed
out through the crankcase. Now the cheek had been designed with
ample margins for the stresses of centrifugal force, and the failure
remained a mystery until I recalled a lesson learned as a student
in the Sperry Gyro Compass School several years earlier. No one had
anticipated the effect of gyroscopic forces like those set up in a
snap roll. Now George Mead took these in hand and strengthened the
shaft to withstand them. With this change, the Pratt and Whitney Wasp
came to stay.
One day George and I, feeling happy about this, decided to take a
walk through the Smithsonian Institution museum. And there we saw
something that cut us back to size. It was the Manly engine, one
designed by Charles M. Manly, the pilot and engineer of the Langley
airplane, the craft Professor Langley had tried to fly off a catapult
years earlier. And marvel of marvels, it was a five-cylinder,
single-row, air-cooled radial that antedated the original Wright
engine and all the other liquid-cooled in-line engines that had
followed it. Charles Manly, having no prior art to befuddle him, had
reasoned out the rational form for an aircraft engine and created one
forthwith. As we stood looking at the museum piece that included the
fundamentals we had used to obsolete years of automotive practice,
George grinned sheepishly and remarked, “It all goes to show that
every time you think you have discovered America, you find that
Columbus was here back in 1492.”
With the completion of many flight tests, the Wasp was now ready
for production. But Rentschler found himself in a quandary as to
what price he should ask for the engines in quantity. He had no
experienced costs, for no engine had yet been built in production. We
had asked for six engines on the first experimental order and Kraus
had paid Pratt and Whitney the $90,000 he had set aside for them. It
was estimated that this amount covered about half of the experimental
costs, and Kraus was willing to add the remainder to the first
production order so as to write off this expense. But no one knew nor
had any way of guessing what the unit price should be for the order
of some two hundred engines now required for Vought Corsairs and
Boeing and Curtiss fighters. And so the price was fixed by that which
Kraus had previously paid for a similar number of Packard 1500’s—a
liquid-cooled engine we had earlier prescribed to replace the
Curtiss D-12’s in the Boeing FB-5’s. For while we had promoted the
air-cooled vigorously we had likewise developed the 500-hp Packard as
a successor to the 400-hp Curtiss D-12.
Rentschler was not too happy about having the price for his
air-cooled engines fixed by that of another contractor for
liquid-cooled; he insisted there was no relationship between the two.
But in government business, price may be fixed by anything else but
merit. The ever-present threat of a Congressional investigation made
it impossible to write into the Pratt and Whitney contract any figure
higher than the Packard price even though the circumstances might be
entirely different. This was but one of the things that made it hard
to interest private manufacturers in risking either their equities
or their engineering talent in a government speculation; none of the
business fundamentals with which they were accustomed to measure
their risks applied here.
However, as it turned out, an unexpected event exercised such an
influence that Pratt and Whitney not only did not lose money on the
first contract but even made an embarrassingly high profit. It
all started the morning William E. Boeing, of Seattle—not “Addison
Sims”—arrived in the Engine Section.
Bill Boeing, founder of the Boeing Airplane Company, and a successful
operator in lumber and real estate, had drawn his airplane-company
staff from versatile young graduates of the aeronautical-engineering
course of the University of Washington and had picked some good
ones. Foremost among these were Claire Egtvedt, his chief engineer,
and Phil Johnson, his factory manager. Bill, a pilot himself, had
opened an air line between Seattle and Victoria, using a couple of
Boeing-built flying boats under the management of Eddie Hubbard.
Eddie had persuaded Bill, against the advice of Phil Johnson, to
enter a bid for the new Chicago-San Francisco contract air-mail
route, and Bill had won the competition with a bid considered
absurdly low by his competitors.
As Bill took a chair by my desk that morning, he promptly launched
into the background of his low bid. It seems that Claire Egtvedt,
who had designed the single-seat fighter F2B around the Wasp, had
also made a study of that engine in a completely new mail plane, to
be called the “40-B.” By doing away with the heavy cooling system
of the Liberty in the new design, and availing himself of the other
features of the Wasp, he had turned out a mail plane capable of
carrying double the pay load on the same horsepower. By converting
several hundred pounds of dead load into as many pounds of paying
load, he had demonstrated the fact that no operator could afford to
use war-surplus airplanes—even as a gift—in face of that kind of
competition. Furthermore, Boeing could build the new planes dirt
cheap with the same overhead needed for the military business. He
thought the Wasp would revolutionize air transport. His problem was
how to get hold of about twenty-five new Pratt and Whitneys right
away with the entire production booked for the Navy.
This was a matter on which the admiral had already set Bureau policy.
Having in mind the fact that if government and commercial business
could be lumped, the increased volume could bring reduced costs
for both, he had issued instructions to cooperate with commercial
operators wherever practicable. All Bill needed was a letter of
introduction to F. B. Rentschler.
Out of this episode grew the Boeing Air Transport Company’s
profitable operation, the ultimate consolidation of Boeing and
Pratt and Whitney, to form the nucleus for the United Aircraft and
Transport Corporation, and such a profit for Pratt and Whitney on
the first order that Rentschler finally came to the Engine Section
for advice as to what should be done with the profit. Not the least
important factor in this achievement was the breathtaking daring
which Rentschler showed in tooling up his shop before the engine
had passed its tests and before he had received the contract. This
intelligent risk paid such dividends that Rentschler later agreed
with Kraus to return what might have been called “excess profits,”
and in so doing thus established a principle of voluntary profit
control that finally became the established policy of the company.
The original suggestion for this came from the Engine Section.
The development of the new engines and the creation of new aircraft
around them came just in time to ease a serious situation in
connection with the outfitting of the new carriers _Saratoga_ and
_Lexington_. The ships were scheduled for completion in about two
years and their squadrons were even then being assembled at the Fleet
Air Stations at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and San Diego, California.
And while the Wasp put us on easier schedules for the fighters, we
were still up against it for the big torpedo-bomber scouts. Our SC’s,
designed originally around the Wright T-3, had proved cumbersome and
heavy and, while operable on twin floats, had lacked the performance
desired for carrier use. The large engine had introduced a propeller
problem, too—one that for a while had given us a lot of concern.
One of the SC’s, equipped with a standard propeller made of laminated
woods glued together and finished to form, had let go on take-off at
Hampton Roads and the engine had nearly jumped out of the plane. In
response to an excited call from Norfolk, I had flown down in company
with Charles J. McCarthy, then our stress expert, to see what could
be done. Fortunately, about this time the Army Engineering Division
at McCook Field had brought along an experimental development, under
the supervision of Frank Caldwell, in which a new aluminum alloy
called “duralumin” had been introduced as a substitute for wood.
So far it had not been fully proved in service but we were in such
a right spot that I now authorized the procurement of the first
production order for 100 of them.
Now to round out the carrier program we must needs do something about
those torpedo bombers. The engine situation began to assume a certain
stable pattern that could be used to foster development: Wright had
a nice bit of business and without serious competition in the 200-hp
air-cooled Whirlwind class; Pratt and Whitney had a similar nest egg
in their domination of the 400-hp Wasp category; both companies had
undertaken new developments in a larger 500-hp type. At Wright it was
the Cyclone; at Pratt and Whitney, the Hornet. But neither of these
engines looked big enough for the torpedo-bomber class and every
engineer in the industry had solemnly assured me in writing that to
build a 600-hp air-cooled radial was completely impossible. In light
of this dictum we had installed a Packard 2500, 800-hp liquid-cooled
engine in one of the SC’s which we had called the “SC-6” but which
the mechanics had promptly dubbed the “_Sea Cow_.” Now the time had
arrived to give the old girl an endurance test.
The personnel of the Engine Section had undergone some change since
my taking over. After Ricco Botta had gone to sea I brought in Lt. L.
D. Webb, a naval aviator and experienced engineer. Lee had started
his naval career as an enlisted man and had served as an electrician
in a submarine. In World War I he had qualified as a pilot and been
commissioned in the Reserve. Later he had taken the examinations
and transferred to the regular service. He was a burly fellow with
a broad back, the kind you like to ride behind in an airplane. With
Lee in the cockpit, me in the rear seat, and Capt. Lionel M. Woolson,
the Packard experimental engineer, lying on a mattress back in the
tail, the _Sea Caw_ started her take-off at dawn from the bosom of
the Potomac River abreast of the spot where the Presidential Yacht
_Mayflower_ lay. We were so heavily laden with fuel that we missed
the first run after roaring past the _Mayflower_ wide open with our
eight hundred horses straining. On the second run past, I noticed a
figure in a nightgown waving encouragement to us, but a second look
revealed it as President Coolidge himself and his clenched fist waved
no encouragement.
And as hour after hour we droned up and down Chesapeake Bay, trying
to burn out the fuel to determine our real endurance, I began
thinking of a scheme that might solve our problem. Certainly the big
liquid-cooled Packard didn’t make sense; but a 600-hp air-cooled
might do the job. Our _Sea Cow_ grossed some 12,000 pounds of
dead weight with her full load of fuel and was correspondingly
big and unwieldy. If someone could build a 600-hp radial he would
automatically save nearly a ton right off the bat; and if some smart
designer could find a way to build a lighter airplane structure, we
might get the whole thing down to something of the order of 7,500
pounds. This would give us a smaller, handier airplane that would
still carry the bomb, torpedo, and fuel load we wanted, and thus
complete the outfit for our new carriers with an all-air-cooled
complement. The problem was how to get the job done—and Old Man
Competition was the obvious answer.
The chance of a lifetime came one day with a visit from the dean of
our aircraft manufacturers, Glenn L. Martin. Glenn’s black mood quite
overshadowed his natty dress. He was about to finish his contract for
torpedoplanes and had no new business in sight. First thing BUAERO
knew he’d have to fire his whole organization and, once they got
scattered, their know-how and teamwork would be lost forever. It was
up to the Bureau to do something to save Glenn Martin.
“Have you tried creating a new model, Glenn?” I asked innocently
enough. Glenn protested that his SC was the last word and that
nothing much better could be produced.
“I’ve had an idea checked out by the drafting room,” I said, “and
they agree that if some smart airplane manufacturer were to design
a new torpedo carrier around, say a new six hundred-horsepower
air-cooled engine, he could get it down to about seventy-five
hundred pounds gross, provided he could develop some new structural
features along the lines that Charles Ward Hall has proposed.”
Glenn was skeptical; and besides, he and the others had little
confidence in those tricky aluminum structures that Charles Ward Hall
proposed; they held out for welded steel. And besides, where could
you get a 600-hp air-cooled radial?
“Both the Cyclone and Hornet do five hundred twenty-five horsepower
now,” I said, “and if a smart airplane designer made a deal with
one or the other for a 600-hp type, say a year from now, the direct
competition in that class might persuade one or both of them to push
the development for you in time to give you the power you need, and
by that time you can have your revolutionary model.”
Glenn’s puckered brow suggested thought. “Do you think the Bureau
would finance such a development,” he asked, “with an experimental
contract?”
“Oh, yes,” I agreed, “up at the Naval Aircraft Factory at
Philadelphia.” Glenn was shocked by the suggestion.
“Have you mentioned this to anyone else?” he inquired.
“Everyone who would listen,” I replied. “And Frank Russell, of
Curtiss, is coming in this afternoon. I thought that since you
had taken his SC design away from him by underbidding him on the
production order, he might find a certain satisfaction in doing
likewise by you.”
By the time I had finished the sentence, Glenn had disappeared
through the door.
With the carrier program pretty well rounded up, I began to think of
going back to sea duty and general service. If I wasted much more
time in the side shows, some future Selection Board would gladly skip
me over. No use to ask the admiral’s permission; he’d say the job
was but half done and he couldn’t spare me. A personal visit to the
Bureau of Navigation and a request to command another destroyer would
do the trick.
But when, shortly afterward, Admiral Moffett called me into his
office, I found the atmosphere distinctly chilly. On his desk lay
the notice from BUNAV advising him of the intention to detach me and
requesting that he nominate a suitable relief.
“What will it take to keep you here?” the admiral asked.
“A nonflying officer has no place in this game,” I replied, “and I’m
supposed to be too old to learn to fly.”
“The pilot course,” replied the admiral, “takes nine months and I
can’t spare you that long.” I had not intended to ask for flight
training but the admiral assumed that I was putting pressure on him.
“I could send you to Pensacola for two months for training as Naval
Observer,” he went on, “and that might take the curse off shore duty
by making you a part of the aeronautic organization.”
My next remark surprised me; certainly it came from my mouth rather
than my head, though my heart may have been in it. “If I could wangle
a way to complete the pilot’s course in two months,” I inquired,
“would that be acceptable to you?”
The admiral grinned as he held out his hand. “When you arrive at
Pensacola,” he advised, “drop in on Brooks Upham, the Commandant.
He’s a personal friend of mine and might be able to do something for
you.”
Thus quite without prior intent on my part I had talked my way even
deeper into aviation. But at home that evening I did not reveal the
whole scheme to my wife. Having received word of her mother’s serious
illness she had left the day before for an indefinite visit at her
home.
CHAPTER NINE
The Gospel According to Aunt Lucy
Rear Adm. F. Brooks Upham, Commandant of the Naval Air Station,
Pensacola, reached across his flat-topped desk for my formal orders.
Behind him through the window, the sun glinted on the leaves of
ancient live oaks, and filtered through shreds of gently swaying
Spanish moss. The rattle of aircraft engines disturbed the still
morning, a signal that flying was being resumed after the September
hurricane that had seriously damaged this ancient Civil War navy
yard. The admiral welcomed me with a friendly smile.
“I’ve had a note about you from Moffett,” he volunteered. “So,” he
added, “it’s the old story of old dogs and new tricks. Having now
reached the ripe old age of thirty-nine,” he went on, “you’re dead
but won’t lie down. If you ask me, it’s a lot of bunk.”
“The Regulations,” I reminded him, “set twenty-eight as the maximum
age limit for flight training.” The admiral reached for the top
drawer of his antique desk. A warm breeze floated in from across the
Gulf of Mexico. Beyond the signal tower, across the blue harbor,
the white sands of Santa Rosa Island gleamed in the sunlight. Still
farther out glittered the quiet waters of the Gulf.
The commandant handed me a sheet of paper. I recognized it at once as
a few lines of doggerel I had written one wintry December night while
the old seaplane tender and kite-balloon ship _Wright_ had lain in
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We had been working all day on a miserably
cold job of ballasting the _Old Hooker_ and had turned the duty
over to the aviators as a part of their instruction. Then suddenly
someone of them had discovered that none of them had qualified as
yet for their 50 per cent increase for “flight pay” and that unless
they corrected this fault immediately they would lose the allowance.
They had all laid down their tools, both the lighter-than-air and
the heavier-than-air pilots, and had rushed over to the Naval Air
Station at Lakehurst to ride up and down ten times in a kite-balloon
attached to a winch in a warm hangar, leaving the ballasting to the
mercies of the ship’s company, the so-called “thicker-than-mud.” Now
I read the verses.
The lighter-than-air are jolly boys,
Who float on wings of gas,
Like helium or hydrogen
And some hot air, alas!
They float about in kite-balloons
A blimp or even a zep.
And draw their extra fifty per cent,
With promptitude and pep.
The heavier-than-air boys zoom about,
And make a lot of fuss,
In F-5-L’s and NC boats
And other kinds of bus.
It takes a sort of superman
To learn the air’s queer feel—
And draw that extra fifty per cent,
With such consuming zeal.
And then there is another crew,
A silly sort of dud,
It does the heavy dirty work,
The poor old thicker-than-mud.
If one of these guys rams a rock,
Or on a reef gets wrecked,
He never gets his pay increased;
Most likely he’ll be checked.
And so we sail the briny deep,
Two live ones and a dud,
The lighter-than-air, the heavier-than-air—
And the poor old thicker-than-mud.
I glanced up to find a smile on the commandant’s lips.
“I found it in the desk here,” he said, “after I had taken over from
Christy.”
We had visited the _Wright_ in the summer of 1922 after ferrying
some F-5-L’s down from Philadelphia and someone must have lifted the
masterpiece from the bulletin board.
“I had hardly expected to find the author of that among the
candidates for flight training,” Brooks Upham went on, “but since
you are here I’ll do my best for you. My aide, young Jimmy Lowry,
will take you out for a flight check and if he rates you ‘promising
material,’ I’ll see that planes are put at your disposal at any time
you may want them. No need for you to fool around with the regular
schedule for ground school; you know all that. It’s simply a question
of nervous and physical endurance whether you can complete the entire
course in the two months.” He reached for a push button.
“By the way,” he added, “my lady asked me to invite you to dine with
us this evening—seven o’clock—service uniform.”
Within a half hour, Jimmy Lowry and I were down at Squadron Six Beach
warming up an N-9 seaplane. The Consolidated NY’s had gone into
service for land-plane training but the N-9’s still survived for
work on floats. Jimmy, after a few words of instruction, motioned me
into the rear seat and took his instructor’s position in front. Then
signaling to the “boots” to cast us off, he opened the throttle and
taxied out into the stream where he cut the gun and let the little
plane idle up into the wind.
He gave her the gun and as the engine took hold we skittered smoothly
over the surface and into the air to sail out over the landlocked
bay. Below us, the old town of Pensacola nestled among live oaks and
Spanish moss now devastated by the hurricane. While I had taken the
controls now and then, flying as a passenger, I had never presumed to
land or take off and had had no other instruction than the few orders
Jimmy Lowry had given me back there at the Beach. Now he shook the
controls as a signal for me to take over and, as I did so, held both
hands aloft to signal that I had charge.
Jimmy Lowry now put me through all the “checks” in accordance with
what I learned later was a well-established routine. He sent me
flying over the land at an altitude of about fifty feet and, after
we had proceeded too far to permit turning back for a water landing
in case of engine failure, he cut the gun and watched my reaction.
The only thing I could see to do was to land straight ahead into the
palmetto swamp, and this, I learned later, was considered to be good
“reaction in emergency.” Jimmy opened the throttle again before we
tangled with the palm fronds, and then waved me back to Squadron Six
Beach. He said nothing as we walked up the ramp and, at the entrance
to Bachelor Officer Quarters, simply saluted and walked off toward
the commandant’s office. Still in the dark as to my future, I hunted
up my room in “BOQ” and found my baggage already in it. A colored
maid was making up the bed.
She had a wrinkled, light-chocolate old face, framed by kinky white
hair held in a tight knot at the back of her neck. Though she was
said to have been born into slavery, her erect, almost haughty
carriage seemed to deny the story. She turned to bow to me in a
curtsy that was dignified and respectful.
“Mawnin’, sah!” she said. Her soft voice had the resonance of a
singer of Negro spirituals. “Ah’s Aunt Lucy,” she added. “I takes
keer o’ dis room for de gempmens what has it. Ah unpacks yo satchel,
too, if you likes.”
“I’m not sure I’ll stay, Aunt Lucy,” I replied. “We won’t unpack
until I hear from Lieutenant Lowry.” Aunt Lucy bowed her head as
she moved off to dust the window sills. She had that air of quiet
dignity, that sense of being wholly at peace with the world, that
had characterized the old-time darkies I had known as a midshipman
back at little Annapolis. A leader among her people, a deaconess
in the church, no doubt, Aunt Lucy seemed a woman distinguished by
deep religious faith. I had unbelted my sword after leaving the
commandant’s office and, after my check flight, had carried it to BOQ
in my hand. Now as I laid it on the table Aunt Lucy glanced at it and
began humming an old spiritual:
“I’se goin’ to lay down my sword and shield.
Down by de riverside,
Down by de riverside,
Down by de riverside.
I’se goin’ to lay down my sword and shield,
Down by de riverside
I ain’t goin’ to study war no mo’.”
As she drifted out of the door the telephone rang. It was the
commandant. As I reached for the receiver, I could feel a flush
creeping up the back of my neck and knew for the first time just how
much I wanted a favorable report. Well, I’d soon know, now.
“Lowry has passed your check,” Brooks Upham was saying. “He considers
you ‘good pilot material.’ See you for dinner!” I hung up and called
down the corridor to old Aunt Lucy.
“I guess you can unpack the satchel,” I said.
The Uphams were distinctly Old Navy, part of a small coterie of
distinguished senior officers and their wives who had served the
Navy through the lean years, on duty that had either taken them to
distant foreign stations together or forced long separations. They
were men and women who had stood for all that was best in loyalty to
their country, their service, and to one another, and who supported
the fine traditions of the earlier days. Poor in worldly goods, yet
they were rich in experience, having traveled widely and lived close
to the people of foreign lands. Money had meant little to them; they
had found ample compensation in their knowledge of a public service
faithfully performed. Evenings at the commandant’s quarters were to
prove important events in my training as a naval aviator; and old
Aunt Lucy was to leave her mark, too.
For flying was still a hazardous business back in the middle
twenties, and tragedy cast its shadow all too often over the little
station at Pensacola. Perhaps it was this that focused people’s
thoughts on things far removed from “pounds per horsepower.” After
dinner that evening, the commandant and his lady sat with me around
the fire that provided the only warmth against the evening chill,
and discussed books they had just finished reading.
The commandant had been deep in a treatise on nuclear theory as
discussed in a book called _The New Knowledge_. It had been written
in a popular and entertaining vein by a scientific author whose name
I don’t now recall and, besides setting forth clearly the new idea
as to the structure of the atom and a theory of electronics, it had
developed an absorbing spiritual theme. The author, recognizing the
resemblance between the laws controlling the actions of electrons
within the atom and those that controlled the astronomy of the
universe, had emphasized his own conviction that no conflict existed
between religion and science. On the contrary, the more a scientific
mind studied the revelations concerning the physical world, the
stronger became his convictions as to the existence of an infinite
God.
The commandant’s lady fingered a book she had just finished but
seemed to hesitate about opening a discussion of it.
“If you are like the rest of the students,” she smiled, “you’ll have
your nose buried so deeply in that precious _Flight Manual_, that
you’ll have no time for anything else.”
The commandant was rather proud of that _Flight Manual_. It was
the book of instruction for the flight-training course that had
been evolved out of long experience with many students. It had been
compiled by one of his instructors, Lt. Barrett Studley, who was also
writing a book on the subject. Every detail was so well covered in it
that it had become a veritable “student’s bible.” No matter how often
he read it and reread it or practiced the maneuvers described in it,
every new reading revealed something there he had not previously
absorbed. Even the instructors boned the manual—and found new
inspiration in doing so.
As Mrs. Upham talked, the commandant stirred the fire until it burned
brightly, shining on his wife’s serene features.
“My book,” she said, “bears on the same theme as the one developed by
_The New Knowledge_ but approaches it from a wholly different point
of view.”
She went on to point out that its author, whose name I have
forgotten along with the title of the book, had been a successful
minister—at least one might judge him so by usual standards. He had
managed a large New York congregation, kept the church in repair, and
collected substantial sums of money for worthy causes. But after his
retirement he had reached the conclusion that his ministry had been a
complete failure. Lacking faith in religion, because he had not been
able to reconcile the Christian Gospel with his reasoned analysis of
it, he had failed in his spiritual leadership.
Deep concern over this had caused him to restudy the Gospels and
especially the history of their composition; and he had concluded
that in the interim between the death of the Apostles and the
compilation of the Gospels, numerous additions might have been made
and certain beliefs carried over from earlier faiths might have been
interlarded into the basic concept of the Christian idea. He had
therefore set about to delete from the Gospels, as recorded, all
the inconsistencies with the Gospel as he thought it must have been
preached, and had emerged with a kernel so dazzling and completely
credible to the rational mind that he had become convinced that it
must have been divinely inspired.
For no one man nor group of men could possibly have conceived a faith
so wholly consistent and so inspiring as had Jesus Christ himself.
The very idea of individual dignity had brought men conviction that
they were not meant to be slaves but responsible children of God.
With that conviction, human liberty was born. And human liberty was
not just a pleasant material situation but the world’s most vital,
dynamic, and constructive spiritual force. To cast off the rule of
tyrants men must only be governed by God.
As the commandant’s lady finished her review, she handed her book
over to me.
“Since we’ve been on duty down here,” she said simply, “we’ve come
to sense the semireligious fervor with which the lads approach their
flying. The hazards seem but to lift up their spirits, for while
physically the airplane is mechanical, yet the art of flying has
the flavor of high destiny.” She paused and glanced quickly at her
husband as if for support.
“We haven’t succeeded in crystallizing the idea,” said the admiral,
“but even as professional military people we keep groping for the
philosophical import of this new device. The thing is potentially
so destructive that unless we find some way, through the spirit, to
adapt it to constructive uses, it will surely destroy us.”
For a while we three sat silent before the fire. Brooks Upham had
expressed the unease that lies heavy on the hearts of military men;
they dislike the business of destruction.
When, next morning, I arrived at Squadron Six Beach, my instructor
was waiting for me with orders to disregard the routine and feed the
subject to me just as fast as I could take it. I had, however, been
assigned to Class Twenty-six—youngsters, for the most part, two to
three years out of Annapolis. Included in the class, however, were
a handful of seniors like “Baldy” Pownall, “Woody” Thomas, Harry
Bogusch, and Freddie Kauffman. For Admiral Moffett, having felt
the need of a little seasoning in the aeronautic organization, had
accepted applications from a selected group of more experienced line
officers. Among them were former submarine officers who, thinking
that duty a little too hazardous to health, had transferred to the
comparative safety of flying.
And thus began a most delightful experience. For the first time in
many moons, my responsibilities were reduced to the lowest possible
terms. All I now had to do was to maneuver a nice little airplane,
one that seemed to sense my intentions and even anticipate them,
and to execute turns, glides, and landings smoothly and competently
and—to my surprise—without dunking me in the drink. The pullings
and haulings of BUAERO, the plot and counterplot of politics, now
faded into the limbo. And in their places came the thrill of facing
hazards—and overcoming them. Raised as I had been in an era when
men had not asked extra compensation for extra hazard in the line
of duty, I held a secret hunch that a man should be glad to pay
something extra for the privilege of enjoying such a happy and
uncomplicated routine. Naturally I did not voice this mutiny to my
instructors.
With my solo safely behind me, I moved ahead with renewed confidence
and from that day forward averaged nearly five hours solo almost
every working day, passing one check after the other and moving
steadily along on schedule. Meanwhile an unexpected influence had
entered into my training, insinuating itself in a delicate sort of
way; it was old Aunt Lucy.
It had started one sunny morning when, standing in front of the
mirror to tie my black four-in-hand tie, I had, in sheer exuberance,
burst out singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Aunt Lucy, who seemed
to be forever dusting the furniture when I was in the room, and who
was always fingering my dress sword, as if fascinated by it, now
interrupted my music.
“Oh, no sah!” she protested. “Not dataway! Not dataway!”
And then with one foot tapping and her gay turbaned old head bobbing
to the rhythm, Aunt Lucy proceeded to swing that old chariot so low
it got dizzy. The song ended, she cackled and waddled off down the
corridor, but in response to my vociferous applause she was soon back
again, dustcloth in hand, flicking specks off the battered furniture
of the bare room.
From that moment, Lucy took my Bible instruction in hand and carried
it out through a series of Negro spirituals, with a technique that
would have impressed Lt. Barrett Studley, the author of the _Flight
Manual_. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace vied
with Joshua, as he fit de Battle uv Jericho, to bring me up to
date on “de ole time religion.” Then one Sunday morning old Aunt
Lucy invited me to witness a baptizin’ in a nearby bayou where a
white-robed, black-faced preacherman, knee deep on a convenient
sand bar, ducked his shouting converts. Next morning I noticed her
flitting around my sword, where it stood in the corner, and heard her
humming the second verse of the first song she had sung to me.
“I’se goin’ to try on my long white robe,
Down by the riverside; down by the riverside; down by the
riverside.
I’se goin’ to try on my long white robe,
Down by de riverside—
I ain’t a goin’ t’ study wah no moh!”
Of an original class of some thirty students, only about twenty
survived the rigorous course. The others either lacked the natural
coordination essential to instinctive flying or failed on that
other important requirement “correct reaction in emergency.” The
first could be acquired by early athletic instruction, but the
second seemed to be innate in some, wholly lacking in others. It
was the unpleasant duty of the check instructor to detect the lack
of that attribute before it could produce fatal results. But to men
who had natural aptitude in the basic requirements, flying had an
extraordinary appeal. There was all the intense satisfaction to be
experienced through skill in any art, such as the smooth stroking of
a tennis ball, the rhythmic swing of a golf club, or the exquisitely
precise casting of a feathered salmon fly—all these were experienced
by the student pilot, but with the added thrill that a mistake
invited disaster.
During the month of November I graduated from the seaplane beach
and moved over into landplanes. My classmates, following the more
leisurely normal course, remained behind. In landplanes, we used the
new Consolidate NY’s and, while they had few of the pleasant flying
qualities of the little N-9’s, they didn’t kill students in crack-ups.
Finally came November 30, 1926, and with it my final check. “Dixie”
Ketcham, my check instructor, put me through the paces and then
waved me back toward Old Corry Field. I was sitting there calmly
enjoying the scenery below, but with one eye, as always, roving about
in search of a place to land in case of engine failure, when the
engine stopped. Below me lay a tiny cow pasture, the spot in which,
no doubt, I was supposed to land. But it was so tiny I felt certain
that Dixie would open the throttle again after I had demonstrated the
required approach technique. And so I settled down to the “normal
approach”: a left turn to get downwind, a glide over the tops of the
jack pine, a slip to lose altitude, a sunfish to kill extra speed,
stick-back to break the glide—but the throttle didn’t open and we
went on in a nice landing.
As we reached the end of the run, just short of the edge of the
field—we had no brakes then, nor did we use flaps—Dixie waved a hand
as the signal to go home.
“If you can get into a pasture like that,” he said, “you can get in
anywhere!”
Back at my quarters in BOQ I walked on air. Aunt Lucy with her
everlasting dustcloth fiddled around the gilt sword knot of the class
of 1871 prize sword. And as she dusted it, she hummed the final verse
of the spiritual she had sung so often for me.
“I’se goin’ to lay down my burden—
Down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the
riverside.
I’se goin’ to lay down my burden,
Down by the riverside.
I ain’t a goin’ to study wah no moh!”
Tossing my helmet and goggles onto the bed and reaching for
my suitcase, I began packing my duffel for the return trip to
Washington. Aunt Lucy was folding my best blue blouse with its shiny
three stripes and, best of all, my new gold wings pinned on its
breast. Under her breath she kept humming.
“I ain’t a goin’ to study wah no mo!” I stopped to look at her.
“Aunt Lucy,” I demanded, “is it by accident or design that you keep
singing that song at me?” Aunt Lucy chuckled.
“Well, sah,” she replied in her deep contralto, “ah thought maybe now
you done learned to fly like de angels, you might like to think a
little about peace.”
“Why,” I retorted, “that’s just what a navy is for—to keep peace.”
“Yassah, yassah,” Aunt Lucy persisted, fingering the gold pin on my
best blouse, “but it jes’ seem to Aunt Lucy dat, now de Lord done gib
yo’ wings, maybe yo’ might find better use for dem dan jes fightin’.”
* * * * *
The telephone jingled. Western Union had a wire for me. My wife was
thrilled by the news of my gold wings; she had left for Washington to
reopen the apartment.
CHAPTER TEN
The Take-off
Back in Washington, the admiral welcomed me with a grin and promptly
assigned me a new job as Chief of the Airplane Design Section.
This was a naval constructor’s stronghold, and even though we line
officers had pretty well dominated design down in the Engine Section,
I could have been made to feel like a blacksmith in a glassworks, had
it not been for my new wings and my postgraduate engineering course
under Dr. Lucke. But by now the vision he had foreseen had begun
to come to pass: the “professors” and the “practical men” had got
together in the person of the engineer, and the world was already on
fire with new developments.
Among other things the great engineering societies, like the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Electrical
Engineers, the Society of Civil Engineers, and others, had joined
hands to build a new Engineering Societies’ Building on 39th Street
in New York City, where they had their several offices and conducted
their technical sessions. One of these societies extended an
invitation to Admiral Moffett to address a joint session on naval
aviation and the admiral passed the job of writing the screed on to
me. But when I handed the finished product over to him, he glanced at
the title “Power Plants for Aircraft,” and grinned.
“You read it,” he directed.
I read it at a session at Pennsylvania State College and afterward,
to my surprise, learned that it had won some kind of award. To
receive this prize, I attended a session in the New York auditorium
of the society’s building and in the course of a little talk, told
the story of how George Mead and I, after the “invention” of the
air-cooled engine, had discovered its prototype in the Smithsonian
Institution in the power plant of the early Langley airplane, the
Manly engine. There was a disturbance in the back of the auditorium
and a member stood up to remark that Mr. Charles M. Manly was right
there in the audience. Amid the shouts that followed, Mr. Manly was
belatedly revealed as a great pioneer.
In addition to the journals and technical papers of the booming
American societies, we received the best articles from foreign
countries. Among these, the Royal Aeronautical Society of London
furnished almost world leadership, while the English magazine, _The
Airplane_, edited by an outspoken character, C. G. Grey, published
stimulating news and comment. Articles in German and French were
translated and distributed through BUAERO in such profusion that it
required a lot of homework just to keep up with the ever-changing
nomenclature of a rapidly growing art. The most scientific writings
came to us from the British National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics, but gradually our own committee with the same name began
to forge to the front with selected articles and digests of the best
laboratory reports from all over the world.
There was some discussion as to the wisdom of releasing the latest
in research or development in this country in exchange for similar
data from abroad, but the admiral settled it characteristically.
If you couldn’t keep ahead of the other fellow by resort to your
own initiative and enterprise in a free market, he felt, then you
certainly couldn’t beat him on a closed circuit. An alert mind could
often find something in the other fellow’s research which the other
fellow might have missed; and if the other fellow beat you to the
punch in your own field, you deserved to lose out. The admiral’s
highly competitive spirit kept the whole Bureau on its toes and a
word of commendation from him fired his supporters to play better
ball than they really knew how.
This general type of leadership seemed to permeate the Washington
atmosphere of the middle ’twenties. The team of Harding and Coolidge
had been elected to office on the slogan of a “Return to Normalcy.”
The American people had tasted the European way in World War I and
had found it bitter indeed. Then, after President Harding had died,
Mr. Coolidge had taken office and given us an administration founded
on New England character and integrity. This had been particularly
apparent in the monetary field. We in BUAERO had to supply Admiral
Moffett with sound bases for our requests for appropriations, but
when we did, the Old Man would come through; he had a rare knack for
getting money, especially after he had established the principle of
the five-year plan. But we were expected to make our appropriations
pay dividends; they weren’t handouts for “social” purposes.
We didn’t pretend to know anything about the obscure theories of
economics, but anyone could understand the soundness of Mr. Andrew
Mellon’s tax policies. The war had left us with the heaviest debt
in the history of the country, and with income taxes at high rates.
Mr. Mellon seemed determined to reduce the debt, and to this end he
resorted to reduced taxation. Meanwhile Mr. Coolidge sat on the lid
in so far as expenses were concerned. In BUAERO we got no sudden
slashing, but a quiet mandate that when a vacancy occurred, it would
not be filled; the work would either be divided among others or, if
unnecessary, be allowed to lapse. And between the two processes,
prosperity returned. Reduced taxes made funds available for new
enterprises; new enterprises paid new taxes which further reduced the
debt. Mr. Mellon now began anticipating this result by further tax
reductions, which accelerated the creation of new enterprises and new
jobs. And so a boom was born and men talked of the “new economic era.”
With the Morrow Board policy and the Moffett five-year building
program as its foundation, and the favorable climate of the new
economic era as its medium, American aviation seemed to turn around
almost overnight. The surviving domestic companies, impelled by the
incentive of constructive competition, began forging ahead with their
integrated programs of research, development, and production. Foreign
designers who had languished in the bad atmosphere of war-torn Europe
now began peddling their know-how in the promised land. Mr. Anthony
Fokker, the rough-and-ready Dutch designer of the famous German
Fokkers of World War I, appeared with a new transport designed around
the Liberty engine. It had a welded-steel tubular fuselage and a
thick monoplane wing made of plywood. With the Liberty it could be
nothing but a “kluck” but with three Wright Whirlwind air-cooled
radials, it was a hot number. When Dick Byrd planned to fly over
the North Pole I wangled one of them for him which he used with
conspicuous success. The smaller Fokker Universal made history in the
Canadian bush.
Igor Sikorsky, who, as a pioneer Russian pilot and constructor, had
built the first four-engined bomber but had left revolution-torn
Russia for free America, now designed a remarkably efficient big
bomber or transport and began developing his twin-engined amphibian.
Giuseppe Ballanca, after setting up shop in Wilmington, Delaware,
produced a single-engined cargo carrier, designed around a single
Wright Whirlwind engine with which Lt. C. C. Champion of BUAERO’s
Engine Section, now headed by Henry Mullinix, won all the prizes for
speed and efficiency at the Philadelphia national air races.
And a new crop of American designers sprang up almost overnight.
Tom Hamilton, of Milwaukee, built a single-motored, high-wing metal
monoplane around the Pratt and Whitney Hornet engine and put it into
service on many freight routes. Mr. Henry Ford, inspired by zeal to
do something concrete for aviation, supported his chief engineer,
William Mayo, in the development of the Ford Trimotor—a high-wing,
metal monoplane built around three Wright Whirlwinds—and its sale to
budding air transport lines at a price which would permit profitable
operations. In this Mr. Ford was not prompted by the modern incentive
of “tax loss”—that idea had not been born in an era of American
initiative and enterprise.
Numerous other enterprisers like Stearman, of Wichita, Kansas, and
Stinson, of Detroit, Michigan, began creating private aircraft to
exploit the coming boom in personal flying. Many, drawing the analogy
with the automobile, were convinced that this boom had already
arrived, and began building airports and flying services all over the
country. Much of this building was based on shoestring finance, but
some of it was sound. And all of it might have made steady progress
except for one thing: speculation permeated the sound core of
aviation just as it ate at the vitals of all other industry.
Even naval officers, who up until then had seemed to pride themselves
on a certain aloofness to the marts of trade, now began dabbling in
“the market.” Profits here were sure and swift—provided always you
were on the inside. One of our friends had an inside tip on a new
graveyard to be constructed within the city limits of Los Angeles,
with the advice and consent of the City Council, where profits were
quick and sure. The harvest for this enterprise was guaranteed to be
as sure as—say, death and taxes. This friend looked down his nose at
another man whose mouselike wife had been inveigled by a door-to-door
salesman into buying a lot in Long Beach, California. The extra
burden of paying for this “investment” was about to break the couple
down when someone poked a hole in a nearby piece of ground and the
oil field on Signal Hill was born. Now the young wife followed the
young husband’s battleship around in her private yacht. But none
of this seemed to discourage creative enterprise, like the rising
aircraft manufacturing and air-transport industries.
Among the newcomers in the manufacturing field, Donald Douglas and
“Dutch” Kindleberger began to stand out. Prior to their advent, most
of the newcomers had been alumni of the great Curtiss Aeroplane
Company, of Garden City, Long Island. But Glenn L. Martin, an
early bird who had pioneered American twin-engined bombers with
his famous Martin bomber, had collected a stable of promising
colts; Don Douglas, Dutch Kindleberger, and Larry Bell had worked
for him until some temperamental disagreement sent all three on
independent projects. After that, each concentrated his efforts to
outdoing the others, and especially the old master, Glenn Martin.
We in BUAERO, sitting as we did at the crossroads, could always get
the dirt and low-down from the visiting firemen and, after sifting
it and appraising it, use our own judgment in how to make it pay
dividends in new development. Intercompany competition mixed up with
interservice competition and whirled about in the old slipstream
might look disorderly and inefficient, but it was motivated by highly
creative impulses.
Admiral Moffett kept his own Bureau on its toes by involving us in
all sorts of racing or other projects. Back in Bruce Leighton’s time,
BUAERO had given Don Douglas the job of building an experimental
single-engined Liberty torpedo-bomber plane—one with extra
large tanks for long-range flying. But after Don had produced a
masterpiece, the Army Air Service seized upon the type while the
Navy dawdled, and the Army had completed the first ’round-the-world
flight. This job, a masterpiece of planning and operations, proved
such a pronounced success that it gave great impetus to other
projects. It also gave the Navy such pain that Admiral Moffett never
got over it.
The classic international seaplane race had long been the Schneider
Trophy and the admiral had set his heart on winning it. The
expenditure of time, money, and effort could be justified then
because it always stimulated technical progress. And so BUAERO
created a new class of racers and brought the trophy to America;
the admiral, master that he was of the art of publicity, played up
the results to the fullest. The Navy had also entered the classic
land-plane races using special racers in the “free-for-all pursuit.”
Then, since turn about had always been fair play, the Army entered
Jimmy Doolittle in the Schneider Cup seaplane races and won them
hands down. This was the same Jimmy Doolittle who would one day take
off in an Army bomber from the Navy carrier _Hornet_ in our first air
raid on Tokyo. Meanwhile, the middle ’twenties were a free-swinging
era of intense competition that pushed American aeronautics to the
forefront of world progress. The bursting bubble of stock-market
speculation in 1929 squeezed out the small fry, but the big boys went
on for a while longer.
Meanwhile I found my new flying ability most useful in my billet
as Chief of Design. On a training-plane competition between Boeing
and Huff-Daland, I was able to check the trial-board report myself
and, being fresh out of Pensacola, to do so with a fair knowledge
of the latest edition of the _Flight Manual_. The Boeing developed
a characteristic which, until then, was new to us. Pete Mitscher,
the same Pete who would one day command Task Force 58 in the Pacific
and earn from his mates the reputation for being the ablest air
commander of them all, got into a flat spin at 6,000 feet over
Washington and windmilled to a crash on the end of Haines Point,
where he stepped out of the damaged plane quite unharmed. Had he
known about flat spins back in the days of the “Affair Fleet,” things
would have been more difficult.
Then one of these tests of mine came near to washing me out of
aviation’s slipstream forever and leaving me as a part of the
permanent “slip.”
There had been some discussion in BUAERO of a suggestion to equip
Pensacola with some advanced combat trainers by taking the Pratt
and Whitney Wasp out of the Curtiss Hawk and substituting in it the
lower-power Wright Whirlwind. I had argued against this and suggested
obtaining the same result by flying the standard Hawks with partly
open throttles. And in order to prove the efficacy of this, I went
over to the Naval Air Station, Anacostia, where we did our flight
testing, to put on a demonstration. When I waddled out in my flying
suit and parachute, I found the plane turning up on the line, but the
mechanic was dissatisfied with the way the engine was running. It was
one hundred revs short of the full-throttle crank speed. Since this
might be due to a weak spark plug or some other minor fault and since
I intended to fly at half throttle anyway, I got in, taxied out onto
the field, and took off.
The Anacostia Naval Air Station occupied about half of a flat strip
of land and had its hangars and shops along the river front. The
Army Bolling Field occupied the other part of the reservation with
its old wartime buildings lying under the hill on which stands St.
Elizabeth’s Hospital. If the presence of an institution for the
insane, overlooking the rival Army and Navy fields on the same plot,
had any significance, I was not concerned with it that day. What I
had to look out for, however, was the extensive regrading going on,
which limited the operating area to a narrow tract.
My take-off was diagonally across the field toward the bluff, and
the little Hawk, to my delight, fairly leaped into the air at half
throttle, and climbed over the trees. Turning to the left, looking
down on the hospital, I noticed the circle that marked the landing
area, and promptly cut the switch to make a dead-stick precision
landing on it. When this turned out well, I started the engine and
repeated the maneuver. On the third take-off, noticing a certain
roughness in the engine, I opened the throttle wide, thinking to
clear a possible fouled plug. But even as I did so, I felt something
let go and noticed the ears of the valve rocker box covers drop below
the rim of the engine cowl.
There was a sudden “whoosh” and the cockpit filled with flames.
Instinctively I cut back the throttle, slapped off the switch, and
pulled the fire-extinguisher knob. As I reached behind me alongside
the seat for the fuel cutoff valve, I glanced into the cockpit where
the flames were licking my stick hand, and curling up around my
ankles beneath my slacks. When I looked out again, we were nearing
the end of the field. At such a low altitude I could not jump and
now, to get the flames out of my face, I kicked into a steep slip to
the left which headed us out over the Potomac River. A water landing
to a sailor has more appeal than a crack-up in a thicket, and I held
the heading until it was certain I could not stretch the river. Then,
close to the ground, I booted the rudder to fishtail her the other
way and followed this with four hard kicks alternating left and right
until she had lost speed. Now as the burning Hawk touched down hard,
I had an overwhelming sense of panic; the next thing I knew I was on
the ground on my hands and knees and the plane was crackling behind
me. Feeling the heat on the back of my neck, I glanced quickly over
my shoulder and then, as the flame seared my cheek, I scrambled out
of there on hands and knees.
Clear of the wreck, I got to my feet and looked around. A small
car was careening toward me from the direction of the Army hangar.
My first reaction was one of embarrassment at being caught by the
Army in such an undignified situation. When I looked again at the
airplane, it stood there without its engine, burning abaft the
cockpit, but headed in a direction opposite to that in which I had
landed it. Its engine lay a few yards beyond me, one propeller blade
broken off near the hub.
Well, that accounted for the crack-up. When the blade had let go,
several of the holding-down stud bosses had broken off, but others
had held the engine in the airplane. Then the rough landing had
sheared the others; the airplane, freed of its heavy noseweight, had
bounced into the air, done a split S, broken my safety belt, and
dropped me clear of the fire. Had it happened any other way, I must
surely have burned up before I could escape the flames.
I glanced at my hands and saw that the skin was burned deep enough to
expose the cords. I felt my face and found burns around my lips and
eyebrows; at least I would not be disfigured for life. The careening
Army car swung alongside with squealing brakes and I climbed on
its running board for a fast run back to Anacostia’s sick bay. The
soldier in the car said the broken propeller blade had sailed right
past him, screaming like a wild thing. Arrived at the sick bay, I
was hustled into a ward and told to lie down; the doctor said I was
suffering from shock. I lay down on the bunk awhile, and when I
looked up, Admiral Moffett stood in the door.
“Have you telephoned your wife?” he asked eagerly.
“No, sir,” I replied.
“Better do it yourself,” he ordered. “News of this will be all over
town. Save her the shock.”
But when I tried to get up, I couldn’t move. The admiral pushed the
bed toward the telephone. When I got our apartment, no prior news had
preceded me; my wife gasped and said she’d be right over. The door
opened and a doctor walked in to examine my hands.
“I’m afraid you’ll never use those again,” he said. Then he looked
up. “Can you stand a lot of pain?” he asked.
I had never had to stand much. The doctor said he’d try a treatment
developed in World War I, one using a solution of tannic acid. It
worked and today I have nothing to show for the experience save a few
minor scars. Meanwhile, the admiral sat there; for the first time
that I could recall, he seemed to droop.
“Things like this,” he said, “make you wonder if this cockeyed game
is worth the candle.” He paused.
“Well,” he added, standing up to leave, “there’s nothing much we can
do about it but play it out. The thing’s bigger than any of us and
we’re in it up to our necks.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Lone Eagle Sets the Standard
Among the aviation phenomena of the late 1920’s was the outbreak of
glorified stunt flying. Barnstormers and wing walkers of the earlier
half of the decade now began vying with one another on a world-wide
scale, competing for rich prizes offered by various personalities,
and for assorted motives. Some courageous souls, quite unprepared,
took off in the direction of the wide blue yonder and never came
back; others, more successful, returned to bask for a while in the
pitiless glare of publicity and then faded out.
But one day, while the whole world seemed to hold its breath and
to offer up a little prayer for him, a lone eagle soared out over
the broad Atlantic and, after thirty-three hours, let down through
the murk over Le Bourget, outside Paris. And after taxiing toward a
milling throng so dense he had to cut his engine to avoid injuring
someone with his propeller, he remarked, “I am Charles A. Lindbergh.”
Perhaps one measure of the character of this performance is the
fact that, to this day, in spite of all the strides in airplane
development, no person has sought to duplicate a solo flight from New
York to Paris.
The impact of Lindbergh’s flight on the progress of American aviation
is well known; it started an upsurge that carried aviation over
a dead center and started it spinning on its way. What is not so
well known is the underlying character of the man himself and its
influence on American air power. For, just as a community or an
enterprise mirrors the character of its pioneers, so has aviation
taken on some of the personalities of its immortals.
In BUAERO we were at first inclined to look at this last stunt as
more or less a lucky break, until Guy Vaughan came down to tell
us about the night take-off. Since Lindbergh was flying a Wright
Whirlwind engine, Guy had invited him to dinner. And while he and
his wife, Helen, sat talking with Lindbergh, word came from Dr.
Kimball, the weather wizard, that things were clearing over the
Atlantic. The party drove out to the flying field and when the men
had pushed their way into the hangar to look for the _Spirit of St.
Louis_, the tiny ship was lighted by a single, dim carbon-filament
bulb—“so dim,” according to Guy Vaughan, “you had to strike a match
to see if it was burning.”
Outside the hangar, Dick Byrd, aided by his ample staff, had also
been making preparations. But Guy Vaughan and Charles Lindbergh,
using their own hands, topped off the fuel tanks of the _Spirit of
St. Louis_ and started her rolling out onto the ramp. Guy ascribed
Lindbergh’s achievement to three things: he was the best pilot in
the world, he trusted nothing to anyone but himself, and he took no
unintelligent chances.
Admiral Moffett hailed Lindbergh’s accomplishment, but feared the
Army might make capital of it by persuading Lindbergh, an Army
Reserve officer, to say that his feat had obsoleted all navies.
Jerry Land, now our assistant chief, got a big kick out of the whole
thing; Lindbergh was his nephew. And then, as the flight proved to be
far more than just a seven days’ wonder and Lindbergh’s popularity
increased rather than diminished with the passage of time, all sorts
of people began getting into the act. When the word was passed around
that Lindbergh was coming home on the cruiser _Memphis_ and that he
was writing a book to be called _We_, the Navy began to take him very
seriously. The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Curtis D. Wilbur, radioed
Lindbergh on the _Memphis_, offering to assign a naval officer as
his technical advisor in the preparation of the book. Lindbergh
accepted the offer with alacrity, and I found myself assigned to the
detail. My job was to see that his book didn’t sink the Navy with a
fragmentation bomb.
On the day of Lindbergh’s arrival at the Navy Yard in Washington,
all the naval aviators in the vicinity were tolled off to act as a
guard of honor for him. I walked through the part, but was so little
interested that I neglected to attend the ceremonies at the foot
of the Washington Monument, and went home as usual for lunch. But
after Lindbergh’s tour of the provinces, we began to take notice;
not only did his popularity increase, but he developed a knack of
being exactly on time for all ceremonies. I had noted, during the
time the _Spirit of St. Louis_ had been in the hangar at Anacostia,
that Lindbergh himself had never failed to check every detail of her
preparations. Now his incredible on-time performance, under trying
conditions, seemed to bear out Guy Vaughan’s estimate; he trusted no
one but himself and was the best pilot in the country. Then came the
day when Charles Lindbergh returned to Washington.
Jerry Land sent for me to tell me that Secretary Wilbur had placed
his yacht _Sylph_ at Lindbergh’s disposal for a cruise down the
Potomac as far as Mount Vernon. A number of dignitaries, including
Bill McCracken, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air; F. Trubee
Davison, Assistant Secretary of War for Air; Ed Warner, Assistant
Secretary of the Navy for Air; and a number of Slim Lindbergh’s St.
Louis backers, were to make the trip. The idea was to give Lindbergh
a lot of good advice on his future conduct and afterward we would
all adjourn to the house of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover
on S Street, where we would meet an agent of George Palmer Putnam,
prospective publisher of the book _We_. I was to go along on the
_Sylph_ and then do my duty at the Hoover house.
On the junket down the river that day, I sat well out toward the
rail, watching Glenn Martin’s first T4M torpedoplane overhead
with its new Pratt and Whitney Hornet going through its one-hour,
full-throttle endurance trial. It was oppressively hot and I was
nervous about that engine; we thought Glenn had cowled it too close,
trying to get speed at the cost of cooling. Lindbergh sat inboard
near a cabin skylight, surrounded by important personages and looking
very boyish. And while I watched the T4M, listening to every engine
throb, I found myself beginning to take notice of the conversation in
which I had expected to find no interest.
The older, more experienced men agreed that Lindbergh had done a
swell job so far, but they reminded him that fame was fleeting; if
he expected to capitalize on his achievement, he must strike while
the iron was hot. Of course he shouldn’t try anything dizzy; his job
was to prove how safe aviation is. It seemed likely that he might
do a good motion picture, a sort of educational movie. He could act
out the early history of the flight: the meeting with his backers,
the days spent building his plane with Claude Ryan in San Diego, his
trials and tribulations, and finally the take-off and landing at Le
Bourget. It could be conservative and refined.
To this suggestion Lindbergh replied to the effect that he hated to
seem ungrateful, but he had no intention of going into the movies.
If he were to go into the movies, someone would try to make a sheik
out of him and he didn’t think he would make much of a sheik. At this
comment, I moved a little closer to the cabin skylight.
His advisors now shifted over to the possibilities of Slim’s becoming
interested in the air lines. After all, he’d had experience as a mail
pilot and could easily take over something big. Maybe Bill Boeing
of Seattle would be interested in taking him on—think of all the
publicity it would bring.
Lindbergh’s reply to this was again that he disliked appearing
ungrateful. It was true he had had some experience in air transport,
but he wasn’t too proud of the fact that he had had to parachute from
two of his planes and had lost them both. He didn’t know anything
much about transportation, and if he went into something he didn’t
know about he would likely make a fool of himself. He hoped that from
here on he might not make any bigger fool of himself than he had made
already.
It now began to appear that a lot more sense was coming from the
advised than from the advisors; I moved over and sat down near Jerry
Land, who grinned proudly at me. Overhead the Martin T4M seemed to be
droning along with confidence.
The third suggestion offered Lindbergh had to do with aircraft
manufacture. It was suggested that after all the publicity on the
_Spirit of St. Louis_, a lot of craft of that model might be sold.
Perhaps the men from St. Louis who had backed Lindbergh on the flight
to Paris might finance an aircraft manufacturing company in St. Louis
of which the young pilot might become the president.
Lindbergh shook his head quickly. He had a crazy idea that he would
like to have his Paris flight redound to the benefit of aviation as a
whole. If he went into manufacture, that would put him in competition
with others in the business; he didn’t want to compete with them but
rather to help the whole aviation game along. If the flight was worth
anything at all, he would like to see it advance aviation. He didn’t
appear to be interested in trying to make money out of it.
By the time Charles Lindbergh had received his friends’ advice, the
Martin T4M had finished its run successfully and landed at Anacostia.
Soon the _Sylph_ put back to the Navy Yard and we all got into cars
to ride up to Mr. Hoover’s house. Mrs. Hoover met us at the door and
showed most of the group out onto the porch. Four of us remained
behind to sit down around a table and hear a report from the agent of
Mr. George Palmer Putnam.
Charles Lindbergh took his seat at the head of a table. On his
right sat a keen young Army pilot, Lt. Robert Douglas, who had been
a student aviator with Lindbergh at Kelly Field. I sat down at
Lindbergh’s left while Mr. Putnam’s representative stood at the end
of the table opposite him. The man from Putnam’s held the galley
proof in his hand and displayed considerable pride over it. The
galley had been struck off in record time.
It seemed that the book really divided into three parts: the first
had to do with Lindbergh’s early life; the second part reviewed his
flight training, his barnstorming, and his experience as an air-mail
pilot; the third part, which covered the technical aspects of the
New York-Paris flight, had been prepared by someone in the publicity
department of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation, makers of the
engine of the _Spirit of St. Louis_.
The first part had been written by a journalist who had accompanied
Lindbergh on the trip home in the cruiser _Memphis_. This section
of the book was considered to be the meat of the cocoanut and had
been well advertised. It was the part of Lindbergh’s life not
already widely publicized. Mr. Putnam’s representative hoped Colonel
Lindbergh would not find it necessary to make changes in it; its
author would be disappointed. Of course, corrections of typographical
errors were in order but extensive revisions would delay publication,
and time was of the essence. Some parts of this section might sound
a little overdone to the colonel, but, after all, that was what sold
books and the publisher had already committed himself to the public
in forecasting a few sensations.
Lindbergh sat silent during this discourse and when the galley was
handed him, divided it into the three parts. The section on his
flying experience he handed to Bob Douglas; the technical section he
passed to me; his “early life” he kept to himself. There was a long
silence while we three scanned copy. I thumbed through a collection
of clichés designed to glorify the Wright Whirlwind, until I found
what I had been sent to look for. Sure enough, someone had put into
Lindbergh’s mouth a quote to the effect that his flight had clearly
shown that armies and navies might now be done away with, and the
moneys previously wasted devoted to an air force. After a while
Lindbergh glanced at Bob Douglas.
“How about your part, Bob?” he asked.
Bob Douglas saw nothing out of line in his section. It had been
developed largely from Lindbergh’s own reports of his parachute
drops from the mail planes in soupy weather, and was quite factual.
Lindbergh looked my way.
“To be wholly honest with you,” I said, “I was planted here to see
that you didn’t sink the whole Navy with one little bomb, and here
it all is, in quotes.” Lindbergh grinned. Some years later I was to
learn from a naval officer who accompanied Lindbergh home on the
_Memphis_ that the young pilot had even then been disturbed by the
trend his book was taking and had accepted Secretary Wilbur’s offer
of technical assistance as a possible way out of his dilemma. Now he
listened as I read that part.
“If you think that is crazy,” he grinned, “just listen to this.” So
saying, he began to read aloud from his “early life.” As I recall
what he read, it stressed Lindbergh’s qualities as a daredevil,
something that certainly did not coincide with my own estimate of
him. He was bold, yes, courageous, undoubtedly, but he was the
most painstakingly accurate and precise young pilot I had yet
encountered, and these qualities, combined with his unique flying
skill, had made it possible for him to undertake the impossible,
without being a daredevil. Now as he read the passages, Mr. Putnam’s
representative nervously interrupted him to interpose the publisher’s
point of view; this treatment was all just a part of the publisher’s
job; you had to do it, or the book just would not sell. Lindbergh
turned his clear eyes on me.
“If you were in my place, Commander,” he inquired, “what would you
do?” The room was still as I pondered this question. We could hear
voices and laughter from the others of the party as they enjoyed
their lemonade out on the porch.
“Colonel Lindbergh,” I replied, “I don’t believe anyone but you
yourself can write _We_.”
Without a moment’s hesitation he turned to the man from Putnam’s.
“That confirms a decision I had already taken on the _Memphis_,” he
said simply. “I’m sorry about all the work that has been done, but it
just can’t be helped.”
And Lindbergh did go off to Harry Guggenheim’s place on Long Island,
and he did write _We_, all except the final portion which was clearly
set apart as the work of Fitzhugh Green. And if fewer copies were
sold because the book did not set the world on fire, at least its
character was consistent with that of its author. I understand that
Lindbergh saw that the journalist, who had done his best under trying
circumstances, received full compensation for his unused work.
Meanwhile, Charles A. Lindbergh had become for me the personification
of the spirit of aviation. Young, courageous, daring, yet
painstaking, competent, and proficient in his art, he had integrity
and that quality so rare in this era of rampant materialism,
Christian unselfishness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A Change in Status
As the summer of 1927 came to a close, I began to sense that my own
work in BUAERO was coming to its end. The fact was crystallized for
me one evening when Fred Rentschler, Chance Vought, my wife, and I
sat out on the little balcony of our apartment at 2301 Connecticut
Avenue, watching the shadows fall. Fred and Chance had had dinner
with us and we could hear the clatter of dishes in the pantry as the
maid of all work finished her chores. For when the visiting firemen
came to town, we either had dinner with them downtown somewhere or
they with us in the apartment. We balanced the social obligations
that way.
Our apartment looked out over Rock Creek Park and across the
Memorial Bridge toward Wardman Park, and the tiny balcony was the
one cool spot in it. In an open space among the trees stood a riding
school that was reminiscent of that avid horseman, Billy Mitchell.
And though he had lost out in his fight, his spirit still haunted
aviation and would continue to do so for all time. He had created the
opportunity on which Admiral Moffett had capitalized, and people like
Fred Rentschler and Chance Vought had founded their businesses. Now
Fred Rentschler, whose consuming passion was business, was talking
about it.
“This aviation business,” he was saying, “is like no other business
in the world.”
Chance Vought, sitting with his feet on the porch rail, glanced
skeptically at him; Chance delighted in debunking Fred’s somewhat
ponderous deductions.
“Whoever said it was a business?” he demanded. “The best you can
say for it is that it’s the ‘Aviation Game’; but it’s still a lousy
racket.” A pained expression crossed Fred’s serious face.
“Aviation is no longer a game or a racket,” he insisted. “It’s
serious business and the sooner some of you airplane wood butchers
wake up to that fact, the better.” Chance winked at me and then
closed his eyes. He would snore during Fred’s discourse on a pet
subject, but would probably come to life in time to put the clincher
on the evening’s lesson.
Fred stressed the fundamental difference between the airplane and
other mechanisms. Most things produced in factories would wear out
in time and replacement furnished the manufacturer with a continuing
source of business. The airplane, on the other hand, would never wear
out; the high quality required for dependable service meant that the
goods would last forever. The only sources of business were expansion
and crash losses, and even these were limited. In other words, even
while the aircraft manufacturer must strive to increase his quality
in the interest of safety, in the process he works himself out of
production.
There appeared to be only one solution to this problem, and that was
the factor of obsolescence. In things like clothing, or automobiles,
or what have you, the trick was to so modify the styling as to keep
the customer “just enough dissatisfied with what he has to persuade
him to buy something new.” Fred ascribed this precept to his friend
“Boss” Kettering, of General Motors.
But the factor of styling, so important in some lines, had no bearing
in aviation. Here performance was the key to progress: in military
aircraft it was speed, climb, and ceiling; in air transport it was
dollars per ton-mile. And the degree to which this last factor was
important to the commercial airlines depended upon the intensity of
economic competition between them.
Bill Boeing, for instance, might have continued to use the
war-surplus Liberty-engined DH’s indefinitely, had not competition
for the air-mail contract forced him to risk a low bid and then build
new aircraft to meet his own standards. And so price competition,
which many were beginning to think was cutthroat and destructive, was
over-all, the key to progress in aeronautics.
The engine manufacturer, for instance, must experiment with new
ideas, conduct research into strange fields, and come up with
something so economical that the airline operator can’t get along
without it. That will obsolete his airplanes, retire them to some
embryonic service that cannot yet afford new types, and force him to
introduce the newest and latest models—or else go out of business.
Competition, Fred insisted, was not destructive, but creative; it was
tough on the one who lost his shirt, but favorable to the public at
large.
Fred went on to develop the vast difference between the
volume-producing industries, where low first cost was the incentive,
and the aircraft industry, where low operating cost was the real
criterion. The airline operator could afford to pay a high price for
high quality aircraft, provided he reduced his operating costs enough
to absorb the first cost in a reasonable time. The whole character
of the two types of industry differed, and neither could expect to
do the other’s job. Technological development was the key to the
economic security of an enterprise like aviation. The way to keep in
the forefront was to stress your engineering; once you got behind you
could never catch up, unless the other fellow broke a leg and fell
down. Yes, he thought, this aviation was a funny business. At this
remark, Chance Vought woke up.
“The thing that is funny about it,” he said sleepily, “is that it has
at last become a business.”
I sat looking out over Rock Creek Park as it faded into the shadows.
The conversation had pointed up a new situation in my own affairs. If
aviation was now a business, then my job here was finished. You could
hardly have called it that three and a half years ago, and the time
had come for me to go to sea, lest some Selection Board pass me by.
I’d go see Admiral Moffett in the morning.
But in the morning the admiral was, as usual, one jump ahead of
me. I found a note on my desk instructing me to see him the first
thing. In his corner office he waved a letter at me, one scrawled
in longhand in the bold writing of Rear Adm. Joseph M. Reeves,
Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet. It was dated at San
Diego, California, on the _Langley_, and it took note of the fact
that the carriers _Saratoga_ and _Lexington_ were scheduled to join
the fleet in a year or so. His chief of staff, Karl Smith, was ill
and he needed a relief for him. He asked if I could be made available.
“Bull” Reeves was a distinguished officer and an able commander. Only
a year or two earlier he had dropped in on me in the Engine Section
to inquire if I thought he should accept an invitation to join the
aeronautic organization and go to Pensacola for instruction with the
ultimate idea of succeeding to command of the Aircraft Squadrons,
Battle Fleet. He had graduated from Annapolis into the old Engineer
Corps but later, upon amalgamation with the line, had qualified for
command. A hero of Naval Academy football, he had been on duty at
Annapolis as an instructor while I had been a midshipman, and he had
been rated “white” by all hands—the highest commendation an officer
could earn from the brigade. During the Spanish American War, he had
made a name for himself in the engine room of the old _Oregon_ in
her dash around the Horn. Admiral Moffett was smiling at my obvious
satisfaction.
“Yes,” he remarked, “you should be a big help to me out there.”
I put in a request for a month’s leave and bought tickets for my wife
and myself on the Panama-Pacific liner, _Mongolia_, sailing direct
for San Diego via the Panama Canal. We sailed from New York where
Fred Rentschler, Chance Vought, Guy Vaughan, and many other friends
in the aircraft industry saw us off. After a lovely cruise through
the Caribbean and the transit of the Canal, we headed north for
the West Coast and San Diego, where my wife and I had first set up
housekeeping at the Coronado Hotel, while I served my tour of duty in
the old Pacific Torpedo Flotilla. It was there we had made our first
contact with aviation.
When the _Mongolia_ pushed her nose into San Diego harbor that
morning late in October of 1927, the bright sun glittered on the
white sands of North Island just as it had done some fifteen years
earlier when we had last looked upon this pleasant scene. Meanwhile,
however, North Island itself had undergone change. Then it had been
a flat, brush-covered expanse on which we had hunted jack rabbits;
now a latticed airship mooring mast thrust its height above a
cleared surface, and white hangars lined the shores of West Beach.
The mooring mast, located there as a haven for Admiral Moffett’s
rigid airships, lay down near the entrance to the ship channel; the
hangars, intended for heavier-than-air craft, faced across the bay
to San Diego or across Spanish Bight to Coronado Island’s bungalows
and cottages. The ancient Hotel del Coronado, with its white
sides and red-pinnacled roofs reminiscent of the lush days of the
land-and-railroad boom, still dominated the bright scene.
As our ship nosed into the pier on the San Diego side, we could
look back at North Island and the Naval Air Station where the
experimental carrier _Langley_, alongside her dock, filled the
immediate foreground, and the tower of the yellow stucco mission-type
Administration Building pierced the blue heavens. Here, less then
twenty years earlier, had stood the tent hangars of the pioneer Army
and Navy aviation schools, the one operated under the supervision
of the Wright Brothers, the other by Glenn Curtiss. Here too had
been born the early rivalries that still dominated the aircraft
establishment, a pattern of Army versus Navy, and of manufacturer
versus manufacturer, that had put the spark in the development of a
new art.
Back there, student pilots had taken off at the crack of dawn in
their powered box kites to get in their flight time before the
gentle southwesterlies could interfere with their training. And if,
perchance, a student like my classmate “Spig” Herbster, of the Wright
camp, were forced down on the harbor by a failure of the tricky
engine of his seaplane, another student like Jack Towers, of the
Curtiss camp, waiting for just such an opportunity, would literally
fly to his rescue—for the benefit of thrilling headlines in that
enterprising newspaper, _The San Diego Union_. To us salts of the
Destroyer Flotilla, moored alongside the ferry slip or the “Spreckles
Dock,” accustomed to night torpedo tactics on the high seas off
Coronado Island, the whole thing had looked a bit silly. But to the
aviators, news headlines had been the breath of life ever since that
day at Kittyhawk when the wise money in the public press had refused
to print the news of the first flight because it was too smart to
fall for such a hoax.
Now that same Jack Towers was serving as captain of the first
flattop, the _Langley_, a vessel named for the professor who had
failed to fly, and I recalled the _Langley_ when she had been
commissioned as the collier _Jupiter_ at the Mare Island Navy Yard,
under command of Comdr. Joseph M. Reeves. The _Langley_ had a
revolutionary power plant, the electric drive, and had been equipped
with a forest of masts and booms designed to fuel battleships at the
rate of 500 tons of coal per hour. Today, fuel oil had replaced coal
in all naval vessels and the _Langley_ masts had been leveled to make
room for a flat landing area for aircraft. And I, who had set out to
become a gunnery officer but had been converted into a mechanical
engineer, was now a naval aviator. Well, the new job seemed to have
possibilities, but just how far-reaching they would prove to be, I
didn’t even dream.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Salt’s Solution
When, next morning, I buckled on my dress sword and reported at the
Naval Air Station, I found Admiral Reeves had gone to Denver to make
a speech at the Navy Day celebration there. Then, since Captain
Towers was senior officer present afloat, I walked down the _Langley_
dock to pay my respects to him. The moment I stepped over the rail
onto the steel-decked passageway leading aft under the landing
platform, I recognized the unmistakable signs of a “smart ship.”
Freshly scrubbed paint and gleaming brightwork told its own story.
And before the winter had passed, I would learn just how smart the
_Langley_ really was. For Jack Towers, the naval aviator, was one of
the best ship handlers in the whole service. He greeted me outside
his cabin and promptly asked me to stay for lunch.
Jack Towers, one of the real pioneers of American aviation, was the
acknowledged leader of the younger generation. He had served with
distinction in World War I as a member of Admiral Sims’s staff in
London, and though some of his contemporaries resented his tendency
to adopt English mannerisms, his juniors swore by him. Now he
invited some of his department heads, old friends of mine, like Pete
Mitscher, Monty Montgomery, and Bobby Moulton, to join us for a bull
fest. And hardly had we sat down around the mess table before I found
myself in the middle of the big issue of the moment.
My personal situation was complicated by the fact that I was a
newcomer to aviation and now, by seniority and assignment, in a
position of authority over such old-timers as were gathered around
the table. No doubt they thought my qualification as naval aviator
had been donated by Admiral Moffett, and discounted my flying ability
accordingly. With this in mind I had sought to tread softly through
the lunch, but the issue now raised must be met head on.
It developed that Admiral Reeves held curious notions about carrier
tactics. He was insisting that a 500-foot, 10,000-ton vessel like the
_Langley_ could earn her salt only by operating sufficient aircraft
to make her an effective military instrument. He had mentioned
thirty-six planes, or two full fighter squadrons, as the minimum
complement. But _Langley_ officers had crystallized the opinion
that not more than a third as many, say twelve airplanes, could be
flown off the _Langley_ and received on board without hazard to the
lives of pilots. That key factor of safety had been argued out in
conferences but “Bull” Reeves had stood pat. The _Langley_ officers,
now concerned, put the clincher on me.
“It’s up to you,” someone said, while the Filipino mess attendants
passed the coffee.
“How come?” I inquired in some surprise.
“As chief of staff,” someone replied, “you’ve got to prevent the
admiral making this mistake.” In the silence that followed I realized
that on my first day in the Aircraft Squadrons we had already pointed
up an issue between the _Langley_ officers and the admiral’s flag.
The fat was in the fire.
“As I understand my job,” I said, trying to choose the right words,
“it is to help the Old Man carry out his program, not hinder him.”
After lunch they showed me the slow-motion movies of carrier
landings; not the successful ones, but the crack-ups. These ranged
from simple landing-gear collapses to rolling off the deck and over
the side into the sea. As we broke up, Bobby Moulton came forward
with that glint in his eye that characterized the peculiar brand of
humor that permeates naval aviation.
“We’re qualifying the new class of carrier pilots next week,” he
grinned. “You can get yours in before the admiral gets back. Meet
me Monday morning down at the West Beach and we’ll put you over the
jumps.”
Not too many pilots had qualified for deck landings back there in
1927. The _Langley_ could make only twelve knots, and her deck was
so narrow a pilot could not see it behind the engine. He could
barely see the signalman out on his platform, and even with a good
landing, failures of the airplane or the arresting gear could make
him trouble. We used Vought UO’s with arresting hooks hung under
their tails to catch the crosswires, and cross-axle hooks, long since
abandoned, to catch the fore and aft wires.
Three of us constituted the next class. After three days of
preliminary instruction on a simulated flight deck at Ream Field,
primarily to familiarize us with the flag signals, we went aboard.
On the way down the bay, a flock of sea gulls followed in our wake,
beady eyes alight for possible garbage, and since they constituted a
flight hazard, Emile Chourré, a veteran carrier pilot, perched aft
on the signal platform to practice his antiaircraft marksmanship by
working on the gulls with a BB gun.
Outside Point Loma the first pilot off—a youngster who had been as
hot as a firecracker at Ream Field—went haywire, and after washing
out his landing gear was ordered back to the air station where he
made a safe belly landing in a shower of sand while surrounded by
crash trucks, fire engines, and ambulances. My place was second in
the line and, as I scrambled into the cockpit and looked down into
the nettings where the whole ship’s company had assembled in the hope
of seeing a brass hat roll over the side, I thanked my stars that
the one thing I could do well with an airplane was to set it gently
back on the ground. And so closely did I concentrate on the business
in hand that I lost track of my landings and came to only when Tiny
Sullivan, a 300-pound chief and an old friend, shook hands with
himself as I jolted aboard for the tenth and final landing. Climbing
from the cockpit I thumbed my nose at Bobby Moulton and waddled
triumphantly toward the disappointed sailormen in the nettings.
While waiting for Admiral Reeves to return from Denver and his
Navy Day speech, I familiarized myself with the local setup. The
Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet, was a part of the battle-fleet
organization whose backbone was a dozen battleships that based behind
the breakwater ninety miles farther north at San Pedro or Long Beach,
and exercised in the open sea nearby. Duty in the organization
constituted “sea duty” but the aircraft squadrons were based on shore
at the San Diego Air Station. Nominally assigned to the _Langley_
for duty, Admiral Reeves and his small staff were given working
quarters in a wing of the Administration Building. All save the
admiral lived ashore, either in Coronado or San Diego; the admiral,
during Mrs. Reeves’s absence in Switzerland, lived in a room off
the corner office assigned to him. My office was next to his in the
opposite corner of the wing. The air station, built to conform to
local architecture, was surrounded by pleasant lawns and attractive
plantings. It provided operating facilities and repair shops for
FLEET AIR, and while under a separate command, had established
a reputation for cheerful cooperation, a circumstance not often
encountered in the naval establishment.
The admiral had built up his staff from among the personnel of his
squadrons. His operations officer, Frank D. Wagner, more commonly
known as “Honus,” had come up from Fighting One, the swank combat
squadron with a reputation for high hat that one day gave it a
replica of a top hat for its squadron insignia. Frank had dragged his
feet on leaving Fighting One, but had brought to the staff a unique
appreciation of the squadron point of view. Under Admiral Reeves’s
watchful eye, he had conducted the tactical exercises of the summer
concentration, and evolved some advanced tactical concepts for air
combat. The admiral’s flag secretary was Seth Warner; his flag
lieutenant, Les Arnold; and his radio officer, Gordon Rowe. I, as his
chief of staff, would supervise the administrative functions and have
general charge of matériel.
The aircraft squadrons themselves were in the process of
organization. The twelve battle wagons at San Pedro operated
three Voughts apiece, and since the battleships constituted three
divisions, their aircraft formed three squadrons of the observation
wing. There were no facilities at San Pedro for aircraft operations,
so the observation wing based at San Diego except when needed aboard
their ships for gunnery or the monthly fleet tactical exercises.
During the summer months, when personnel shifts took place, all
aircraft based at San Diego for the summer concentration period,
where they broke in new crews and tried out new air tactics under
Wagner.
Squadrons were also being assembled for the carriers. _Langley_
units based full-time at San Diego and carried out their protracted
gunnery schedules over nearby areas. Some _Lexington_ squadrons
were being gradually assembled at the Naval Air Station at Norfolk,
Virginia, while the _Saratoga_ units were being brought together at
San Diego. These squadrons would be equipped with the new air-cooled
fighters and torpedo bombers we had been developing at BUAERO and
manned with new pilots then under training at Pensacola. The whole
organization, under the leadership of Admiral Reeves, must be rounded
out and trained during the next few years.
The admiral had always been “Bull” Reeves to his contemporaries,
from the day when he had created the first football headgear so
that he might get into the Army-Navy football game after a serious
head injury. His juniors in aviation now called him “Billy Goat”
because he wore one of the few beards then extant in the Navy. This
beard was a lovely gray Vandyke which, with the admiral’s shell-pink
complexion, gave him an air of grave distinction that quite belied an
uproarious sense of humor. He had a deep, vibrant voice and he spoke
with great eloquence—a fact he ascribed to his having once studied
for the ministry. Standing before an assembly of his brother officers
he could expound the weightiest tactical or strategic doctrines in
an entertaining and enlightening manner, speaking always with the
obvious relish of a man engaged in an undertaking at which he knows
he is competent. He differed from Admiral Moffett in almost every
characteristic, but especially in his logical, measured approach to a
problem. Though trained as an engineer, he had specialized in tactics
and strategy and had brought to these subjects an orderly but very
active mind. Even as I slid into the routine of my new job, I looked
forward with impatience to the Old Man’s return.
On the first morning that we faced each other across the desk in his
bare office, Admiral Reeves raised the question of the _Langley’s_
reluctance to expand her operating complement. Entertaining as he did
a high regard for Captain Towers both as a seaman and as a leader,
and having in mind the initiative with which Jack had pioneered
naval aviation, the admiral surmised that the long list of casualties
among pilots had tended to overemphasize the hazards of flying off
carriers. The fleet problem that was scheduled for the coming spring
would offer an opportunity for an air attack on Pearl Harbor. In
light of the probable arrival of the big carriers the following year
he wanted to try out some of his ideas on the _Langley_, if only on
a small scale. However, the scale proposed by that vessel was too
small for any use at all. Our job was to find some way around the
difficulty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Germ of a Big Idea
When later the Commander in Chief, Adm. Louis R. de Steiguer, once my
captain on the _Old Ark_, finally released his statement of the fleet
problem, the attention of all hands was focused on the forthcoming
Hawaiian cruise. In April the following year, 1928, the fleet
would rendezvous at San Francisco to sail from there for the joint
Army-Navy exercises. In preparation for the maneuvers, each unit
commander was called upon to submit his own “estimate of the military
situation” and to formulate his own decisions and his operation
orders. The fleet staff, after analyzing the several solutions, would
promulgate the commander in chief’s orders. In FLEET AIR, as the
Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet, were locally known, we planned to
close the first phase of the exercises with a dawn attack on Pearl
Harbor by planes launched from the _Langley_.
Appreciating that a dozen tiny fighters in competition with the great
guns of the ponderous battle wagons would make little impression on
Pearl Harbor, the admiral undertook to expand greatly the number
of aircraft to be flown off the _Langley_. To provide living
accommodations for their crews he instructed Captain Towers to
request the Mare Island Navy Yard to undertake alterations to the
vessel during her forthcoming annual overhaul. To increase the fire
power of our embryonic air force, presently confined to a pair of
thirty-caliber machine guns each, we started our squadrons training
in a new tactic.
Dive bombing, first tested against Nicaraguan rebels by the United
States Marines, had been further developed against naval targets
by Fighting Five, a _Lexington_ squadron then being assembled at
Norfolk, Virginia. Admiral Reeves waxed enthusiastic over this idea,
primarily because it concentrated the attack upon objectives located
at the surface, instead of wasting energy on the usual dogfights
between knights of the air. Frank Wagner, after scurrying around to
lease all suitable training areas in the vicinity, soon had airplanes
diving all over the San Diego hinterland.
In order to remove some of the hazards of operating carrier land
planes over the sea, we began training our two auxiliary vessels,
the former mine planter _Aroostook_ and the sweeper _Teal_ as “plane
guards” for the _Langley_. For protection against losses incident to
distant water landings, we equipped all planes with rubber flotation
bags and gear to inflate them, when necessary, with bottled gas.
Finally we borrowed two fast destroyers from the local squadrons
under command of Adm. Thomas J. Senn. Here, though we little
appreciated it at the time, was the germ of the big idea of the
carrier task force.
With a view to further speeding sea rescue, we asked BUAERO to
undertake for us the development of a single-float amphibian gear,
interchangeable with the seaplane float of the Vought Corsair. To
navigate a single-seater without radio out of sight of the carrier,
to engage in combat and then return to a pin-point contact with a
roving carrier, demanded real skill. In order to provide some sort
of homing device, our radio officer, Gordon Rowe, strung a loop of
wires between the wings of a Corsair, thus utilizing the loop-antenna
feature, then common in home radio sets. Rowe’s device, antedating
radar, was intended to avoid the possible loss of precious pilots and
planes but it also made the Corsair available as a liaison plane for
fighter tactics. With a good carrier-based amphibian we could extend
our control of combat units and, at the same time, release them for
safe long-range operations.
To gain experience from the Hawaiian cruise, Admiral Reeves felt
the _Langley_ should operate at least two eighteen-plane fighter
squadrons as dive bombers together with six Vought Corsair
two-seaters for scouting, rescue, and radio liaison. While the
_Langley_, with the space available in her vast, empty coal bunkers,
could easily provide ample hangar space and crew’s quarters, the
restricted area of her flight deck and the limited capacity of her
plane elevator introduced serious limitations. How to spot forty-two
airplanes on an area believed by _Langley_ officers to be adequate
for but twelve was something of a problem.
While working on this, I proceeded on another project close to my
heart, a recommendation from FLEET AIR for a long-term development
and procurement program that would conform to the one I knew to
be under way in BUAERO. If we could eliminate some of the local
partisanship that frequently obscured the fundamentals of such
problems, we might facilitate engineering progress.
When I submitted my schedule to the admiral he approved all of it
save one critical item, the construction of an experimental two-seat
fighter. The idea had originated in World War I on the Western Front,
where the classic form of attack had been a dive out of the sun onto
the enemy’s tail, to shoot him down when he wasn’t looking. Perhaps
a tail gunner might guard a pilot from such surprise, but Admiral
Reeves would have none of the idea. He thought an alert fighter pilot
could do the job by twisting his neck. If he had to lug an extra
gun and tail gunner, he would impair the combat performance of his
airplane. Besides, during maneuvers, no rear gunner could serve a
gun. This was no snap judgment on his part; he had had Wagner try it
out during tactical exercises, using Voughts to simulate two-seat
fighters. In his judgment there could be no such thing as a two-seat
“fighter.”
Against such logic I could but argue that many officers in the Bureau
favored the project, among them Bruce Leighton, who, having finished
his tour at sea, was now head of the powerful Plans Division. Failure
to include his pet project in our recommendations would stir up such
a controversy as to hazard the entire program. The admiral smiled at
me.
“You’ve been with Moffett so long,” he chuckled, “that you’ve
begun to think like a politician yourself.” It being hopeless to
argue further with this forthright old sea dog, I modified the
letter, knowing full well that Bruce Leighton, who had fostered
the air-cooled engine against bitter opposition, would not readily
abandon his pet two-seat fighter. And so it proved. BUAERO and FLEET
AIR split wide open on this single controversial item with the
result that the rest of the program fell apart. Before long we were
engaged in acrimonious correspondence on almost every subject. Even
engineering needs politics for lubrication.
When the _Langley_ returned from her overhaul, she brought more
trouble in her wake. The alterations for additional crew space had
not been approved. When the admiral learned this from Frank Wagner
his beard bristled and his eyes flashed.
“Instruct Fighting One and Fighting Six to assemble all aircraft on
the _Langley_ dock,” he ordered. “Collect a dozen Vought Corsairs and
advise Captain Towers we will call on him after lunch. We’ll soon
see,” he added ominously, “just how many planes the _Langley_ can be
made to operate.”
When, after lunch, the admiral with his staff bore down under all
plain sail upon the _Langley_ dock, Captain Towers and his officers
met us at the gangway. The admiral, taking personal charge, soon had
Wagner and me helping the deck crews to spot planes closer and closer
together. When he had finished, he wrung from the _Langley_ officers
their reluctant admission that forty-two airplanes might be operated,
but they expressed their firm conviction that it would be dangerous.
As the admiral swept off the flight deck in triumph, he pointed up
the moral in a strong, resonant voice.
“Most standards,” he said, “are limited by opinion or prejudice.
They break down under pressure. The function of a leader,” he
added, “is to generate the pressure.” Turning to me he continued,
“Please collect all the artificers in FLEET AIR, every carpenter’s
mate, shipfitter, and helper. Go in person aboard the _Langley_ and
construct quarters for the plane crews.”
“Without authority from Construction and Repair?” I queried.
“Upon the authority of COMAIRONS,” he replied, “and,” he added, “on
my responsibility.”
Arriving at San Francisco, we found Chance Vought waiting with a new
Corsair single-float amphibian which he had personally chaperoned all
the way from Long Island City in a baggage car. The Naval Aircraft
Factory at Philadelphia later supplied two more of a somewhat
different design. After testing them, I came in for a good deal
of ribbing from _Langley_ pilots who, like Chance, insisted I had
spoiled good airplanes by overloading them with junk. The craft
may have been “klucks” but they lifted a heavy load from the staff
conscience.
The fleet sailed on schedule with the aircraft squadrons ready in
all respects. Some of our wives, including mine, were to all sail
later on a passenger steamer from Los Angeles. With our convertible
coupe in the ship’s hold and my own recollections of an earlier visit
to Honolulu in the old Armored Cruiser Squadrons in mind, we looked
forward to a pleasant sojourn.
During passage, the fleet passed the steamer at sea, where the wives
got a close-up of the _Langley_ launching and receiving planes.
We had been assigned a fixed station “6,000 yards astern of BAT
DIVS,” an order that irked the admiral no end. To launch and receive
aircraft, the _Langley_ had to leave her station and head into the
wind, a fact that seemed to cause acute distress to those elements of
the fleet accustomed to cruising in precise formation.
On the slow journey westward, daily exercises, morning and afternoon,
developed our flight-deck technique to the ultimate. As a plane
floated in over the ramp, to drop into the gear and be brought up
with a jerk, squads of deck handlers swarmed out of the nettings,
cleared hooks from landing wires, caught wing tips, and hustled the
craft forward of the barrier, just in time to clear the gear for the
next plane, even then floating down the groove. It was Bull Reeves
who pressed always for more speed. Always quick to condemn a miscue
or commend smart action, he finally inspired the _Langley_ officers
until they cut the take-off interval between planes down to ten
seconds and the landing intervals to thirty.
At the crack of dawn, one lovely Sunday morning, we headed into the
wind to launch aircraft for the assault on Pearl Harbor. We had
selected this day in the knowledge that the defenders, after the
usual Saturday night festivities, would be sleeping late.
First across the bow was Gerry Bogan of Fighting One; the rest of
his flock zoomed after him at ten-second intervals. Fighting Six
followed, led by “Injun Joe” Tomlinson. Finally scouts and amphibians
roared into the air, leaving the deserted flight deck a bleak expanse
of silence. After their attack on Pearl Harbor, the squadrons were to
land ashore.
Our striking force, undetected by the defenders, caught Army and Navy
pilots flat on their backs in bed, just as their successors were
destined to be caught some thirteen years later on Sunday, December
7. It now seems likely that the casual Japanese oil tanker that
managed always to find herself in the center of our operating areas
off San Pedro, or those “fishing” sampans that busied themselves off
Honolulu that very morning, later communicated our movements to the
Japanese high command. It was natural for their admiralty to assume
that we understood the import of the new weapons we were exercising.
They could not have believed the intelligence that our own high
command had so discounted the striking power of aerial bombs and
submarine torpedoes that they had neglected to equip their vessels
with adequate gun defenses. Recognizing in FLEET AIR—as they surely
did—a revolutionary instrument of sea power, they sped their own
development and hastened to exploit it in the rapid expansion of
their East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.
During the remainder of the Hawaiian exercises, we conducted joint
operations with local naval forces and with the Army, polishing our
flight techniques at sea. One day, a shift of wind, sweeping yellow
volcanic dust from an extinct crater, cut our surface visibility to
a dangerous low just after Gerry Bogan, with nine fighter bombers
from Fighting One, had roared over the bow to attack a distant enemy
fleet. Our worried staff found some comfort in the knowledge that one
of our radio-liaison Corsairs was supposed to be plane-guarding the
unit, ready to lead the flock back aboard after its mission had been
completed. But when we radioed the Vought, the pilot reported he had
lost the fighters. After homing the Corsair and taking her aboard,
we began really sweating it out, peering hopefully into the yellow
spaces, looking for Gerry Bogan. Finally at long last came the drone
of engines. One by one the planes lurched into the gear and taxied
forward. The admiral sent his orderly for Bogan.
“Where the hell have you been anyway?” he demanded with unwonted
truculence.
“Fightin’,” replied Gerry.
Years later when I read of Gerry Bogan’s fantastic exploits in the
Pacific, and especially Bill Halsey’s estimate of his courage, I
recalled this laconic yet complete answer—as well as the way it had
parted Bull Reeves’s whiskers in an appreciative grin.
At Pearl Harbor, one day, we got news of the arrival in San Francisco
of the long-awaited _Lexington_. She planned to proceed at once to
Honolulu on a trial run at thirty knots. Day by day we watched her
phenomenal performance, and we admired her from afar as she anchored
in triumph off Waikiki with Diamond Head as a fitting backdrop. There
her captain, Frank D. Berrien, welcomed us warmly as we transferred
aboard.
Whereas on the _Langley_ COMAIRONS staff had perched under the
flight-deck ramp in temporary cubby holes hung as an afterthought
out over the stern, on the “_Big Lex_” the chief of staff rated a
living room, bedroom, and bath, a sumptuous suite in which I rattled
around like a single die in a wardroom dice box. Messing as we did
with the admiral in his big cabin, we luxuriated all the way back
to San Diego. There, anchored in the Roads, we found big “_Sister
Sara_” under the able command of Capt. John Halligan. Bull Reeves’s
two-starred flag floated over the world’s most powerful carrier
force, a smart outfit that already gave signs of great _esprit_ in
the making.
Meanwhile a number of new aircraft and new pilots had been assembling
for the “summer concentration.” Our job now was to whip the force
into shape for the next fleet operation less than a year away.
Captain Towers turned over command of the _Langley_ to Capt. Arthur
B. Cook, another good skipper, and now returned to BUAERO to become
Admiral Moffett’s Assistant Chief. We hoped that the stresses and
strains of the winter might not complicate our affairs, for we
already had a tough problem to solve in the relationship between the
carriers and their squadrons. The admiral held that the squadrons
should base under him at San Diego and should operate under his
command in the monthly fleet tactical exercises; some of the carrier
officers, and singularly enough it was the naval aviators now acting
as ship’s officers, and not the line officers at all, insisted that
the squadrons should function with respect to the carriers just as
a turret crew works on a battleship. Aside from the fact that it
was impractical to base squadrons on carriers and train them there
without keeping the carriers continuously at sea, the introduction of
carrier skippers into the chain of command tended to slow down air
operations.
This was a conflict that raged even more bitterly as time went on
and especially after Capt. E. J. King took over command of the
_Lexington_. It was complicated by the _Langley_ incident and
worse still by a political situation even then developing back in
Washington. Some of the high brass had gone gunning for Admiral
Moffett’s scalp—his term of office would expire in a year—and their
candidate, as yet unbeknownst to Bull Reeves, was Rear Adm. Joseph M.
Reeves.
As the net of complications began to tighten about us, I chafed under
them. To me it seemed that grown men ought to learn to bury their
pet prejudices and to move ahead on the big ideas in an orderly and
cooperative fashion. To Bull Reeves, an older, wiser, and always more
philosophical man, these conflicts all seemed part of a plan that
somehow produced the right answers where the apparently more orderly
processes finally created planned disorder.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Creation of Strategic Concept
The return of FLEET AIR to San Diego coincided with the commencement
of the summer concentration period of 1928, and now with the two big
carriers _Lexington_ and _Saratoga_ anchored off Long Beach, ninety
miles to the north, their squadrons trained ashore at North Island
under the direct command of Admiral Reeves. Scuttlebutt rumor had
it that the next fleet problem would take place off Panama early
the coming year, and this directed all staff efforts toward sound
preparation for the big show. In all this we felt a certain sense of
urgency; now was the time to show the battle wagons what we could do,
and thus “sell aviation to the fleet.” Underneath the daily routine
we somehow sensed that we were dealing with high destiny, though our
course was never completely clear. What ultimately developed was
not the direct result of anyone’s far-sighted vision; it just came
naturally out of the conflict of forces and events.
At that period, the Navy had settled down into a certain organization
and procedure that had evolved out of years of experience. The
fundamental concept of the fleet setup had been derived from
a somewhat shallow reading of Mahan and somewhat superficial
instruction at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Mahan,
in the evolution of his thesis on sea power, had made a painstaking
analysis of history, and especially of naval history. Since he
studiously excluded theory and opinion, drawing his conclusions from
the record, he was able to present convincing evidence in support of
his thesis that victory in war and prosperity in peace have always
resided with that nation which controls communication by sea. The
foundation of sea power is maritime commerce.
The United States Naval War College at Newport held classes in
naval tactics and worked out tactical problems on the maneuvering
board. For their precepts they naturally looked to Mahan’s classic
studies and thus became imbued with the tactics of the battle line
as employed by Nelson, the great English admiral. From a continued
emphasis on the battle line and a general understanding of the role
of sea power in history, it was easy to conclude that sea power
and the navy were synonymous. The modern counterpart of this loose
doctrine is the prevalent belief that strategic bombardment is air
power.
The administrative organization of the Battle Fleet revolved around
the battleships—the so-called “backbone of sea power.” The big-gun
carriers based at Long Beach behind the breakwater where they found
nearby plenty of sea room. The destroyer squadrons, then called
DESRONS, the submarine divisions, or SUBDIVS, and the aircraft
squadrons, or AIRONS, based on San Diego, ninety miles further south.
For purposes of administration and elementary training, each of these
units operated separately under the supervision of the commander
in chief. Once each month, the fleet as a whole conducted combined
tactical exercises off the coast. Yet even here the forces operated
largely under the command of their administrative staffs. The idea
of breaking up the several administrative units and reassembling
them as task organizations so constituted as to bring to bear such
a concentration of heavy guns, long-range torpedoes, and mobile
aircraft as appeared necessary to the accomplishment of a particular
mission had not as yet evolved. It was to grow out of the peculiar
conditions that prevailed in the aircraft squadrons: the big carriers
could find suitable anchorages and deep-water operating areas only at
Long Beach; their aircraft could find adequate training and repair
facilities only at the Naval Air Station, San Diego.
It was customary to change personnel just before the concentration,
sending about half of them to “shore” or other duty, and receiving
a new batch of students from Pensacola to be trained “at sea.” Half
of the squadron officers changed at this time as well, a fact that
dictated a fresh start on fundamental tactics each year. In view of
this fact I determined upon a revolutionary procedure. Instead of
accepting the ordinary run-of-the-mine officers sent to us by the
Bureau of Navigation for duty in certain specified units, we would
jump the gun and insist upon the right to select our own squadron
commanders and assign other officers to such squadrons as seemed
appropriate to us. When we suggested this selective process to
Admiral Reeves, he smiled tolerantly and invited us to go ahead,
intimating that we would be wasting our time. For the Bureau of
Navigation usually selected its officers and made its assignments
with little or no regard for their aptitude for the jobs in mind.
Someone had long ago worked out a system designed to expose every
officer to an equal amount of duty in every line, so as to afford him
an equal opportunity to advance in rank, whether or not he possessed
qualities of leadership.
But if the factor of leadership had fallen into low estate in
Washington, it still rated high in the aircraft squadrons. Frank
Wagner and I had observed the vast differences in character displayed
by ships and organizations, and had noted that each had seemed to
take on some of the personality and character of the man or men who
had founded it, and to retain that personality and character no
matter who had succeeded to command. If the U.S.S. _Taddlyadlie_
started out as a “smart ship,” she would always be a smart ship; and
if the U.S.S. _Tiddlywinks_ started as a “madhouse,” her career would
become a series of variations of that theme. With that idea in mind,
we determined to give the aircraft squadrons a propitious start and
began some tall wangling to gain our ends. For this we brought two
powerful arguments to bear: the lives of pilots depended upon the
quality of the leaders; if we were to be held responsible, we must
have authority over our leadership selections. In our tough battle
against this leveling system we won every skirmish but one—a squadron
that suffered our only breakdown in morale.
While focusing attention on the quality of leadership of our
subordinates, we did a little soul searching of our own. The rapid
development of gadgetry in the Navy had tended to create a special
group of staff-officer specialists who had become “plank owners”
on various staffs. Thus the intricacies of steam engineering, or
gunnery, or radio communications, or what have you, had become so
mysterious to the average line officer that the specialists had
taken over a lot of authorities without accepting the corresponding
responsibilities. An admiral, for instance, might sign out a
long-winded technical document without being able to pronounce
the words, or he might let his radio officer sign the paper “by
direction.” The addressee would turn the masterpiece over to
his radio officer for reply, and thus accept responsibility for
fundamental decisions fogged up by technical jargon. Even Admiral
Reeves had tended to shift the administrative authorities to me and
the operations to Frank Wagner. But Frank and I determined to have
none of that; we directed these matters right back to the admiral.
Contrary to naval custom we sought to build up the admiral and play
ourselves down. For instance, after having prepared an order for
the Old Man’s signature, we would urge him to call a conference
of squadron commanders to indoctrinate them in his plan. A fine
speaker, one possessed of unusual knowledge of military history, of
policy, strategy, and tactics, he often held us spellbound by his
entertaining and instructive discourses spiced by keen wit. Wagner
and I would grasp every favorable occasion to suggest a commendatory
signal to a subordinate who had distinguished himself; similarly we
saw to it that the admiral got word of any complimentary comment
from his subordinates. In other words, we made it our first order of
business to develop loyalty both ways—up and down. The time soon came
when a squadron commander remarked, “If Bull Reeves told us to fly
into the side of a mountain, we’d fly—and likely come out safe on the
other side!”
We also gave critical attention to our own performance of staff
functions stressing especially our communications procedures and
techniques. On the matériel side we took extreme pains to train our
“mechs” and to emphasize the importance of preventive engineering.
Under this doctrine, it became the task of the maintenance crews to
discover incipient failures and correct them before they could induce
forced landings or other accident. Having good, sound, new equipment
to start with, we were able to reduce mechanical failures almost
to the vanishing point and to abolish them entirely from over-water
operations.
On the important morale side, Frank Wagner was the key to success.
Intimately acquainted with the younger pilots as he was, and an
active participant in their social affairs, Frank could watch their
reactions and recommend actions designed to keep them all at a
high pitch of enthusiasm. One day, after we had been pressing hard
toward perfection, Frank came to me with a long face; he feared the
kids were getting stale. He thought we should secure all flying for
several days and actually order the pilots off the station and away
from their jobs. When we went in to see the admiral, concealing our
misgivings as to this revolutionary idea, the Old Man threw back his
head and parted his beard in a laugh that must have carried clear
down to the _Langley_ dock.
“Go to it!” he shouted. “And Wagner,” he added, “a little visit
across the Mexican border to Tijauna might help you get a smile back
on your own face.”
As the summer developed, two special projects helped bring our new
outfits to a high degree of precision: the city of San Diego planned
to dedicate Lindbergh Field, and the city of Los Angeles would be
host to the national air races in dedication of Mines Field. This
gave the staff an opportunity to keep the squadrons practicing their
close formations, a drill that tended to bore them; they preferred
the dive-and-zoom of practical combat exercises. But now, returning
from the many operating areas Frank had established in the back
country, they passed in review before the admiral’s critical eye,
flying wing-and-tail in tight parade formations. Tommy Tomlinson,
with the first section of his squadron, began practicing section
acrobatics, putting on a rhythmic show of breathtaking formation
loops, rolls, and dives.
At the dedication of Lindbergh Field, the overcast lay so close to
the surface that, save for fine air discipline, we should have had to
call off our participation. Instead, we flew some four hundred fleet
aircraft in a thrilling fly past, at low altitude, with the tails of
the formations lost in the clouds. Later at the National Air Races
in Los Angeles, Tommy’s Three Sea Hawks stopped the show with their
precision acrobatics. The Army responded with their Three Musketeers.
When one of their team was unfortunately killed in an accident,
Charles Lindbergh, stepping into the lead position, gave the crowd a
sample, not alone of his own flying, but also of the quality of his
teamwork and personal leadership.
It was in the National Air Races, too, that the air-cooled engine
finally triumphed completely over liquid-cooled. A year earlier,
Claire Egtvedt had come down from Seattle to get our ideas on the
specifications for a new plane to replace his current production F3B.
Primed by me, the admiral had given him the requirements for what
had since become the first experimental single-seat fighter bomber,
the XF4B. Flown by Tom Jeter in the free-for-all pursuit race,
this airplane won handily, running away from the special souped-up
liquid-cooled entries. Later in a special event promoted by Bill
Boeing, a race to altitude from a standing start, Mort Seligman,
in the XF4B, executed a triumphant loop over the T4M station ship
cruising at 10,000 feet above the thronged grandstand, and dived
back onto the field before the nearest competitor could climb to the
target. Jim Fechet, Chief of the Army Air Service, followed Bill onto
the field to get the Army’s first order in ahead of the Navy. In
subsequent years this basic airplane served both Army and Navy, the
one as P-12, the other as F4B, with variations to suit the special
requirements of each.
Returning to San Diego, we spent the autumn of 1928 at gunnery
training, interspersed by monthly tactical exercises with the fleet.
All three carriers and their squadrons operated in conjunction with
cruisers, destroyers, and submarines against a simulated enemy battle
line and in support of our own “backbone.” Yet even as we developed
intricate joint attacks under this time-honored doctrine, we in
COMAIRONS began to flirt with a revolutionary concept: maybe our
task force could defeat the battle line singlehanded! From here to
the fantastic proposal to use battle wagons in support of aircraft
carriers was a terrific mental leap. When the detailed plans for the
winter exercises became available, we drew a long breath and took it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Maneuver for Position
When the commander in chief released the preliminary statement of
the 1929 fleet problem, we in COMAIRONS staff wore broad smiles of
satisfaction. For while the exercises contemplated a conventional
assault on the defenses of the Panama Canal, the problem was so
stated as to convince us that the high command was beginning at last
to recognize the role of the carrier in warfare at sea. A “red”
fleet, comprising the modern battleships then based in the Pacific
with its accompanying submarines, destroyers, and train, moving into
the Gulf of Panama with the object of attacking the Canal, would be
opposed by a friendly “blue” fleet which had just transited the Canal
and moved out into the Gulf to defend it. The blue fleet comprised
the vessels of the scouting fleet, then based in the Atlantic but
reinforced by the _Lexington_ and _Langley_ from the “battle fleet”
of the Pacific. This gave the defenders an air force comprising all
the Army and Navy shore-based aircraft in the Panama Canal Zone, the
aircraft of the scouting fleet then based on my old seaplane tender,
the _Wright_, and the planes of the _Langley_ and _Lexington_; it
left to the attackers the _Saratoga_ and her planes, under the
command of Admiral Reeves.
In the past, these Panama maneuvers had been stereotyped battle-line
tactics with the battle wagons steaming majestically behind a
destroyer-laid smoke screen while bombarding the Canal with their
turret guns at maximum range. After the fleet had fired a few
blank charges or “primers” to simulate long-range attack and its
airplanes had been “shot down” by the local defenders, the vessels
would proceed to their anchorage in the Bay of Panama and all hands
would go ashore for a big bust at the Union Club. Later there would
be a “critique” in which the high rankers would stand up before a
congregation of Army-Navy officers and alibi their failures, or try
to impress their personalities upon the assembly. Following this,
the social whirl would begin and fleet grand tactics would be put
aside until another year.
This time we proposed to spring something new. Instead of tying _Big
Sara_ to the apron strings of the battle wagons, we would propose
that she be detached from the slow elements and sent on a wide
southerly detour past the Galápagos Islands, along the north coast
of South America, into the Gulf of Panama, through the screen of
defending vessels, and up to a point where we might launch a predawn
sneak attack on the Canal locks. The single drawback to our plan
was the fact that the only vessel with enough high-speed cruising
endurance to accompany _Big Sara_ was the light cruiser _Omaha_,
flagship of Adm. Thomas J. Senn, Commander, Destroyer Squadrons.
However, Admiral Reeves and Admiral Senn were warm personal friends.
Capt. Harold R. Stark, Admiral Senn’s chief of staff, and I were on
terms of warm regard. We decided to chance submitting the fantastic
proposal that a senior unit commander be deprived of his flagship to
plane-guard _Big Sara_.
Meanwhile, storm clouds had begun to darken our political horizon.
With the close of the concentration period, we had come face to face
with the moot question as to the relationships of carrier squadrons
to their carriers. Based on our experience we prepared a letter
recommending such changes in the Navy Regulations as would permit
the commanding officers of carriers to exercise administrative
control over their squadrons, yet still preserve their freedom for
assignment by the admiral to task forces and give to him the tactical
command. By this time, Capt. E. J. King had assumed command of the
_Lexington_, and Capt. Harry E. Yarnell of the _Saratoga_. Both were
extremely able men but with quite different temperaments. Captain
King had positive ideas for which he fought with determination;
Captain Yarnell, while equally clear in his opinions, approached
the problem with judicious moderation. In both the _Lexington_
and the _Saratoga_, the positive convictions that the squadrons
should be treated like gun divisions as an integral part of the
ship rested largely with the old-line aviators running the air
departments. And so we had a major difference of opinion in which
senior naval aviators battled to keep the squadrons subservient
to the carriers while we line officers, basing our convictions on
practical experience, battled to keep the aircraft squadrons free.
On the staff, we argued that the carriers existed for the squadrons;
on the ships, they seemed to think it was the other way around. This
conflict came at a time when our Washington fences were none too
secure.
The fact that Admiral Moffett would complete his second full term as
a bureau chief early in the coming year had intensified the efforts
of his enemies to deny him reappointment. Their candidate for his
relief was Admiral Reeves, and as a palliative they suggested that
Admiral Moffett take over command of the Aircraft Squadrons, Battle
Fleet. To us on the staff, the whole thing looked like a tempest
in a teapot and we, of course, took no position. Admiral Reeves
busied himself with preparations for the fleet problem and expressed
amusement over Washington politics. Then came the news that some of
the boys in the Bureau now had a foot out for me, and had represented
me to Admiral Moffett as a turncoat—a former Moffett man now gone
full out for Bull Reeves. Aside from the impact of this conflict upon
our personal fortunes, there was the question as to what position
BUAERO would take in the matter of the relationships of squadrons to
carriers. But more important still, such a warm front of political
turbulence afforded a poor climate in which to make our big play for
recognition of naval aviation in the forthcoming fleet problem.
Now at the height of our concern for the future, we got a wallop
in the solar plexus that all but sent us down for the count. When
the commander in chief finally issued his own estimate of the fleet
problem and his operation orders for it, there was no reference
whatever to our proposal for a sneak attack with the _Saratoga_.
The battle wagons would do their time-honored square dance behind
a destroyer smoke screen; they would fire a few gun primers and
exercise their fire control; then they would proceed to the anchorage
and hit the beach for a big party at the Union Club. When Frank
Wagner brought the news to me and we both dropped into the admiral’s
office, he lifted his beard from his paper work to stare at us with
amazement.
“Whatever it is,” he boomed, “it can’t be as bad as you men look.”
After Frank had briefed him on the disappointing situation, Admiral
Reeves reached for a message blank and drafted a dispatch to the
commander in chief at San Pedro, asking for a conference for himself
and staff on the subject of the fleet problem.
Next morning COMAIRONS and staff took off for San Pedro in a flight
of three Loening amphibians, the admiral riding as my passenger. As
we mounted the flagship’s side ladder to her quarterdeck, we were met
at the rail by the ship’s captain, none other than Claude C. Bloch,
the man who had counseled my wife to get me out of the side shows and
back under the main tent.
Admiral Pratt, his blouse unbuttoned to reveal an old-fashioned
stiff-bosomed white shirt, received us in his cabin. Seated behind
the usual billiard-cloth-covered table, he inquired courteously
in his State-of-Maine accent to what he owed this visit from so
distinguished a group. To Admiral Reeves’s inquiry whether Admiral
Pratt had read our estimate of the situation for the fleet problem,
the commander in chief replied in the negative; he had left the
matter in the hands of his assistant chief of staff. His earlier
rejection of our big idea had been doubly disappointing because we
respected him as a sailorman of the old school and a man highly
regarded as a strategist and tactician. With the news that he had not
known of our proposal, our hopes began to revive.
Admiral Reeves swept in his outline with deft strokes: The _Saratoga_
would launch her aircraft two hours before dawn from a point some
150 miles away from the Canal. To reach that point where she would
rendezvous with Admiral Pratt’s battleships, the _Saratoga_ would
steam all night at 30 knots, accompanied only by the _Omaha_, her
plane guard. In the 10 hours of darkness between sunset and the
launching time, the _Saratoga_ would cover 300 miles. This, added to
the 150-mile launching range, would put her 450 miles from Panama the
night before the attack. During the previous day she would have run
360 miles more, and these distances were such that the enemy could
hardly scout the possible areas of approach with any certainty of
discovering the _Saratoga_. There was an excellent chance that we
might get in undetected.
Admiral Pratt listened carefully and then put his finger on the one
weak spot. He feared that if we launched aircraft that far at sea
and lost even a single pilot, the reaction of public opinion at home
might be most unfavorable.
Admiral Reeves replied that when he had offered the same objection I
had produced the surprising record of the year’s operations. Using
the new equipment provided by BUAERO we had gone through a full year
without mechanical failure over the sea. Since we were drilling
constantly to avoid cockpit failures it was reasonable to expect that
we would have a similarly clean record off Panama.
Satisfied by the logic of this, Admiral Pratt began to warm to the
whole idea. He suggested that, while it was now too late to change
the orders all ready issued, this very fact might be converted to our
advantage. The problem could be made a better exercise if we kept
the new plan a secret among ourselves while he arranged later to
spring a sudden change of orders on his fleet. He proposed to stop
the formation somewhere along the west coast of Mexico, send out new
orders by guard boat, release the _Saratoga_ for her wide southerly
detour, and, incidentally, profit by the element of surprise inherent
in radio silence.
When COMAIRONS and his staff departed the flagship, we walked on air.
The fleet sailed on schedule, maneuvering down along the Mexican
coast, with the _Saratoga_ rehearsing her part with predawn take-offs
and rendezvous. At the time we had no night-flying equipment and had
done little night flying; but we had discipline, which was better
than any equipment. Then one day the fleet flag made a signal for
the fleet to stop and send boats for mail. When we opened our orders
we found that Admiral Pratt had assigned the _Omaha_ to us as
_Saratoga’s_ plane guard, but instead of transferring the DESRONS
flag to a destroyer, had left Admiral Senn, Harold Stark, and all the
staff on board.
As the _Omaha_, lifting in the swell, ranged up alongside the
_Saratoga_, Admiral Senn, although Admiral Reeves’s senior, hailed
the _Big Sara_ from his bridge by megaphone. “What do you want me to
do, Bull?” he inquired.
Now we began working our speed up to twenty knots, proceeding in
company with the _Omaha_ leading the way on our epoch-making wide
southerly detour. And as the _Big Sara’s_ decks trembled under the
thrust of her great screws, we on COMAIRONS’ staff began to feel a
tremor around our hearts. Looking back into the vessel’s boiling wake
we could see the churnings of white water as the vast power of her
great motors drove her forward; a portion of the energy went into
slip, but by far the largest part of it went into effective forward
thrust. In that turbulence we could visualize what went on quite
unseen in the slipstream of aviation, that remorseless force which
was driving us at such breathtaking speed.
From our lofty perch on the flag bridge we could count sixty-six
airplanes trembling there in the breeze that swept across the
deck straining them against their lashings and wheel chocks. Out
in front stood thirty-six Boeing fighters with air-cooled radial
engines, airplanes we had not dreamed about five years earlier when
I had sat in the anteroom off Admiral Moffett’s office in BUAERO.
Behind the fighters ranged twelve Vought Corsair scouts, conceived
and constructed by Chance Vought, who had written the prescription
for the Pratt and Whitney Wasp. Back on the fantail, their biplane
wings folded, nested eighteen Martin T4M torpedo-bomber scouts,
three-seaters built around the Pratt and Whitney Hornet, an engine
that even George Mead, who had created it, had solemnly stated in
writing was “quite impossible.”
As the crews milled about on deck, checking a cockpit cover here or a
lashing there, the squadron commanders supervised their work. There
was cagey old “Skinny” Wick, skipper of Fighting One, the squadron
that wore the high hat insignia on its fuselages. Commanding the
other fighter squadron was brilliant Art Davis. The celebrated Three
Sea Hawks, with Art as their new leader, comprised the first section
of this command but the entire outfit could now match the leading
section in smooth squadron acrobatics. In command of our scout-bomber
squadron we had that rough and ready old-timer, “Squash” Griffen.
At the head of our heavy bomber outfit rode the Old Man of the Sea
himself, Harry Bogusch, of whom Admiral Reeves had said, “That man
is so crazy about flying you’ll have to shoot him down to get the
squadron out of the sky.”
As we sped toward the equator, we speculated on our chances of
success. Frank Wagner, appreciating the intelligence of some of the
smart aviators on the _Lexington_, feared that, having trained under
us and learned our mental processes, they might diagnose our play. If
they should take their suspicions to Captain King, and he should pass
them on to the “blue” C.I.C. along with a suggestion that he deploy
the defending aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Panama to scout for
_Big Sara_, the _Lex_ could intercept us during our daylight run and
strafe our planes on deck.
This fear the admiral discounted. While he had great respect for
Admiral King’s intelligence and counted him an ambitious leader
who had carefully schooled himself in all branches with a view to
ultimate command of the fleet in case of war, he rated King a hard
driver, one unlikely to invite initiative from his subordinates. To
be a good driver you had to know more about your job than anyone else
and be on it every minute. This tended to develop fear among your
juniors and discourage their enthusiasm for making suggestions.
The most important factor in a campaign, according to the admiral,
was a knowledge of the military character of one’s opponent. One
should not discount his abilities, nor should he overestimate them.
War is no exact science and not therefore subject to rational
analysis like, say, engineering. War itself is irrational and the
conduct of a battle is always a tragedy of errors. One must be
prepared to take risks but these must be intelligent risks—where the
advantage to be gained is commensurate with the hazards involved.
Fighting spirit is a major factor. One must know the weapons and have
faith in their efficacy. The admiral thought that King, for all his
tour of duty in aviation, was still a battleship man. He doubted if
King had real sympathy or enthusiasm for aviation.
“I recall that you used to box at the Academy,” he said, looking at
me, “and you remember the old instructor there, ‘Matchew’ Strohm—he
of the cauliflower ears, the flattened nose, and the Bowery dialect.
‘Matchew’ used to say, ‘If yer feelin’ sick to yer stummick, remember
maybe de udder guy is feelin’ a leetle sicker. It ain’t de headwork,
but de last leetle poosh, dat wins de fight!’”
We were now committed to action. We had perfected our technique. From
here on out, we’d play it by ear!
Sitting there in the admiral’s cabin, yarning around the
green-baize-covered table, I became suddenly aware of how far we had
traveled in the brief span of twenty years. Two decades earlier, back
there in Annapolis, I had been one of a couple of hundred midshipmen
facing an uncertain future. Britannia’s rule of the waves had brought
peace and prosperity to a world from which tyranny had all but
disappeared. The Navy had lapsed into innocuous desuetude, after a
brief flurry in the Spanish American War, and now offered but little
hope of early promotion. Admiral Reeves, then but a lieutenant and an
oldish one at that, had taught us “skinny”—physics, electricity, and
chemistry. Rated “white” by the midshipmen and known for valor on the
football field, he had threatened to grow old in the service with no
chance to display his talents.
Today he was the commander of a naval force, totally undreamed of
two years earlier, a product of his own conception and creation. And
he was discoursing to us on matters of tactics, strategy, military
policy, and leadership in terms we could not have comprehended much
earlier. I had gone to Annapolis, not for any love of the sea, but
because I had thought to save my father the expense of a college
training which, at the time, he could ill afford. And chance had
thrown me in with men like Dr. Lucke, a leader in the creation of
the American technology, Admiral Moffett, a leader who had applied
it to aviation, and Admiral Reeves, a leader who had conceived a new
philosophy for the naval air force.
The morning we sighted the low volcanic cones of the mysterious
Galápagos Islands, I recalled the day precisely twenty years earlier
when I had helped reconnoiter this little-known archipelago while
a midshipman in the armored cruiser _Colorado_. At the time such
a thing as a gasoline engine was quite unheard of in the fleet.
I had therefore sailed a whale boat into Post Office Bay and had
sought out the barrel in which, it was said, whalers were wont to
leave their letters for later transmission to their destination by
whomever chanced to pass that way. In order to commemorate the day
and emphasize the breathtaking progress of engines, I suggested to
the admiral that I might take off in a fighter and touch wheels
ashore. The admiral smilingly agreed but as we closed the islands,
intermittent squalls and areas of low visibility forced us to cancel
the project.
This unsettled weather continued until the evening before the night
run to Panama. We had run all day at 30 knots, with a section of
fighters on the take-off spot, ready to launch the moment the weather
cleared. The _Omaha_ had reported running short of fuel, giving
us a new worry. Unless she could last the route at full speed, we
would have to launch without a plane guard. Cruising along from
one squall to the next, elated by the luck that had protected us
against prowling _Lexington_ scouts, we suddenly broke out into the
clear in an area of unlimited ceiling and visibility. It was about 5
P.M. when the fighters roared into the air.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Frigate Birds
Up until this moment, everything done had been in rehearsal. Now,
with the possibility of enemy contact at any instant, the flag bridge
took on a new atmosphere of high tension. The admiral stood out on
the bridge, binoculars glued to his eyes, while the breeze fingered
his beard. Frank Wagner hovered beside him, alert for a suggestion
or command, a quizzical expression in his eyes, indicative of his
humorous reaction to stress. As we followed the tiny fighters racing
directly ahead along our course, we were startled by a quick reversal
that brought them racing back to the carrier.
At that time, fighters carried no radio. They zoomed across the bow
at low altitude to drop short sections of garden hose as message
holders. The fighters had sighted a destroyer dead ahead, an enemy
scout, the _Breck_, heading for us on a collision course. Even as we
read the message, we made out the ship’s mast, dead ahead. We’d been
caught.
The _Breck_ turned to parallel our course, well out of gun range, and
seemed to be looking us over. The flag-chief quartermaster, gazing at
her through his long glass, turned to the admiral.
“Sir,” he remarked, “it looks funny to me. I wonder if he thinks
maybe he’s sighted the _Lexington_.” The admiral lowered his
binoculars and turned to me.
“Well,” he asked, “what do you want to do with her?” Now, the lack
of a plane-guard vessel for the next morning had lain heavily on my
mind. We had enough worries without risking a take-off crack-up and a
lost pilot. It must have been this that prompted my facetious reply.
“Tell her to plane-guard us, sir!” I laughed.
Quick as a flash the admiral barked the signal to the flag-chief
quartermaster. As the bright flags fluttered in the late afternoon
light, the _Breck_ answered. Then to our amazement, she turned and
swung into position directly astern of us, four hundred yards away.
There we might have left her save that Ken Whiting, the official
umpire, felt obliged to make a ruling. And so we theoretically opened
fire on her with the after ten-inch, and theoretically sank her.
Ken signaled the _Breck_ that she was now disabled without radio to
communicate our position.
We were just congratulating ourselves on this break and sweating out
the rest of the daylight, when the _Omaha_ reported being attacked by
the cruiser _Detroit_. Her captain, Dick White, who had once been my
skipper on the destroyer tender _Bridgeport_ and was an old friend
of Admiral Reeves, had doped out our intentions, and disregarding
his orders, had left his scouting station to look for us. Even then
he was broadcasting our position in plain English, instead of code,
begging the _Lexington_ to come and get us.
Ken Whiting now ruled both cruisers out of the action. The _Omaha_,
already short of fuel, slowed down, but the _Detroit_, calmly taking
up the plane-guard station, began a play-by-play account of _Big
Sara’s_ every move. Well, the fat was in the fire now; Captain Dick
knew we needed a plane guard too badly to wave him off, and besides,
he knew Bull Reeves too well to worry about any future disciplining.
The tropic night fell on the Gulf of Panama, coming down suddenly at
five bells of the first dog watch. All night we steamed at thirty
knots with the stars closed in around our darkened decks. At midnight
the admiral called me to the flag bridge.
“All the squadron commanders have been up in a body to ask me to
launch immediately and not wait for dawn. What do you say?” That was
a poser. No doubt, sweating it out down in the ready room, fearful
that Army or Navy aircraft might catch them flat-footed on deck
during the night, they had come up with their big idea.
“Sir,” I replied, finally, “we have no reason to believe that any
night fighters or bombers can be out this far. At least we haven’t
seen or heard any signs. To change a plan involves new risks, and we
have enough already.”
“You’re right,” the admiral agreed. “I’ll tell them to turn in; we’ll
stick to the original plan.”
Standing on the flag bridge with the seas slapping against the side
and the night breeze filtering down our necks, I began to appreciate,
for the first time, the kind of courage that was being displayed by
this man. A half-dozen rivals, candidates for his job, were sitting
back, waiting for a break. It was the old Navy Game, keep your neck
in and let the other fellow take the risks. Sooner or later it pays
off—if you live long enough. Bull Reeves had never played that game.
“Sir,” I began, “there’s a lot of brass hats watching us tonight.”
The admiral inclined his head to hear me above the roar of the wind.
“And,” I went on, “there’d be many a dry eye tomorrow if you should
slip.” For a while I thought he hadn’t heard.
“I know,” he replied slowly, “but a commander who stops to appraise
the impact of a military decision upon his personal fortunes has no
right to be entrusted with a command.”
After a while, dark figures began stirring among the parked
airplanes, and the blue lights winked on—flashlights screened by
paper torn from packages of absorbent cotton, loaned by the sick bay.
Still later, the staccato bark of an engine and red flashes from its
short exhaust stacks signaled all mechanics to start their engines.
By now the night air was cold and we shivered as we stood around on
the bridge, looking down on an expanse of exhaust flames. Ship’s
officers had taken their stations, their telephone helmets on their
heads. Pete Mitscher and Ken Whiting stood in the wings of the
bridge. The roar of engines swelled then ceased as suddenly as it had
started.
Without hearing the order, we knew what that meant: “Pilots, man
your planes.” The radio messenger handed me a signal blank. It was a
plain-English broadcast from the enemy cruiser _Detroit_. Dick White
was on the air, in his play-by-play account.
“_Saratoga_ has started all aircraft engines,” it began. “What a
sight! A thousand tongues of red fire from their exhausts! I have
turned on searchlights and am firing pyrotechnics to indicate
present position. Can’t someone stop this? It would be a pity, but
we can’t let them get away with this kind of murder.”
Over the bow roared Skinny Wick in the first airplane, her running
lights on. She turned toward Panama. Now they were getting off at
about ten-second intervals. They were rendezvousing on the course to
the Canal. Eighteen had joined up. Off went their lights! They were
going in darkened.
Now a second group had joined up and turned out its lights. There
went the torpedo planes. They were forming in two nine-plane groups.
One eighteen-plane fighter squadron would escort each nine-plane
bomber division. Now they’d all disappeared. There came the last
group, twelve in all—Griffen’s dive bombers. Now they were all
gone. The signalman handed me an intercept from Dick White. “It’s
magnificent. I’ve never seen such precision. It’s breathtaking.” With
that he signed off.
Each of the fighters was a potential 500-pound dive bomber and
if unopposed would dive immediately onto the locks. Afterward he
would climb back to his station and protect the heavy bombers on
their level-bombing run. Even the two-seaters were potential dive
bombers, and if unopposed would also go in to bomb. Thus we had
three detachments, timing their approaches so as to appear over
the defending observation posts simultaneously in order to throw
the defenses into confusion. After the bombers had delivered their
attacks and started back to the _Big Sara_, the fighter pilots would
remain behind to harass the Army pursuit. With their air-cooled
fighters they could sit on top of the Army liquid-cooled jobs, watch
them climb below in a futile effort to gain altitude, and finally
thumb their noses, as the enemy lost flying speed and spun out of
control.
On the _Saratoga_ we sweated out the hour-long minutes of the
approach. Radio silence was broken when Bogusch and Griffen reported
success. We sweated out their return; the run would take all the
available fuel. When they started coming aboard we were too busy to
exult. Every plane got in safely except Les Arnold’s F3B. Les, our
flag lieutenant, was right over the deck with a few seconds to go
before the “cut,” when his engine conked, out of gas. He landed
smoothly in the sea. We left him to the mercies of a convenient enemy
destroyer we had called in to act as plane guard, and started out to
sea.
But too late! For now we found ourselves under the guns of the
defending battleships. It seems that Admiral Pratt in our battleship
divisions had failed to come up in time to support us. The navigator
of the flagship had underestimated the strong current off Cape Mala
and the _Saratoga’s_ screen was nowhere in sight. Every phase of the
complex air operation had gone off like clockwork. All our squadrons
had reached their objectives unopposed just at dawn, and had caught
the defenders on the ground. With the exception of Les Arnold’s
plane, which had now been recovered with only a ducking for Les, we
had no casualties of any kind. Only the mighty battle wagons had
missed the boat!
The critique that year was brief. Admiral Pratt took the floor.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “you have witnessed the most brilliantly
conceived and most effectively executed naval operation in our
history. I expect to fly my flag in the _Saratoga_ on our return
cruise north, partly as a badge of distinction but mostly because I
want to know what makes the aircraft squadrons tick.”
Nearly twenty years after the dawn attack on Panama, I met Gen. J. B.
Mitchell, USA, Retired, the officer who had then commanded the Panama
defenses. The general told me that, having gone abroad early that
morning in company with his adjutant, long before the alarm had been
sounded, he had sighted specks against the sky.
“Frigate birds?” his adjutant had inquired.
“Frigate birds, my eye!” the general had retorted. “Those are enemy
aircraft and they’ve caught us flat-footed.”
Our own high-rankers, while appreciating the tactical skill Bull
Reeves had shown, had entirely missed the implications of his
accomplishment. While the Army Air Service had been talking air
power, the Navy had created the first American strategic air force,
not one riveted to shore bases but one roving the high seas—on the
backs of the fleet! Yet if this revolutionary development was lost
upon most Americans, it was not lost upon our potential enemies, the
Japanese.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Another Turning
Admiral Moffett did not miss the opportunity, afforded him by the
_Saratoga’s_ performance, to press for his reappointment as Chief of
the Bureau of Aeronautics. He countered front office maneuvers in the
Navy Department through adroit handling of the political angle at
which he was past master. Someone on the Naval Affairs Committee let
the Secretary know that the admiral’s reappointment for a third term
was favored by that committee; then someone on the Appropriations
Committee inquired when his nomination might be expected—and lo, the
whole house of cards collapsed.
The performance of the _Saratoga’s_ planes created a front-page
sensation; _The New York Times_ handled the story exceptionally.
Hanson Baldwin, himself a Naval Academy man steeped in the Mahan
tradition, was on the scene, and went out with us on several
demonstrations arranged for fleet officers and distinguished
visitors. Charles A. Lindbergh, then at Panama in connection with Pan
American Airways’ first mail hop from Panama to Miami, spent several
days on board the _Saratoga_.
Instead of quartering him in the admiral’s cabin, we berthed him down
in the wardroom with the squadron pilots and passed the word around
that he should be treated like any other visiting Army file. However,
since his first act had been to request permission to take off and
land on the ship, and further, since approval of his request might
convey the impression that there was no mystery attached to being a
naval aviator—especially a carrier pilot—I was designated to chaperon
him during flight operations and diplomatically to fend him off.
We were standing together on the bridge of the _Saratoga_, watching
the evolutions on deck. The very precision of the landings and
take-offs was a delight, and the smooth teamwork of the deck
crews was breathtaking, even to those who had grown up with the
development. Lindbergh, enthusiastic as a kid with a toy airplane,
kept up a running fire of questions as to the whys and wherefores
of everything. He was particularly curious about the air tactics,
and kept Wagner and the admiral busy answering searching questions.
Lindbergh’s eyes gleamed and his boyish grin widened as the admiral
held forth as only he could do.
It was after the operations had been concluded and we were heading
back to port that Lindbergh popped the question that was uppermost in
his mind.
“Why won’t you let me land on board?” he asked abruptly.
“Admiral Wiley is reluctant to accept responsibility for your
safety,” I replied.
“I’m responsible for myself,” he retorted brusquely. “Isn’t it a fact
that they just don’t want an Army officer around a carrier?” he added.
“Of course,” I replied. And then I moved on to the counterplan. “You
remember the Three Sea Hawks at the Los Angeles air races last year?”
I inquired.
Naturally Lindbergh remembered.
“Well,” I went on, “Tommy Tomlinson has left the service, but Put
Storrs and Bill Davis are here, and the boys thought you might like
to lead them in a Section take-off, and fly ashore with them when you
go.”
Lindbergh nodded. “I’d like that,” he said simply.
“It would make a good story,” I went on. “‘Leader of Three Musketeers
takes off with Three Sea Hawks.’” Lindbergh shook his head.
“Not interested in the publicity,” he said.
And there, thought I, was a key to his conduct. Lindbergh was so
honest, intellectually and in every other way, that the antics of
publicity seekers revolted him. Newspaper men, having never before
encountered a celebrity who was not avid for publicity, could not be
expected to understand this. They made—and broke—celebrities at will.
They considered that they had made Lindbergh and most now thought him
ungrateful.
With Admiral Moffett’s reappointment to the Bureau, we became curious
as to Admiral Reeves’s new assignment. He had made it a practice
never to request duty for himself, and now rather hoped he might get
command of the Ninth Naval District, at Great Lakes. But when the
news leaked out through the grapevine, it was a dive-bomb hit right
amidships. Admiral Reeves was to go to the Navy Yard at Mare Island
as Inspector, a job that usually rated a commander or, at most, a
captain. The admiral took the news cheerfully as usual.
However, this was but a preliminary “strafing attack,” the name the
admiral had coined for diving tactics. One day Wagner walked into
the admiral’s cabin, his face as long as the _Saratoga’s_ flight
deck. Waving a letter in his hand he sank down in his seat at the
mess table and announced, with a wry grin, “They’re shanghaiing me to
Guam!” At first we thought he was simply using the slang phrase, but
it turned out to be literally true.
“And as for you,” he added, nodding to me with a sudden grin that
always signaled the triumph of his humor, “you’re headed for Coco
Solo.”
Coco Solo, the big new base on the Atlantic side of the Canal, would
have been most acceptable as a command following a full three years’
sea cruise, but I had been but a year afloat and was already on the
short side of sea duty. The assignment, had it been carried out,
would have been a sentence to oblivion. Admiral Reeves later saw
that it wasn’t. For when the new Commander in Chief, Battle Fleet,
who relieved Admiral Pratt, proved to be Adm. Louis M. Nulton, a
friend of Admiral Reeves, the latter promptly dispatched a letter to
Admiral Nulton suggesting that he ask for me as his Aide for Aviation
on the Battle Fleet Staff. This assignment put me one notch above
the Aircraft Squadrons, whose new commander was announced as Admiral
Butler, with Ken Whiting in my job as Chief of Staff. And since
Admiral Nulton was known as a man for detail, the Aircraft Squadrons
Staff saw that they would need a friend on high if they were to
retain the freedom of action Admiral Pratt had always given Admiral
Reeves.
Meanwhile, it was a gloomy outfit that received Admiral Pratt on
the _Big Sara_ for the cruise home. The admiral had just been
selected for the highest naval command, Chief of Naval Operations,
in Washington. En route north he brought up the problem of the “home
yard” for the _Lexington_. Norfolk was the _Lexington’s_ home yard.
Admiral Pratt, proposed to return her to the Atlantic in order to
balance the work load—in other words keep the yard workmen employed.
Wagner and I took issue with him and I must have pressed too hard on
the need for keeping the squadrons together for training, for Admiral
Pratt turned on me in some annoyance and barked, “You always see the
ultimate objective and want to take it on the first assault. You’ve
got to learn to take minor objectives one at a time, and to hold them
till the big one falls in your lap. Otherwise,” he added, shaking a
finger in my face, “you’ll never get anywhere in this man’s Navy.”
Shortly after we arrived in San Diego, and even before the admiral’s
relief had reported, Bull Reeves was detached from his command. The
day he shoved off, all his squadron commanders and staff accompanied
him to the Santa Fe railway station. Overhead FLEET AIR paraded for
him in a last formation flight. The Old Man put up a cheerful front
until Harry Bogusch shook his hand.
“Admiral,” said Harry, “we used to hate your guts for making us fly
those tight formations, but that night off Panama we blessed you for
the air discipline you had forced on us.” With that, two big tears
welled up in Bull Reeves’s eyes and ran down his nose onto his gray
whiskers.
After Admiral Nulton had hoisted his flag on the fleet flagship
_California_, I found myself once again on a battleship. Time was
when I would have thrilled at the thought. Now it left me numb. To
have served with two great leaders in succession and to have lived
through the creative period of naval aviation ashore and afloat and
then go back to battle wagons cheerfully was too much to expect. I
couldn’t get into the spirit of it.
When later the _California_ spent the summer at the navy yard
in Bremerton, Washington, I was completely cut off from aircraft
operations except by correspondence. Admiral Nulton and his battle
fleet staff tried hard to absorb some of the new ideas, but it was
too much to expect them to think and act intuitively, along lines
that crisscrossed every preconceived idea.
The end of the summer found us back behind the breakwater at San
Pedro, when one day a message came that Fred Rentschler and Bill
Boeing had flown down from Seattle in their Ford Trimotor and were at
the Los Angeles Biltmore where they would like me to have dinner with
them. I knew from the newspapers and from letters that great things
had been going on in the aircraft industry. Not only had some of
the companies made money on operations, but some of the leaders had
become rich as a result of the increased values of their stocks. This
was the beginning of the end of that mad period of speculation in
which all sorts of mergers and consolidations had prompted the public
to get into the market and make a killing. In the aircraft industry,
Curtiss and Wright had led off with a merger that had brought
together two of the greatest names in aviation and had put two of the
biggest operations under the same tent.
In reply Boeing, Rentschler, Chance Vought, and others, fearing the
giant thus created, had consolidated in a merger of their own. Unlike
the Curtiss-Wright consolidation, which, to them, smacked of Wall
Street, the new one was to comprise only sound companies, those which
had already proved profitable or seemed likely to continue to do so.
The big idea was to bring together, under one leadership, the best
in airplanes, engines, propellers, and transport systems in order to
coordinate engineering experience in a way that would speed progress.
For passenger air transport still seemed to hang on a dead center: it
was impossible to reduce rates unless volume could be stepped up, and
volume refused to step up until costs came down.
The new outfit, which had taken the name of the United Aircraft and
Transport Corporation, planned to get its engineering heads together
and create improved aircraft designed to break that log jam. Fred
Rentschler and Bill Boeing had come to Los Angeles to look over some
of the western companies like Northrup, which had already joined up,
and Menasco, which would like to. Reading about the Curtiss-Wright
consolidation, I had to smile at the idea I had once had of depending
upon those two for air-cooled engine competition. Save for Fred
Rentschler and Pratt and Whitney, they would now have us by the neck.
It was an interesting circumstance that the particular group should
have joined up in the new outfit. For I had put the bee on Chance
Vought that had produced the prescription for the Pratt and Whitney
Wasp, and had later sent Bill Boeing to Fred Rentschler for the
engines for his mail planes, the very engines that had made possible
a tidy profit out of a venture that Bill’s competition had called
impossible. And save for the Martin torpedo bombers, this group had
supplied all the equipment for our carriers, including the engines
for the Martins. And the marriage seemed natural from another point
of view: the parties at interest were all pioneers with a zeal for
aviation and they had all played the game according to Hoyle.
On arrival at the Biltmore I found another old-timer in their
company. Thomas Hamilton, like Bill Boeing, had grown up in
Seattle, but unlike Bill Boeing he had not had money to spend on
airplanes. Instead he had taught himself to fly in a crate of his own
construction and had then built his own business. On the outbreak
of World War I, Tom had rushed to Washington to get a contract to
build airplanes but had been diverted to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the
home of furniture manufacture, to make propellers. He had, however,
established his own Metalplane Company and built a high-wing metal
monoplane that, he claimed, antedated the Ford. And when the new
United Aircraft and Transport Corporation had looked around for a
propeller company to round out their line, they had taken over Tom
Hamilton, his Hamilton Aero Manufacturing Company, and his Hamilton
Metalplane Company. Tom, like every other Tom, Dick, and Harry of
that time, had been in the stock market but, unlike some of them, had
done well.
At dinner that evening, I noted the changes that had come over these
men. The time had been when they had scratched gravel for the last
trace of “color” that might lie close to bedrock. Now they flew
high, wide, and handsome on the crest of the current boom. They had
flown in aboard their own Ford Trimotor; they had taken a suite at
the Biltmore and now they ordered the exotic foods on the menu. One
advantage of the naval service was that much of this had passed us
by; we had security, but no wealth. These men had wealth but little
security, and even at the height of the great boom of the late
’twenties, Fred Rentschler, at least, clearly foresaw the ultimate
outcome. To him the whole thing was crazy—a house of cards built on a
foundation of sand, foredoomed to collapse at the first real tremor.
Meanwhile they shop-talked back and forth, discussing their current
management problems, one of which seemed to concern Tom Hamilton and
his propeller company.
It seemed that after I had taken the decision, away back there in
BUAERO, that we would use the new metal propellers in place of the
wooden ones, two companies had competed for the business—the Hamilton
Aero Manufacturing Company, of Milwaukee, and the Standard Steel
Propeller Company, of Pittsburgh. In the middle had sat the Reed
Propeller Company, owners of the patents taken out by Dr. Sylvanus
Reed. These patents, covering metal propeller blades made of “light
alloys, solid throughout the outer half of their length,” had been
discounted by both Hamilton Aero and Standard Steel, who had declared
them invalid. However, the new Curtiss-Wright Corporation had
absorbed the Reed Company to put the power of Curtiss-Wright dollars
behind the patents.
Meanwhile, Tom Hamilton, of Hamilton Aero, and Harry Kraeling, of
Standard Steel, fought their conflict on other grounds. To match
Tom Hamilton’s propeller-design savvy, Harry Kraeling hired Frank
Caldwell, the Army’s civilian propeller expert, away from the Army.
Frank Caldwell had a few inventions himself and was one of the
best informed men in the industry. Both companies sold “two-piece”
propellers—that is, duralumin blades mounted in steel hubs that
permitted blade-angle adjustment on the ground. The Reed Company held
to single-piece, fixed-pitch props made of solid duralumin. It was
one of these that had dumped me into the dirt at Anacostia, back
in 1926, when a blade had broken off close to the hub. I still kept
a section of that blade as a souvenir. Now after United Aircraft
and Transport Corporation had acquired Hamilton Aero, of Milwaukee,
Standard Steel, of Pittsburgh, had countered by recognizing the
Reed patents and taking a license from Curtiss-Wright. Standard
paid Curtiss royalties, and in exchange Curtiss agreed to sue all
infringers of the patents—including Hamilton.
Fred Rentschler, as president of United, had not relished a patent
suit with Curtiss and had therefore bought up Standard Steel of
Pittsburgh from its local stockholders. This had given him freedom
from the threat of suit because he had acquired the license in the
transaction, but it had opened up other problems. The two propeller
companies had been so highly competitive, it now seemed unlikely that
either Hamilton or Kraeling could consolidate the two outfits into a
single company; they needed new and neutral management. Furthermore,
since the consolidation had brought the two manufacturers into one
group, the action had deprived the Army and Navy of their cherished
competitive sources and had substituted instead a potential monopoly.
It was like old times to chin with these friends about their business
problems and to become, for an evening at least, a part of the world
I had once lived in. In that world, petty personal jealousies had
to be subordinated to business principles. Only in a semipolitical
organization, such as the Army or Navy, where there was no financial
statement to measure the quality of leadership, could men indulge
in such extravagances as personal politics. Of course in business,
personalities did exercise strong influences, but in the long run,
economics seemed to write the answer to the business equation.
After a visit in Los Angeles, Rentschler and Bill Boeing flew to San
Diego to call on the Navy. Taking off in my little Vought Corsair,
I went ahead to introduce them to the new command down there. Then
one evening as we sat together in a bedroom of the old Hotel del
Coronado, that relic of the lush boom days of Southern California,
Tom Hamilton and Bill Boeing turned in, leaving Fred and me to talk
shop. Fred was back on his propeller problem, wondering if I, by any
chance, could suggest a possible new president for the consolidated
company. He had, of course, kept in touch with the gossip in BUAERO
over the controversy with FLEET AIR, and was aware of its influence
on my personal situation. The talk drifted naturally to this subject,
and before I was aware of its drift, Fred had invited me to take over
the propeller job.
“Don’t be silly,” I laughed. “At forty-two, I’d be crazy to even
consider it. In the first place I am devoted to the service and, in
the second, there’s nothing in a naval officer’s training to qualify
him for business competition.”
“I haven’t suggested it,” Fred replied soberly, “without first
thinking the matter through. I’m sure you have the necessary
versatility and resourcefulness.”
“I appreciate your interest and thank you for the compliment,” I
replied, “but frankly I’m sorry you brought it up. If I accepted,
which, of course I have no intention of doing, the time would surely
come when I would regret it. And in passing it up, I open myself to
the certainty that every future setback will make me sorry I lacked
the guts to resign.”
“Is there no way for you to retire?” he asked.
“No, and if there were, that wouldn’t be the way to go about it.
Nothing but a complete separation would do, and for me, that is quite
out of the question. I’ve got twenty-five years in on my retirement.
Throwing that away would be stupid.”
“Well, think it over,” he persisted. “And when you’re ready, let me
know. You could start with the propeller company, and then, if things
work out, you could go on from there.” I laughed at the idea.
And, at the moment, I was serious about it, but after Fred and Bill
and Tom had left, I found I couldn’t turn off his voice by a flick of
the switch. This was no ordinary proposal to be dismissed forthwith:
These men had shown me their stuff on many occasions. They were deep
in the technical development of aviation, something close to my own
heart. They were getting big things done; I was bogged down in a maze
of politics with no clear objective before me, and frustrations
wearing me down. I began lying awake nights, analyzing the pros and
cons.
Trying to compare advantages and disadvantages like this got me
nowhere. The fundamental fact was that if I persisted in working at
aviation I must risk my chance for high command. If, however, I gave
up aviation and returned to line duty, I would be deserting technical
development at the very time it needed the attention of everyone who
had acquired experience in it. In private business I could continue
the engineering development and, far from impairing my future as an
executive, could actually enhance it. For in the new era which had
blossomed in the brief fifteen years since Dr. Charles Edward Lucke
and Columbia University, an executive with a fundamental engineering
training had a better chance to accomplish things in a manufacturing
business than one without such training.
The chances of a former naval officer succeeding in business were
slim, but the chance was there. The risk of failure was great, but
the opportunity to contribute importantly to the advance of aviation
was enough to warrant taking the chance. Admiral Reeves would have
judged it “an intelligent risk.” I submitted my resignation, and
received the acceptance in December, 1929.
The stock market had crashed two months before; the world had entered
a protracted period of depression. I had bought a complete outfit of
brand new uniforms, for duty on the commander in chief’s staff. Now I
packed them away in a sea chest, along with the prize sword “awarded
by the Class of 1871 for proficiency in ordnance and gunnery,” and
turned my back on the sea. After twenty-five years of naval service,
I signed off for life.
Throughout this tortured period of indecision, my wife had taken
no other position than the traditional one of the Navy wife,
“Whither thou goest!” She had listened with her usual patience to
my reasoning, but reserved to herself the intuitive process that
proved in the end to be right. For it was only after we had been out
of the service some time that I learned a fact that would have made
the decision far easier, one that she had sensed all along. In civil
life we were free. No longer were we social and professional slaves
to every officer and his wife who happened, by accident of date of
appointment or scholastic standing at Annapolis, to outrank us on
the precedence list. But one basic fact was clear; the slipstream
that had sucked me into naval aviation had now blasted me out of the
service I had loved, and into civil life.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Necessity, the Mother of Creation
When, shortly after the first of January, 1930, Tom Hamilton took me
up to Milwaukee to look over the Hamilton Aero plant there, the stock
market crash had already enveloped the country in a cold chill. Along
the Northwestern Railway’s right of way, cold smoke stacks pointed
dead fingers toward leaden skies and fear gripped the land. However,
we found Tom’s modern factory still bright and cheerful for it had
been well equipped and was now well run by Arvid Nelson, its manager.
While the civilian demand for propellers had collapsed with the boom,
military business had continued firm under the five-year Army and
Navy building programs.
It was when we went down to Pittsburgh to look over Standard Steel
that I got a jolt. The plant, located across the river in Homestead
in a former cap-pistol factory, was as drab and cheerless as
Pittsburgh itself. With many of the steel mills down as a result
of the market collapse, there was less smog than usual along the
Monongahela, but the grime of the past still clung to treeless
slopes. After a look over the situation there it was clear we must
cut the consolidated propeller company back to a size suited to the
reduced demand.
While the plant in Milwaukee appeared the better of the two, the
State of Wisconsin had a heavy corporation income tax that would
have to be included in costs; and besides, Milwaukee lay off the
main east-west line of rail communication. At Pittsburgh, Harry
Kraeling had just completed a new three-story loft building in which
we might concentrate the machinery of both companies, and the plant
had a siding to the main line of the Pennsylvania. Here, about
halfway between Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio, was a situation
that offered such advantages that we decided to consolidate the
best equipment and the most skilled workmen there. We would then
abandon all excess facilities and endeavor to set up a plant with a
break-even point calculated to keep us in the black even with the
greatly reduced military production level.
In calculating this setup, I had help from the head office in New
York and in the person of Joseph F. McCarthy, controller of United
Aircraft. Mac, I found, was the sort of wizard who could glance at
columns of figures and read in them signs and portents such as could
be made clear to me only after I had reduced them to engineer’s
language of graphs and charts. From him I discovered that a financial
statement is not just the cold record of past mistakes or triumphs,
but also a weather map from which to forecast future trends and to
take decisions calculated to reap the abundant harvest.
Using the figures available, we calculated the size of the facility
with which we might expect to continue to break even during a period
of slow demand but still retain the flexibility essential to reaping
a profit when the tide turned. United Aircraft was frankly not in
business for its health; it was in business for a fair profit and
each of the subsidiaries was expected to stand on its own two feet.
By consolidating the financial resources of all its subsidiaries
in the parent company, it had in effect broadened the resources of
each. Any company in temporary need of funds might look to the parent
company without going outside to borrow, but over the long pull it
must contribute its share to the over-all income.
Having had no training whatever in accounting or finance, but having
been schooled by Dr. Lucke to search for fundamental principles, I
now began digging down to bedrock and in J. F. McCarthy, himself,
discovered a rich nugget. Profit, it seemed, was not just the excess
of receipts over expenditures, a sum to be divided among a few
insiders and squandered in riotous living. Profit was, among other
things, the great regulator and controller of trade, and trade was
the foundation of human existence. Under the free play of natural
competitive forces, the compelling need to make a profit or go out of
business and starve was what drove men to cut costs of production.
If they could reduce costs enough to make the product available to
more people they could increase the demand and expand the volume of
production. Out of their profits, or the anticipation of profits,
they could attract new money with which to buy new machinery designed
to cut costs further and expand volume further. All this was a
delicate, living process that required good judgment and great skill
to nurture.
Profit, it appeared, was like the governor on a steam generator.
Increased demand for power would slow down the engine and reduce the
voltage were it not for the fact that the governor, sensitive to
small changes in speed, now opened the throttle wider to admit the
extra steam required to meet the new demand. Contrariwise, when the
demand fell off the engine might overspeed and destroy itself, save
that the eversensitive governor now reacted quickly to close the
throttle, and save the machine.
Profit was therefore no devouring ogre, as some would have us
believe, nor was it just the regulator or controller of costs. Men,
in seeking to make a profit—and correspondingly to avoid a loss—were
ever on the alert to create new devices and new products. If one
of these turned out to be useful, or desirable, and if its price
proved reasonable, then the device would come into general use and
its production and use would become profitable for both its creator
and its user, to say nothing of the workmen who manufactured it. If,
however, the device or idea failed to measure up to the customer’s
expectations, or failed to satisfy his tastes, then it would just
fade out; nature, it appeared, was highly selective. She believed in
enterprise.
When natural law was permitted to function according to principle,
corrective forces maintained a degree of equilibrium. To each action
there was an opposite and equal reaction and the action contained
the germ of the reaction, to the end that the pendulum could not
swing too far. It was only when man-made law began hampering natural
law that the violent swings took place. No man could understand the
workings of the natural law well enough to anticipate the future nor,
were he able to do so, could he control the future. Least of all did
he have wisdom enough to incorporate the germ of a corrective action
in his plans.
As I studied this matter of profit and business cycles, I began
to get hold of a truth that seemed to be the answer to a lot of
questions about the place of the machine in the economy. Men were
beginning to argue that labor-saving machinery would bring about
technological unemployment, and as the world-wide depression
deepened, the facts seemed to confirm the opinion. However, there was
another side to this coin: in a technological age when some engineers
were engrossed with the task of cutting costs with machinery, other
engineers were busy creating new devices to sell. And when these new
devices clicked, they called for the creation of new enterprises, the
employment of new money—even the creation of new wealth—and best of
all the creation of new jobs for workmen. The automotive industry was
one of many brilliant examples of this fact.
Now no man or group of men could possibly have enough wisdom to
control the operations of this law. The free play of natural forces
was the only intelligent controller. Like the slipstream of an
airplane, this process might appear to be turbulent and wasteful,
but again, like the slipstream, it was one of the most efficient
processes in nature. The best men could do was try to maintain a
healthy climate in which the process could flourish, and since
the key lay in the incentive for the human spirit, men’s chief
contribution must come out of faith in the natural process.
All this was a revelation to me in more ways than one. Like most
naval officers I had absorbed something of the point of view of the
professional man who tends to look down his nose at the tradesman.
Overimpressed by the sins of a few profiteers, we considered
businessmen mere money grubbers inclined to wink at sharp practices,
if not downright dishonesty. To the professional man, especially one
in public service, whose compensation does not clearly reflect the
results of his own efforts, the real reward lies in his knowledge of
a job well done. To some, this provides all the incentive required,
but to most it furnishes an excuse to sit on the beach and watch the
ebb and flow of the tides. The military man is prone to forget that
some hard worker must create the wealth necessary to support him in
the honorable estate to which he has become accustomed and that if
comparable salaries make his appear modest, Uncle Sam is lavish with
the perquisites.
When I sought to probe these matters with J. F. McCarthy, I found a
kindred spirit. From the inception of the company, Fred Rentschler
had brought Mac into every business discussion and decision; it had
been his idea that finance should walk hand in hand with operations
rather than bring up the rear with a truck load of old ledgers. He
had, therefore, given Mac a high degree of autonomy in financial
matters especially in the subsidiaries and Mac had used this so
skillfully that everyone in the organization respected his business
judgment and admired his integrity.
As time passed, and my responsibilities in United widened, Mac and
I expanded our viewpoints together. Shortly after completing the
physical consolidation at Pittsburgh, I was made president of the
Sikorsky company at Bridgeport. A year later, after Chance Vought
had died suddenly, I became head of his company in East Hartford.
In less than a year, I, the least experienced businessman in United
had fallen heir to its three problem children. As the depression
deepened, and vast social changes began to take place, I sensed
the far-reaching responsibilities that attach to the head of a
manufacturing organization. Aside from the normal headaches incident
to managing a competitive enterprise during a period of world-wide
depression, there were heavy responsibilities imposed by strange
forces unleashed by politicians prying open Pandora’s Box. This was
an era when American business was placed on trial for its very life.
Our difficulty at Pittsburgh sprang primarily from the fact that
the consolidation of the two manufacturers of metal propellers
had created a potential monopoly; and there is no business more
vulnerable than a monopoly. Our two steady customers, the Army and
the Navy, wasted no time in slapping us down; they turned their
propeller business over to fly-by-night competitors, and worse
still, to government arsenals. My first venture in business was
now threatened by unfair competition from sources that contributed
nothing to engineering and development and charged their overhead to
a government appropriation.
It was somewhat as if Uncle Sam had pirated a manuscript of a best
seller and had had it printed in the Government Printing Office or a
sweat shop at public expense, and then left the author to starve. The
policy is hardly designed to advance the writing art and, in the long
run, is sure to prove bad medicine for the government, that is the
people, itself.
This fact we endeavored to point out to both Army and Navy, urging
that it was to their interest that we continue to live. After all,
we were the only organization in the world capable of continuing
the development of metal propellers; foreign aircraft still clung
to their archaic wooden props, and foreigners were still convinced
of their superiority. We tried to point out that the consolidation
had been forced by patent considerations and for no other reason,
that the new management had been drawn from Army and Navy and had
no intention of monopolizing anything but was determined to foster
progress in new design. Their reply was to ask to see the color of
our new designs.
With survival dependent upon the creation of something new and
better, I went upstairs to the engineering department to put the
problem before its chief, Frank Caldwell. Frank, a big cinnamon bear
of a fellow with a slow Tennessee drawl, had forgotten more about
aircraft propellers than most engineers would ever know. While Chief
of the Army Propeller Branch at Dayton, he had suggested to Harry
Kraeling, then a salesman of the steel alloy Vanadium, that he give
up trying to build propeller blades out of welded-steel sheets, and
use instead the new aluminum alloy, duralumin. When I put the problem
up to Frank, he hoisted his bulk out of his chair and ambled toward a
drawing table in the corner of his office. Pushing aside a T square,
he peeled the cover back from a large drawing and looked at the black
lines with modest pride.
At that time, the Hamilton-Standard duralumin blades were clamped
into the sockets of steel hubs in such a way that when an airplane
stood on the ground, the blades might be adjusted to whatever setting
was desired. However, once set, the blades were not adjustable in the
air. This gave the airplane a handicap such as a motor car would have
if deprived of its gearshift. The propeller shown in Frank’s drawing,
however, had a mechanism for adjusting the propeller blade setting in
the air. The pilot might use one setting, corresponding to low gear,
when taking off, and another corresponding to high, for cruising.
Frank visualized his “controllable pitch propeller” as the “gearshift
of the air.”
The idea of such a propeller was not new. Many people had tried
the device and found it sound in conception; the problem was that
no one had been able to build one of the things strong enough to
stand up under the extremely high centrifugal and vibratory stresses
found in propeller blades. The novelty of Frank’s design lay in
its simple hydraulic control mechanism, in which oil pressure on a
piston rotated the blades and locked them in either of two positions,
the best setting for cruising or for take-off. Judged by the old
engineering adage, “to be good it must look good,” Frank’s propeller
looked to me like the answer to a maiden’s prayer.
Now Frank Caldwell was no overenthusiastic salesman. The best he
would say for his brain child was to express the quiet hope that it
might amount to something some day—provided we could make it hang
together. But to me there was no use fooling around; here was just
the kind of gadget we needed to pull us out of the hole. I gave
orders to shoot the works and rush the development of the “gearshift
of the air.”
Fifteen years later, after we had become more conscious of the need
for corporate social security and after we had got ourselves all
bound up in our own red tape, I doubt if United Aircraft would ever
have undertaken such a project.
For the problem was not so simple as I have so far stated it. The new
propeller must of necessity prove more costly than the old type, and
there was no proof that the increase in performance would justify
the increased costs. This question did not lend itself to precise
calculation, nor could we solve it by trying the propeller on an
existing airplane. In order to realize the advantages of the new type
we must build a new airplane designed to exploit it, and in those
days people just didn’t haul off and build airplanes to sell other
people’s propellers.
The point is that at the moment the controllable-pitch propeller, one
day to be recognized as the most revolutionary device in aeronautics,
was not then something that men demanded. In fact, current opinion
was bearish on the idea just as it had been on the air-cooled engine
and still was on reduction gears. In the judgment of the wise men,
such devices were bound to be so heavy or so costly that their
advantages might at best balance out their disadvantages, so why
bother with the complication? Frank Caldwell had thought it through,
but, being modest and conservative, he did not try to sell the device
to me. My own reaction was intuitive rather than rational.
Though I reported my decision to Fred Rentschler at the New York
office, he naturally took little notice of it until our financial
statement began showing red ink. Lacking profitable production to
support an expensive development, we had begun to show serious
losses. Since there was no flight experience available to support
my venture, Fred was all for canceling the project to avoid further
losses. The sole argument I could bring to bear was the fact that I
had installed an experimental prop equipped with magnesium blades in
one of the small Sikorsky amphibians, an S-39, which had astonished
me with its quick take-off and improved cruising characteristics.
Behind my decision, however, had lain the whole background of
aviation development. One device after another had been proposed
and rejected on the basis of engineering judgment, only to be later
perfected by some zealot who refused to recognize handicaps. I
expressed confidence in the outcome and offered to gamble my job on
it. Fred shook his head in doubt.
“Well,” he said sourly, “it had better pan out or it will be just too
bad for you.”
Now there remained one process by which I might recover some of our
investment. The propeller had been developed to the point where we
might offer a few of them to the Army and Navy at experimental
prices on experimental contracts, a practice long used to foster new
and expensive developments. But when I went down to BUAERO I ran into
a cold front that iced me up like nothing I had ever before seen. The
Plans Division of BUAERO seemed now to have usurped the functions of
the Engine Section in developments of this kind, and the head of that
division was now Comdr. Richmond Kelly Turner, USN, a Naval Academy
classmate of mine and a friend of long standing. “Spuds” Turner was a
tough egg, something the Japs were to learn at Tarawa and other South
Pacific actions some fifteen years later; I didn’t have to wait that
long.
Kelly Turner seemed to think that controllable-pitch propellers were
no good in general, and to suspect that the one I was trying to
sell was probably the least useful of them all. If I had wasted my
company’s money chasing a will-o’-the-wisp, he had no intention of
sending any of Uncle Sam’s hard earned cash on a wild-goose chase
to try to bail me out of my business mistakes. “Spuds” did not
confine his opinions to me in a confidential chat, but took pains
to broadcast them all through the corridors of BUAERO in a loud
stentorian voice.
Meanwhile, after taking over the Sikorsky job, I had felt the need of
a new assistant in Hamilton-Standard and had learned through George
Wheat, our public relations counsel, that Raycroft Walsh, a former
major in the Air Corps who had resigned to go into business, might
be interested. Ray had had an active Army career and, during the
Mitchell controversy, had served in the Office of the Chief of Air
Corps, Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick, as Finance Officer where he had
performed some of the functions I had performed for Admiral Moffett.
I liked him the moment I met him, and immediately recommended that he
be brought into the company.
When Ray took the new propeller to the Army, he encountered a similar
lack of interest. Even though he carried his case to the Assistant
Secretary of War for Air, Mr. F. Trubee Davison, and finally to his
friend Pat Hurley, Secretary of War, stressing the fact that refusal
to help develop the new propeller would prove disastrous to the Army
and fatal to Hamilton-Standard, he made no more progress than had I
with my friend “Spuds” Turner. It was a kind providence which, taking
us by the hand, led us out to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and a new milepost
in history.
For prior to the crisis in the affairs of Hamilton-Standard,
United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, having in mind the need
for building new transport aircraft designed to carry passengers
and mail on a profitable basis, had initiated a joint airplane
development headed up by Boeing. Based upon the performance of the
Boeing “Monomail,” a single-engined low-wing monoplane itself partly
derived from the earlier work of Jack Northrup, Boeing had taken in
hand its new ten-passenger, twin-engined, low-wing monoplane to be
called the “Boeing 247.” Designed around a new Pratt and Whitney
Wasp engine and equipped with Hamilton-Standard propellers, it was
intended as a replacement for all other assorted models in use on
the line. Boeing, confident of its engineering ability, had released
for production a full order of some sixty airplanes without first
testing out a prototype. This procedure, if successful, would put
the airplane company far ahead of any competitor and would give the
transport company a big jump on other airlines such as it had earned
by creating the earlier model, 40-B.
At first everything had gone swimmingly, but the day the first
ship to fly over the lines essayed to take off with full load from
the high-altitude field at Cheyenne, serious trouble developed;
the airplane just could not handle full load satisfactorily from
such elevations. At first, Boeing had been inclined to blame Pratt
and Whitney and the Wasp engine for insufficient horsepower, but
when that attempt failed, both parties shifted the blame onto
Hamilton-Standard propellers, claiming faulty propeller design.
This was the old Indian game of passing the buck around the
eternal triangle of engine, propeller, and airplane. When we sent
Frank Caldwell to Cheyenne to investigate he went quietly about a
demonstration that, we hoped, would prove convincing.
First he adjusted the duralumin blades at best setting for take-off
to show how well the ship would perform even at high altitude. This
setting, however, was so inefficient at cruising speeds that the
nearby mountain peaks echoed and reechoed the whining complaint of
whirring blades. To meet this defect, Frank reset the blades to the
best angle for cruising, where the airplane, its load having been
reduced for take-off, performed perfectly. After this convincing
demonstration, he unwrapped his drawings of a controllable-pitch
propeller for the 247. While no such prop had yet been air-tested,
Boeing brushed the objection aside, confident now that between the
two companies, the airplane could be salvaged.
So it was that Frank Caldwell’s controllable-pitch propeller not only
saved the whole string of Boeing 247’s, but in doing so, it opened up
the new era of “three-mile-a-minute” air passenger travel and started
air transport on its way. After that, even the Army and Navy began to
recognize the potentialities of the new propeller; it paved the way
for low-wing monoplanes with their high-wing loadings and thus marked
the passing of the biplanes.
But prior to the Cheyenne demonstration, Hamilton-Standard propellers
dragged bottom. Ray Walsh, who had taken over its management, closed
the Pittsburgh plant, reduced the organization to a handful of the
ablest men, and moved the shop into a corner of Pratt and Whitney’s
ample building in East Hartford. Later, when success acclaimed the
genius of Frank Caldwell, Ray began expanding his organization to
meet new demands and finally built an additional wing on the Pratt
and Whitney building to house his new shop. Still later, we moved
Chance Vought Aircraft down to Stratford to bunk in with a much
deflated Sikorsky, and turned the whole Vought shop over to Hamilton.
Meanwhile, when Ray undertook to sell the rights to manufacture the
new propellers in England, he encountered problems both at home and
abroad. The British Air Ministry, like our own services, discounted
the propeller—this was a time when most Britishers discounted
everything American—and our own armed forces threatened to refuse us
the right to license them under our patents. Since our government had
contributed precisely nothing to the development, and especially
since my classmate, Kelly Turner, had broadcast his decision to the
whole aeronautic establishment, they were hardly in position to claim
much equity or any right to control a device of such obvious interest
to commercial air transport.
However, it was in a totally different role that the
Hamilton-Standard controllable-pitch propeller attained immortality.
The manager of the propeller branch of the de Havilland Aircraft
Company, Ltd., our English licensees, was John Parkes, himself
a fighter pilot, an Englishmen who retained some of the ancient
enterprise and love of innovation. Today he is managing director of
Alvis Limited, Coventry, but then he was the moving spirit in the
adaptation of the Hamilton-Standard propeller to the British Spitfire
fighters, the planes that helped win the Battle of Britain. The
Germans had developed their own controllable-pitch propellers and,
save for the curious chain of circumstances outlined here, would have
hopelessly outclassed the British. When Mr. Churchill paid tribute to
the “so few” to whom Britain owed so much, he probably had in mind
the courageous fighter pilots but behind them stood, among others,
Ray Walsh, Frank Caldwell, and John Parkes.
And so we trace the living process through which our struggle to
survive created new devices and exercised profound influences that no
human mind could have imagined. The miscalculation of one engineer
saved the creation of another engineer just in time to give air
transport the necessary fillip, and to provide British fighters with
the winning punch. And there is a final point to keep in mind: it was
the performance of Hamilton-Standard’s controllable-pitch propellers
in Boeing transports copied by the Germans that impelled them to
develop their own propellers. The moral seems to be that leadership
in scientific research and technological development is the key to
military security. A laggard faces extinction.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Igor Sikorsky Spans Two Gaps
On the ninth floor of the New York Central Building, at 230 Park
Avenue in the city of New York, Frederick B. Rentschler, president of
the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, sat behind his desk in
a corner office that looked out on the Biltmore Hotel, and welcomed
me with a grin. It was a May day in 1930.
“We’ve got a problem in Bridgeport,” he began. “It’s Sikorsky
Aviation Corporation. They need management, and I thought you might
like to take it on in addition to Hamilton-Standard.”
United Aircraft and Transport, it seemed, had been originally
conceived as a consolidation of outstanding manufacturers for
military and air transport. However, back in 1928 when it was being
set up, Fred had encountered considerable pressure from certain
ones “downtown” to include some outstanding private commercial
manufacturers as well. Some in Wall Street had become convinced that
the day of private flying had already dawned, and they had drawn the
analogy with the automobile somewhat closer, it had seemed to Fred,
than was warranted by the facts. While he resisted their pressure,
he did agree to take over a few outstanding commercial manufacturers
like Stearman in Wichita and Sikorsky in Bridgeport.
And when the bottom had dropped out of the stock market, and the
fool’s paradise that characterized the late ’twenties had faded into
the deep depression now steeping the country in gloom and fear,
Fred’s judgment had been vindicated. At Sikorsky, a flock of “firm
orders,” with down payments from Curtiss-Wright Flying Service, had
been transformed into a big inventory surplus. Somebody must now
liquidate that to get enough cash to continue, and somebody must
create something to sell to the Army and Navy, the only remaining
users of aircraft. That somebody could be me.
“When you get up to Stratford,” Fred told me, “you’ll find an
organization that is unique to say the least.”
Practically every one in the company was a Russian—a White Russian
refugee who, “come the revolution,” had made his precarious way to
the United States. They were all talented, artistic, intellectual,
and by our standards at least, wholly impractical.
Igor Sikorsky was their guiding genius, a man around whom all had
rallied when the going was tough. Over on College Point, Long Island,
at an abandoned chicken farm, they had pooled their resources for
the common good and built their first twin-engined bomber. And so
successful had this ship been that Arnold Dickinson, an enterprising
fellow from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who had been greatly attracted
to the fascinating Russians and much impressed by their cleverness,
had advanced them large sums of money. Then came the Sikorsky
twin-engined amphibian, one of the first American aircraft to control
and maneuver well on either of its two engines, and with its success,
United Aircraft became interested in taking the company into the
fold. By that time, Sikorsky’s backers had built a modern plant for
him at Stratford on the Housatonic River, and things had looked
promising indeed up until that Black Friday of October, 1929, when
the bottom dropped out of the stock market.
It happened that I had flown the Sikorsky amphibian and had met Mr.
Sikorsky. He had called on me in BUAERO and left with us a vivid
impression of his charm of manner, his intellectual honesty, his
resourceful mind, and—unique in our experience—a most becoming
modesty. For at a time when fast-talking promoters had beaten paths
to our doorway, in the hope of high pressuring us into buying their
mousetraps, the Russian designer alone had shown humility with
respect to his art and respect for the judgment of others. And with
it all, being himself without guile, Mr. Igor Sikorsky had proved
himself the most convincing salesman in our rather wide experience.
For sitting as we had at the crossroads, we had had the advantage of
a good view along all highways.
Now I learned from Fred Rentschler that there was another
complication of the kind Mr. Sikorsky later sometimes referred to,
in his delightful accent and his literal-English translation of an
old American saying—“Somewhere there is a Negro sawing wood.” Pan
American Airways, during the boom, had advertised a competition
calling for large flying boats or amphibians, to be flown on its
Caribbean and South American air routes, where practically no
airports were available. Sikorsky Aviation, it appeared, had won the
award and had agreed to build three of the giant craft at an average
price of $125,000 each. After having spent at least that much on
engineering alone, they had decided to throw the drawings away and
start anew with a clean sheet of paper. Fred Rentschler had been a
member of the Pan American Airways board of directors during the
competition, and now felt that United was committed to go on with the
project. He had reconciled himself to the fact that it would cost
United upwards of a million dollars, and had even concluded that the
money could be looked upon as an investment. If the planes proved
successful, we might get back our money and more too, by selling
airplanes, propellers, and engines to the new commercial airline. In
a way, one might persuade himself that it was United’s duty to make
such a contribution to the art.
This idea, while commendable in spirit, seemed to me somewhat
fantastic in practice. Some years earlier, “Captain Dick” Richardson,
a naval constructor, designer and pilot for the giant NC boats that
had crossed the Atlantic, and himself a pioneer pilot, had carefully
analyzed the economics of commercial operations and solemnly
concluded that airplanes in excess of thirty thousand pounds gross
weight could not possibly pay their freight, let alone produce
revenue. At that time there had been no controllable-pitch propellers
in sight, nor had wing flaps appeared on the horizon; Captain Dick’s
dictum had become an axiom. In view of this, it seemed to me wise for
us to attempt to dissuade Juan Trippe, President of Pan American,
from his foolhardy undertaking. When, later on, we tried to do so,
Juan could not be sold. He, like Igor Sikorsky, had that intuitive
something that motivates the pioneer.
Meanwhile, back there in the New York office, Fred Rentschler
continued to explain the complexities of the Sikorsky problem. At
this point, J. F. McCarthy, United’s controller, who had sat through
the whole discussion, began unrolling several of those long yellow
ruled sheets of paper on which accountants were accustomed to line up
their figures.
Mac had broken the Sikorsky expenses down into the usual three
categories, general and sales expense, engineering expense, and
manufacturing expense. Now it appeared, the ratios of these expenses
to one another and to shipments, sales, and so on, were far out of
line with good practice. There were certain items in each that were
more or less fixed, but manufacturing expense now looked like the
best point of attack; it was a large part of the whole; it had large
reducible items and it could be cut without serious harm. In other
words my job was to go down to Stratford and fire enough of these
attractive Russians to bring the expense into line. Fred summed it up
this way:
“There is a limit to the contribution United Aircraft can make to
Russian relief.”
And so, next day I took a morning train from Grand Central. The
new Sikorsky factory lay just below the town of Stratford and just
above the point where the Housatonic River empties into Long Island
Sound. It was a sheltered spot and had been selected as possessing
good seaplane facilities with space for a landing field nearby. From
the outside, the high factory buildings looked new and shiny, but
as I entered the door I thought that someone had cut corners on the
details of construction.
After Arnold Dickinson had arrived, we went to work. Arnold
appreciated the problems, but hesitated to move in on them. That
remained for me, and now I began the unpleasant task that would
burden me for many years. For the good of the organization and the
salvation of jobs for the many, I must separate from our companies
many delightful people, men who, though warm personal friends,
just did not seem to have what it took to keep the wheels turning.
The task was heartbreaking but the penalties for shirking it were
inexorable. All one could do was try to perform his duty to the
company with utmost fairness and kindness, and without impairing
the morale of the individual or organization beyond the absolute
minimum. This was a job that needed doing all at once; it must not be
dragged. And so my first act at Sikorsky was to issue orders that the
manufacturing expense be reduced by 20 per cent, and forthwith. The
method of accomplishing this would be left to the local management.
That, however, did not work too well at Stratford. The cut in
manufacturing expense seemed to create not a single ripple; I soon
discovered why: engineering expense had suddenly skyrocketed. And
when I ordered it restored to its original level—I did not deem it
wise to cut back further for fear it might impair the engineering on
the Pan American project—the Sikorsky management “agreed with me 100
per cent” as they were wont to express it in their Russian slang.
But I soon found out why; the direct labor skyrocketed. Evidently
these Russian intellectuals, refugees from their own land, were so
versatile that they could play any position on the team—infield,
outfield, or umpire. The organization was like a balloon; you could
press your finger on one side and make a dent, but the other side
bulged out—and less obviously. And when I took my new organization to
task, they always “agreed with me 100 per cent,” and then proceeded
to do precisely as they jolly well pleased.
Meanwhile, we got on with the Pan American S-40’s, as they came
to be called, though this project proved to have more angles than
the Kohinoor diamond, and threatened to cost about as much. While
the specifications for the first Pan American Clippers had been
reviewed by Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, Pan American advisor, and
incorporated into the contract, they didn’t mean a thing. Before Pan
American would take delivery on the plane it must be passed by the
Department of Commerce and given an Approved Type Certificate as to
its airworthiness. Without this ATC, Sikorsky might be left with a
million dollars’ worth of airplanes and no market. Now Pan American,
our sole customer, used this advantage to insist on our incorporating
in the ships everything its own engineers or our prolific innovators
could dream up, from swivel-handled toilets to back-lighted card
tables. Thus our designs were kept in a state of continuous flux—at
company expense. Save for the redeeming qualities of Igor Ivanovich
Sikorsky himself, it is hard to imagine what might have become of us.
A man of strong convictions, for all his humbleness, he was a
brilliant engineer though never a “clever” one. Thoroughly grounded
in science and mathematics and accustomed to reason from fundamental
principles to valid conclusions, he possessed to an astonishing
degree those powers with which to divine a true course even when
the signposts were not clearly marked. This capacity he once called
“intuitive engineering” without for the moment ascribing that quality
of genius to himself.
Thanks to Igor Sikorsky’s personal leadership, we finally completed
delivery of the first three Pan American Clippers. While United
absorbed a heavy loss on them, none of this resulted from changes
made necessary by official ATC tests. Unlike other companies that
later suffered severe losses from this cause, Sikorsky always managed
to pass the tests in a remarkably short time, even though radical
design features were involved. As for Pan American, that company used
the airplanes to lug tons of mail, cargo, and passengers over the
high seas for many years. The ships paved the way for a later model
that disproved “Dick” Richardson’s formula, hurdled the last long
barrier, San Francisco to Hawaii, and pointed the way to overseas air
transport by land planes. It is not unlikely that Fred Rentschler’s
investment paid off in the long run, if not on the books of Sikorsky,
on those of Pratt and Whitney and Hamilton-Standard.
With the Clippers behind us, we now had the choice of two courses:
first, we could shut down Sikorsky and save further losses; or
second, we could reorganize it and try to exploit the genius of
Igor Sikorsky without prohibitive losses. There seemed no way
to anticipate earning a profit in the near future; whatever we
tried must be for the long pull. But one thing we had definitely
determined: it was too much to expect our friends, the Russian
refugees, to implement the American techniques of production. Not
that they could not understand them, for they did understand and
admire the extraordinary manifestation of applied science that went
under that banner. The problem was rather one of temperament or
national character.
It was not until the middle of World War II that I heard this thought
advanced by Charles A. Lindbergh, one of Mr. Sikorsky’s most devoted
friends and an ardent admirer. The conversation took place much
later, but before the war had involved this country. By that time I
had become president of United Aircraft, and had persuaded Lindbergh
to join our organization in the capacity of a personal advisor to me.
The conversation took place in our home in Hartford, on one of the
many stimulating evenings my wife and I were to enjoy with Lindbergh.
He had been outlining those views on the European situation which had
involved him in so much misunderstanding. Having been in Russia and
Germany and, like his father before him, having ardently hoped for
peace for his own country, he had feared that, in joining with Russia
to defeat Hitler, we would bring about those very things which have
since justified his concern.
He thought that nations, like people, displayed traits of fundamental
character that were distinct and unchanging. These had had hereditary
origins and had been influenced by environment. They influenced the
attitudes of nations toward specific circumstances and conditions
and especially tended to determine the attitude of a nation toward
war as an instrument of policy and to dictate the methods by which
it prosecuted a war. The character of the Russians and that of the
American people, he thought, differs as night differs from day.
Theirs had been a tradition of compulsion, ours of cooperation. If in
competition with them we tried to use their methods, we must prove
quite as inept as would they in trying to use ours. But if we had
the wit to exploit our own ideology to the limit, we must surely
overcome the inferior authoritarian process. He saw the problem in
its spiritual rather than material light.
Now if consideration of matters like this appears somewhat academic,
the fact remains that they were fundamental to our decision as to
what to do with Sikorsky. On the one hand, it was clear that in
trying to operate the plant we would assume heavy management burdens
with little hope of financial reward; on the other, it was certain
that there was a pearl in the Sikorsky oyster which, unless we dived
for it, would remain quite undiscovered. Our willingness to accept
the risk of further operations there must depend upon our confidence
in the collateral benefits. This, in turn, must be based entirely
upon the quality of leadership we ourselves could display. And so,
after much soul searching, we decided to gamble on our own abilities
to direct the genius of Igor Sikorsky so as to benefit the art, if
not to swell the treasury.
With this decision taken, we cut the organization back sharply to
the double handful of men Mr. Sikorsky himself deemed vital to his
success. These included, among others, the brothers Gluhareff,
Michael and Serge, Bob Lebensky, of the experimental shop, and Buivid
of the laboratory. With the organization set, I stated the problem
as that involving the creation of a large flying boat so designed
that, when operated on the Pan American system, it could earn its
board and keep. In other words, we must move the upper limit of the
Richardson formula as high as necessary to gain our objectives. As
one contribution to this project, we had the new Hamilton-Standard
controllable-pitch propeller, then under development; as another we
had a complementary development of Mr. Sikorsky’s, a new wing-flapped
airfoil. The propeller could pull more weight into the air and fly
it; the flaps could help it into the air and get it back on the water
at a reasonable stalling speed. This made the flying-boat hull the
controlling factor; its characteristics limited the load we could
drag into the air with our new wing and new propellers. To refine the
lines of the boat hull, our engineers now devised an inexpensive but
effective test rig; they towed a model hull alongside a speed boat
and photographed its action in rough or smooth water with slow-motion
cameras.
And while we pushed on with our concept of a wholly new design in
which we would accept no compromise that impaired the economy of
operation, we all sweated out the days and nights of tests and
experiments. But there was one critical item on which I did no
sweating. Had Mr. Sikorsky revealed to me the fact that the wing
loading he had selected would be too high to conform to the current
Department of Commerce requirements, and that he would have to sell
the Department a new concept of landing in a power stall before
he could get his ship accepted, I am sure I should not have had
the courage to risk all that money on his persuasive qualities. As
it was, he kept me in ignorance of the risk, assumed it wholly to
himself, and let me know about it only after he had made his sale.
The principle of high wing loadings, involving a new type of approach
and landing, is now so thoroughly accepted that few pilots know how
it came about. The principle is inherent in current air economics
and the limits have gone steadily upward. In 1927 I had solemnly
announced for the Design Section of BUAERO that we would not consider
wing loadings in excess of 10.5 pounds per square foot. Today, the
new Boeing Stratocruiser utilizes loadings eight times that high.
And so Igor Sikorsky built the famous S-42’s, forty-passenger flying
boats, designed to hop from New York to Bermuda to the Azores and to
Portugal on what was called the “stepping-stones” route to Europe.
So well did he design the planes that, when the British refused to
give Pan American landing rights at Bermuda because they had no
similar boat with which to match the service, Pan American turned
westward to the Pacific and used the new Clippers to pioneer the run
to Australia, the Philippines, and China. On this run the controlling
factor was the great distance to Honolulu, 2,400 miles against 1,900
miles from Bermuda to the Azores, but the Sikorsky boat hulls,
derived from model-towing tests, could take off nearly 20 per cent
more load than that originally contemplated. Thus they removed the
last barrier to overseas air commerce.
From the United point of view, while we made no money on the
transaction, and, accounting-wise, lost a hundred thousand dollars
on the ten ships, cash-wise we bore no out-of-pocket loss. And
while the project took a lot of nervous and physical energy out
of management, it paid dividends to the aviation art as a whole.
Meanwhile we kept our eyes open for a chance to work into some Army
or Navy business, though a number of important changes had taken
place.
First of all, shortly after President Roosevelt had been inaugurated,
Postmaster James Farley had canceled the air-mail contracts and
Senators Black and Nye had broken out in a rash of Congressional
investigations. These had upset the five-year procurement programs of
both Army and Navy and reacted adversely upon many manufacturers. For
a while, Admiral Moffett had held the fort, but then a great tragedy
had deprived aviation of one of its foremost figures at its time of
greatest need.
The admiral, continuing his absorption with the development of
lighter-than-air craft, had succeeded in building and operating the
_Macon_ and the _Akron_ and had established a new field near San
Jose, California, one that now carries his name. Here the _Macon_
carried out operations with the fleet until an unfortunate accident
resulted in her complete loss. The Old Man, still faithful to the
rigid airship, continued to fly in them himself until the night the
_Akron_ sailed out over the Atlantic and was destroyed. The admiral
was lost at sea along with other gallant airmen, close friends
and classmates of mine. The loss was disastrous enough from the
personal angle, for Admiral Moffett was loved and admired by all
his aeronautic organization to a degree seldom attained by any man.
Coming as it did at the time of greatest trial on the political
front, it deprived us of the one person who might have guided us
through our worst rocks and shoals. The admiral was buried at
Arlington along with so many of the young lads he had inspired. With
his passing, gloom settled over us all.
When Adm. E. J. King succeeded to command of BUAERO, he brought
to it a type of leadership quite different from that which had
characterized its thirteen years under Admiral Moffett. Admiral King,
who was one day to become Commander in Chief during World War II,
was a man of strong convictions who made his own decisions. With his
brilliant intellect and decisive manner, he dominated the Bureau
completely.
The cancellation of air-mail contracts set off a chain reaction that
disrupted the whole United Aircraft and Transport structure. To
comply with the law requiring separation of manufacturing companies
from transport organizations, United Airlines was split off into a
separate company known as United Airlines Transport Corporation. With
the transport link between the eastern and western manufacturing
groups thus disrupted, we divided them into two separate companies.
The four Connecticut companies, Pratt and Whitney, Hamilton-Standard,
Chance Vought, and Sikorsky, comprised the new United Aircraft
Corporation. The western group took the name of Boeing Airplane
Company.
In the reorganization, William E. Boeing severed all his aviation
connections. Frederick B. Rentschler resigned the presidency of
United. Phillip G. Johnson, deprived by law of his right to manage
the airlines, later moved to Canada to create the great Trans-Canada
Airlines. Donald L. Brown moved up from Pratt and Whitney to become
president of United Aircraft Corporation, and I became its senior
vice-president. Thus a Congressional investigation that proved no
wrongdoing deprived the country of the services of three outstanding
pioneers.
President Roosevelt had, meanwhile, appointed Admiral Reeves
Commander in Chief, United States Fleet. Having in mind the progress
of events in the Pacific, I had undertaken a study of a big boat
designed to scout its vast areas, using available harbors as bases of
operations. About the time the job was completed, the admiral invited
me to join him on the _California_, at Hampton Roads, to watch the
aircraft carriers in operation. Frank Wagner, his Operations officer,
met me at Old Point Comfort and the admiral himself greeted me at the
gangway. The bulkheads of his cabin had been papered with charts of
the Pacific, evidence enough of the Old Man’s absorption with that
problem. When, after lunch, he developed his estimate of the Pacific
situation and asked if I thought it possible to build a flying boat
capable of patrolling the area, I was able to produce from my brief
case exactly what the doctor had ordered. The hearty laugh with which
Bull Reeves greeted this legerdemain brought back memories of the
happy days of FLEET AIR.
Under pressure from the fleet, BUAERO, which at this time was
absorbed in carrier aircraft and about ready to wash up big boats,
invited bids on which Sikorsky won the award. As the designs
progressed, BUAERO developed increasing interest in the project and
finally authorized a second development by Consolidated Aircraft of
San Diego. In the competition for the production order, Sikorsky lost
out to Consolidated on price, but the Sikorsky design was selected
by the new transoceanic operator, American Export Airlines, for whom
we built three passenger ships. The American line, organized and
operated under the able leadership of John Slater, provided nonstop
flying-boat service from New York to Foynes, Ireland, and during
the war provided comfortable berths for many very important people
while many others of the same character shivered in bucket seats in
hastily improvised land-plane service via Newfoundland, Iceland, and
the Azores. In other words, Sikorsky flying boats showed the way to
transoceanic service and, at the moment, actually outperformed the
land plane.
However, even under such fair terms as those granted us by American
Export Airlines, we did not succeed in avoiding serious losses at
Sikorsky. Meanwhile, Pan American had turned to Martin and then
Boeing, and each of these able builders had suffered similarly. By
that time, too, the aircraft industry had suffered from the political
debacle in Washington. We had reached the end of our rope and could
no longer afford to contribute either our management or engineering
talents, let alone our slender capital, to the subsidization of
airline operations. We decided to drop out of the big-boat business.
And when I broke this sad news to Mr. Sikorsky—by then I had become
president of United Aircraft—he received it like the great gentleman
he is. He understood our problem; he was grateful for all the
consideration the company had given him. He wondered if perchance we
would grant him one more favor; he would like to go back to his first
love—experimenting with helicopters. He thought he might succeed now
where he had failed before. A modest sum of money would meet his
requirements and he hoped this was not asking too much.
Quite certain that no one could possibly build a successful
helicopter but that Mr. Sikorsky at least deserved a try, I
magnanimously agreed to back him. Igor Sikorsky did invent the
helicopter, just as the Wrights before him had invented the airplane,
by diligent study, by painstaking experiment, by teaching himself to
fly and then teaching others. In so doing, the man who had given the
world the means of vaulting the last barrier to air commerce went
to the other extreme to create the only vehicle that can operate in
three dimensions without a prepared surface from which to take off
or land. Aviation owes much to his creative mind, one that not only
finds no difficulty in reconciling science and religious faith, but
on the contrary, exercises that intuitive quality that marks real
genius.
The moral of this brief review of the history of a representative
airplane company is that profit has a counterpart in loss, and both
are essential to progress. Again, financial results are not the
sole measure of excellence; there is also the intangible factor
of stewardship. When the final account is cast up, Igor Ivanovich
Sikorsky will rank among the immortals of American aviation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Courage of Conviction
One of the important considerations that had influenced my decision
to resign from the Navy had been my desire to work on constructive
tasks with men whose competence I had admired. Among these were Fred
Rentschler, Bill Boeing, George Mead, Claire Egtvedt, George Wheat,
Don Brown, Phil Johnson, and Chance Vought. As fate dealt the cards,
however, the decade of 1930 saw the passing of Chance, George, and
Don, and of these, Chance was the first. During the summer of 1930,
after I had added Sikorsky to my responsibilities, Chance died of
septicemia, something which today would respond quickly to the new
drugs. With him, much of the sparkle went out of United Aircraft.
By the time I joined United, Chance had already come to realize that
his famous Corsair two-seater, which had done so well on battleship
catapults and carrier decks, had all but been outmoded by the passage
of time alone. And he was at a loss to know what to do about it,
and talked far into the night about that problem. His untimely
death relieved him of all necessity for further worry, but it also
handed the job to me. Worse still, the Vought company, like most
other aviation concerns, had always been a one-man show and there
were no more Chance Voughts standing around to be hired, even with
more jobless men around than the country had ever known. And so we
faced the task of creating a new organization—one of a type then new
to aviation—of developing some new product and of marketing it in
what was becoming a tough market indeed. In this job we pinned our
hopes on some of the old-timers in the Vought organization and on a
relative newcomer, Charles J. McCarthy.
“C.J.,” as we called him, to differentiate the airplane engineer from
“J.F.,” the financial wizard, had been in BUAERO in charge of the
new department called “Stress Analysis” at the time when I had been
chief of the Engine Section. It was C.J. who had flown to Norfolk
with me the day the Wright T-3 engine jumped out of a torpedo bomber
when the wooden propeller flew apart, and it had been out of that
experience that we decided to standardize on metal propellers. It
was curious how, in the aviation slipstream, we milled around, each
trying to add his little push to the effective forward thrust. For
Chance had offered C.J. a job in his company, and C.J. had accepted.
Now I began to look upon him as my second there, and between us we
decided to bring in a new chief engineer.
The newcomer was Rex Beisel, a man who had received good training
in the old school of Curtiss Airplane Company but had gone west to
create a new private airplane. The stock-market crash had made Rex
available and we now promptly scooped him up. We thought Rex a bit
opinionated, and expected to have to handle him roughly at times, but
we knew there was great capacity there. And in this we were right,
for Rex created a strong engineering organization as a substitute for
the genius of Chance Vought, and came ultimately to head the Vought
Division in his own right. The story of how this was done, like the
story of Hamilton-Standard, or Sikorsky, or Pratt and Whitney, or any
of the great independent outfits like Grumman, or Martin, or Douglas,
or Boeing, is worth a book in itself; but for our purposes here we
can sweep in only those high lights that seem to back light the
slipstream itself. And though the several stories run concurrently,
we are concerned more with events than with precise timing.
There was, however, one vital factor that influenced the performance
of every aircraft company, and in the end, imperiled the existence
of them all. For while the creative force of the Morrow Board policy
carried over beyond the 1929 stock-market crash, it did not survive
the ordeal of the New Deal. With the election of President Roosevelt
in 1932 and his advent into the White House in 1933, an earthquake
hit American aviation. When President Roosevelt ordered the
cancellation of the air-mail contracts and directed the Army to take
over, the young air-transport business suffered a vital blow. When,
after the deaths of several Army pilots who had had no preparation
for the complex transport task, the lines were returned to private
operations, the blight of Congressional investigation fell upon the
whole aircraft industry.
Senator Hugo Black, later a Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, who had been probing the ocean-mail subsidies, now
turned his attention to aviation. The airplane, long a subject of
great public interest, crowded the headlines with sensational charges
and countercharges, none of which seemed to lead anywhere other than
to the glorification of the investigators. Then Senator Gerald P.
Nye, not to be outdone in courtesy, dragged out the old myth of the
“munitions racketeer” and the “merchants of death” and dusted it off
for the more modern treatment of klieg lights and other technological
advances in the art of public relations. Whatever else may be said
for these hippodromes, they had the effect of knocking down an
airplane program just as a killer in the stockyards fells an ox with
one neat blow from a maul. Even though the programs remained on the
statute books, it would have required a courageous procurement staff,
indeed, to make contracts with such apparent renegades as headed the
unhappy aircraft companies.
The moment arrived when Chance Vought Aircraft was running out of
work. In order to extend the useful life of the old Corsair, we had
replaced the Wasp engine with a new Pratt and Whitney Hornet 1690.
This gave us a breathing spell while we assembled our engineering
team and dreamed up a new model. But BUAERO had now revived the old
two-seat fighter project and thrust it on us. Worse still, they had
designed the airplane themselves and now looked to us to detail it
and build the prototype. Recalling the old fight between FLEET AIR
and BUAERO on this subject, back when I had been Admiral Reeves’s
chief of staff, the whole thing had elements of poetic injustice
in it that now aroused me to action. I decided to build their old
two-seat fighter, according to all specifications, to exceed their
designed performances, and at the same time build the structure
strong enough to be used as a dive bomber. This would take a lot of
doing, for the performance guarantees were already high, but it would
leave us with two strings to our bow, a two-seat fighter that would
probably not go into production, and a two-seat dive bomber that
probably would. In the latter event, Vought would give the Navy a
distinctly new type of airplane, one that could depend upon its guns
to penetrate enemy fighter cover and then use its bombs on ground
targets.
One of the complications involved was the specification that called
for the installation of the new Pratt and Whitney two-row radial, the
R-1535. The two-row feature would have introduced excessive drag and
cooling difficulties, except that I chanced to read an article by C.
G. Grey in _The Airplane_, a British magazine devoted to aviation
and to running down everything American. Mr. Grey had recently
visited the great Bristol airplane factory and had been impressed
with a project for cooling air-cooled engines. Unlike certain foreign
engine builders who insisted on blowing large quantities of air in
the general direction of their cylinders, Bristol had devised an
ingenious contrivance through which they had succeeded in directing
a “mere trickle” of air at precisely the required spots, thus saving
much drag and improving the cooling no end.
After this tip-off, we set up a joint project using the Sikorsky wind
tunnel and staff, under the direction of Chance Vought engineers,
to develop a cowl for a Pratt and Whitney engine. Out of this
cooperative effort came a new power-plant installation using the
“cowl-flaps” which any passenger in any American transport can still
see by looking out the window at the engine nacelle and watching the
opening and closing of the “gills.” This development not only made
the two-row radial a success but proved so effective that it has been
rated by discerning observers as a development quite as revolutionary
in its way as was the controllable-angle propeller.
With the drying up of both military and commercial business in our
own country, we must needs look elsewhere or fade out. The export
market was the only outlet, and while there were obstacles there,
the superiority of our products, built up under the Morrow policy,
had put us in a strong competitive position. Even from the point of
view of costs and in the face of a preference on the part of some
countries for aircraft of their own production, we could still make
headway. American automobiles had won leadership in foreign markets
because of superior quality and lower price. The idea that we could
not compete with “slave labor” had been disproved; the technology
of production could support higher wages and still produce low-cost
goods of high quality. That was our heritage which we would now
exploit.
However, there were other considerations. The control of export
permits had been lodged in the State Department, which would not
grant such permit without the approval of the military department
concerned. In the case of the SBU-1 two-seat dive bomber we had first
to obtain permission from BUAERO and then run the gantlet of the
State Department and the office of a Mr. Joseph Green. This problem
came to the fore when the Argentine Navy sought to acquire some
of our planes. Admiral King ruled that since the airplane had the
characteristics of a dive bomber it was too secret to permit foreign
sale. Of course the only secret about it was that the wings had been
made strong enough to take the pull-out loads—something any designer
could build in—but that proved enough.
Chance Vought Aircraft now found itself in a tight spot. I camped on
the doorstep of the State Department, of BUAERO, and even went to see
Adm. William H. Standley, then Chief of Naval Operations, to urge
that the matter be viewed from the point of view of the long-term
public interest, keeping a vital industry alive and 800 men and women
employed. We already had millions on relief without swelling the
throng on a technicality, but I was too poor a salesman to make the
idea stick. In desperation, I tried another approach.
With my wife as company, I caught a Pan American Airways flight for
Buenos Aires, determined to close the contract and then see what
Uncle Sam had to say. If he wanted to accept the responsibility for
an overt act that would take the food from the mouths of our men, he
could do so, but I refused to hold the bag while they gave me the
run-around.
We were fortunate in our representation in Argentina. The firm
of Jorge Luro y Cia. brought us the experience of Jorge Luro, a
distinguished pioneer aviator, and the mature wisdom of Señor
Guillermo Leloir, member of an aristocratic Argentine family.
“We Latins,” Guillermo counseled me, in anticipation of direct
negotiations with Capt. Marco Zar, the director of Argentine naval
aviation, “admire your North American enterprise but resent your
high-pressure salesmanship.”
Marco Zar, a graduate of the Pensacola Naval Air Station, had come to
me one day in BUAERO, asking for advice on his procurement problems.
His current interest in Vought airplanes was due to his knowledge
that I managed the company. An earnest, conscientious officer, he
believed that a good deal for his service must needs be a fair deal
all around. My tactics during the negotiations were predicated on
this fact plus the advice from Guillermo.
Details of our contract were argued out before a large conference of
Captain Zar’s subordinate officers. The captain won every skirmish
pertaining to prices or specification, yet the final conclusions were
satisfactory to all concerned. When I returned to Hartford, I passed
the word around the shop that the kids could eat for another year,
provided Uncle Sam did not refuse us an export permit.
With work for the shop we could direct our attention to a new
development. It was already clear that biplanes were being outclassed
by monoplanes, but they had persisted longer on carriers because
of the space limitations imposed there. As a replacement for our
two-seat dive bomber, which could carry a 500-pound bomb, we drew
up a proposal to construct a folding-wing 500-pound monoplane dive
bomber so designed that a carrier could manage its full complement of
the new, faster type. The Bureau considered the proposal for a while,
and then, instead of giving us the advantage we deserved for having
conceived the idea, got out its own specification and published it to
the trade. Then they further complicated the problem by advertising
for two types, a 500- and a 1,000-pounder. We submitted proposals
for both, and were awarded the 500-pound model. Now in order not
to get left at the post in case BUAERO finally decided to buy only
1,000-pounders, we decided to build our ship to meet all the tight
specifications for the smaller size but still capable of carrying a
1,000-pound bomb.
The competition from other manufacturers was tough. Every airplane
was stressed to the ultimate and no margins were left for error.
After winning a design competition, a manufacturer had to submit an
article for test by the trial board at Anacostia. If he beat out
his competitors there and won a production award, then followed the
trials and tribulations of trying to build his brain child without
losing his shirt. Then, after the airplane got into service and
developed the unforeseen bugs that always show up regardless of
previous care, he had the added responsibility for correcting faults
on aircraft he might have donated to the government at a substantial
loss to himself. After that, all that remained was to dream up a new
model to replace the old, and in the meantime, keep service men in
the field to show untrained mechanics how to operate a complicated
contraption that was fully as high strung as the president of the
company that had built it.
After our new SB2U went into service, we shifted our attention back
to building a monoplane observation replacement for the battleship
and carrier-catapult planes, represented by our original Corsairs.
For so well had Chance Vought wrought that his little two-seaters,
conceived back there in 1926, remained in service until after Pearl
Harbor, some fifteen years later. Our replacement was called the
“Kingfisher” and it saw service in World War II. One of them saved
Eddy Rickenbacker from a watery grave on the vast Pacific, something
that alone compensated us for the painstaking design efforts we had
put into a complicated project.
Meanwhile, in the effort to find a product for export sale and,
possibly, break into an Army competition, we built a fighter under
circumstances so fantastic as almost to belie the telling. Jack
Northrup, who had built a sweet little single-seater for the Army,
using the Wright 1510 two-row engine, had won high praise from
the Army Engineering Division at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, in
competition with fighters by Curtiss and Seversky. But during
an interlude in the contest, after the plane had gone back to
California, it had sailed out over the broad Pacific and not
returned. There had been gossip at the time that the Japs might have
had something to do with it. At any rate, Jack Northrup had decided
not to reenter the Army competition, but Jack Horner, sales manager
of Pratt and Whitney, suggested that Vought take over the design from
Northrup, reconstruct the model around the Pratt and Whitney 1535
engine, and create an export fighter model for United Aircraft.
I conducted the negotiations with Jack Northrup over the telephone
and sent our men west by air. Starting with few drawings and no
materials, we rushed the airplane to completion in something like
forty-five days. During the work at East Hartford, the Connecticut
River overflowed its banks and cut off the electric power, but our
crews, working night and day, finished the little ship in the light
of their automobile headlights.
In the competition at Wright Field, which was based not on the actual
performance of the prototype but on what the contractor was willing
to guarantee in production, we lost out to Alex Seversky. When we
offered the airplane to the Navy, with arresting gear, we were unable
to arouse interest. While this put us in the clear for an export
permit, we failed to sell any of the craft, at least to countries
with cash to buy them. One day our European export representative,
Tom Hamilton, brought some Japanese officers to Hartford.
When the Jap pilot put the little fighter through its paces, we
looked at one another in wonderment. We had long understood that
these boys couldn’t learn to fly—they had myopic eyes. But whatever
else the Japs had, this pilot had everything; he didn’t put on
any dive-and-zoom noise show, but checked out the little airplane
especially as to its maneuverability at altitude, the characteristic
at which it excelled. And so with the full approval of Washington,
the plane, which had been rejected by both Army and Navy, was sold to
the Japanese.
Later on in the Pacific war, their fighter pilots proved quite
proficient in the air. Furthermore, their fleet fighters, the Zeros,
could give even our Grumman Wildcats plenty of trouble. Finally one
of their Zeros was captured and brought to San Diego where, after
passing severe tests by the guards, I was permitted to see it. It
was bigger than our Northrup-Vought and powered with a Japanese
two-row radial of about the size of our 1830. The engine was of
Japanese design but incorporated what the Japs considered to be the
best features of the French Gnome-Rhone radials, the British Bristol
Jupiter, the Wright Cyclone, and the Pratt and Whitney Wasp. And it
displayed beautiful workmanship throughout.
As for the airplane, it looked a good deal like the Northrup-Vought,
though it was larger and incorporated some of the best features of
other aircraft bought by the Japanese, as well as some neat wrinkles
of their own. The power-plant installation was distinctly Chance
Vought Aircraft, and the wheel stowage into the wing roots was
definitely Northrup. The wing-tip folding was Japanese, and it looked
like an idea we should have used. All in all, it was a masterful
example of good imitation—they even copied the Navy inspection stamp
from the Pratt and Whitney type parts—plus some good Jap innovation
which combined to make the product of an “inferior race” all too
devastating. As Admiral Reeves had been wont to remark, “One should
never discount an enemy.”
But while the Japs had been busy with their Zeros, we had not been
idle at Vought. I, for one, had not forgotten the lesson of Panama,
even though our Navy now seemed to have turned its back on the
fighter-bomber idea. Fighter pilots are inherently resentful of
any suggestion that they should know how to dive bomb as well as
dogfight. But the fact remains that, once they have driven an enemy
from the skies, neither they nor their ships are useful unless they
can turn a hand at attacking objectives on the ground. With this idea
in mind, we set out at Vought to build a new Corsair. She must be
able to out-perform enemy fighters and still be readily convertible
to a dive bomber; she must have the structural ruggedness and
strength to withstand the high stresses of this work. This meant, in
turn, that she must be larger than the pure fighter and to this end
she must have a more powerful engine. That is just another way of
expressing Bruce Leighton’s ancient adage about the power plant being
the heart of the airplane.
We had such an engine in the new Pratt and Whitney 2800. Originally
intended to develop from 1,800 to 2,000 horsepower, this engine was
later actually used at from 2,500 to 3,000 in World War II. Around
the new power plant we designed a new fighter bomber, and offered
it to BUAERO in anticipation of the war that seemed inevitable. But
BUAERO was cool to our proposal. Large airplanes could not be carried
on the flattops in the same numbers as could the smaller, more
compact fighters; number was an important factor in the complement of
a carrier. They were willing to let us go ahead on the project, but
they could not hold out much hope for ultimate production.
Now I took a long breath and embarked on the gamble of a lifetime.
We would commit Chance Vought to a new single-seat fighter, one with
such blazing speed and such fire power and such maneuverability that
it could blast any enemy from the skies, even though handicapped with
all the rigging that goes on a carrier fighter. We would build into
it such rugged strength that it could carry heavy bombs in a dive,
and still withstand the clumsiness of any horny-handed pilot who
might try to pull its tail off.
But in taking this kind of decision we were not alone. Out in
Seattle, Boeing had staked its future on the conviction of the Young
Turks of the Army that a long-range heavy bomber would one day become
the backbone of air power, no matter who said it would not. Farther
down the West Coast, Don Douglas risked everything on the future of
a new four-engined transport to be called the “DC-4” at a time when
the Army remained cold to all transport and the airlines were doing
very well, thank you, with the DC-3. Across the city, Bob Gross, at
Lockheed, took his chances with a new twin-engined liquid-cooled
fighter to be called the “Lightning,” at a time when the predominance
of opinion was against such craft. Nearby, Dutch Kindleberger of
North American, always crazy like a fox, dreamed up a single-seat
liquid-cooled fighter around the Rolls Royce Merlin engine, a fighter
which was to be called the “Mustang,” that would one day become
a long-range escort for bombers over Europe. Down at San Diego,
Reuben Fleet plugged along with flying boats and amphibians, long
after the smart money was all on carrier planes. His Consolidated’s
Catalinas would one day fight the world over for all our allies. And
down Baltimore way the Old Master, Glenn Martin, rode his own hobby
of light, fast bombers for ground attack at the very moment when
the “Young Turks” seemed about to prevail in their battle for heavy
bombardment. Out at Farmingdale, Long Island, the brilliant engineer
Kartveli was forging his Thunderbolts, intended as fighters but
destined for use in the invasion of Europe as the long-range fighter
bombers that broke Hermann Goering’s heart because he was sure we
couldn’t build such planes.
These are but a few of many that come readily to mind. The fact was,
no one could guess whom we would fight, to say nothing of how or
when. Without a foreign policy, we could shape no military policy,
and without a military policy who could guess what airplanes might be
called upon to do? But our saving grace lay in the fact that this was
a free country where any man might risk his money, or even his neck,
in backing his pet idea. When the chips were finally down, Uncle
Sam, who hadn’t killed his air craftsmen with kindness, found they
had supplied him with a wide variety of combat types from which to
choose, a variety that made it possible for him to go out and win. In
a postwar interview, Hermann Goering was reported to have said that
the one thing the Germans had envied us was our flexible system of
individual initiative and enterprise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Review of Some Fundamentals
During the protracted period when Hamilton-Standard, Sikorsky, and
Chance Vought found the going rough as they endeavored to create new
products that could be sold to a reluctant government, Pratt and
Whitney for a while made much smoother weather of it. The Wasp engine
had proved so outstanding that no other power plant had challenged
it, and in a field that offered the greatest volume. Subsequent
engines, while not outclassing all competition, as had the Wasp, won
a fair share of the market. As a matter of fact, it was Pratt and
Whitney that had provided most of the resources out of which the
other divisions had prosecuted their new developments. But now as the
year 1937 arrived, even the bellwether of our flock began to find the
pickings scarce.
For certain ones in the Army Air Corps still persisted in advocating
liquid cooling, and now, as they began occupying positions of
power, they pressed harder than ever, this despite the fact that
the brilliant performance of the air-cooled radials had all but
driven liquid-cooled in-line engines out of the country. In England,
however, where the Bristol air-cooled engines had not attained
to the same leadership as had the Pratt and Whitney and Wright
radials in America, Rolls Royce had done an outstanding job with
a racing-plane engine which they had later developed into a fine
pursuit engine. In Germany, where tremendous effort was being made
to rehabilitate aviation after the terms of the Treaty of Versailles
had been modified, Junkers had taken a license to build Pratt and
Whitney engines but, as usual, had not built power plants wholly
comparable with the original. Simultaneously B.M.W. had prosecuted
the development of their own liquid-cooled engines, a type in which
they had background and experience. These facts, plus some new
liquid-cooling developments, had encouraged certain men in the Army
to promote an American liquid-cooled program.
By using Ethylene Glycol, or Prestone as we know it in our
automobile antifreeze mixtures, many of the difficulties inherent
in liquid-cooling were ameliorated. The new “pressure-cooling”
systems became competitive with the “baffles” of the radials in so
far as weight and performance were concerned; they still retained
the old handicaps of leaky plumbing. In order to exploit this
progress, the Army Engineering Division at Wright Field had designed
a liquid-cooled, in-line engine of its own, and turned over the job
of building and testing it to the Allison Engineering Company, of
Indianapolis, Indiana.
Allison, skilled in automotive experimental work, especially
that associated with racing in the speedway, had built up a fine
reputation by undertaking highly experimental projects that, for
one reason or another, failed to appeal to companies interested in
production. Allison’s president, “Pop” Gilman, had done a lot of
Diesel development, and other clever experimental work for BUAERO
when I was chief of the Engine Section, and he had built up a highly
competent outfit. After completely redesigning the Wright Field
effort, Pop had gone ahead to make a fair engine out of the “Allison.”
In addition to their convictions that the United States should
develop a good liquid-cooled engine, some men in the Air Forces had
always believed that General Motors should become a factor in engine
production. Out of this conviction, the time came when General Motors
absorbed Allison and put its back into power-plant development.
This meant tough competition for the aircraft industry and while we
might, by dint of great effort, keep ourselves in the forefront of
technological progress, we could not, of course, match the limitless
financial resources of “the corporation.” With the head start we
already held in current engine types, we should more than hold our
own, but now with the cold hand of the long depression pressing down
on us, we found the new Army-G.M. alliance cold comfort indeed.
Meanwhile, the Army continued its pressure on Pratt and Whitney
and Wright Aeronautical, to force both companies to undertake
liquid-cooled engines of their own design. The fact that the two
types would not mix any better than oil and water, and that for us
to divert a portion of our limited energies to something we did not
believe in would impair the development of air cooling, seemed to
have no weight with a few liquid-cooled fanatics.
And now they dug up a new angle. It seemed that out in Santa Monica,
Don Douglas and his engineers were studying a new twin-engined
bomber and were leaning toward the idea that, in order to reduce
the drag and improve the air flow over the wings, the engines,
instead of being mounted outside in the cowls, should be completely
housed in the wings. To meet this requirement, the engine must be
flat, in the form of a pancake. Our own studies contemplated a
twenty-four-cylinder job, and such an arrangement demanded liquid
cooling. Under tremendous pressure from Wright Field, where, of
course, the purse strings were held, Pratt and Whitney reluctantly
agreed to go ahead. Similarly, Wright Aero accepted the inevitable.
This was the situation in the summer of 1937, when, with Chance
Vought Aircraft just beginning to round out into an effective team,
I was put out of commission by an automobile crack-up that took me
out of active service for several months. Coming home after dark in a
driving rain from a day of trout fishing at the East Haddam Fish and
Game Club, some thirty miles from Hartford, I was smacked so hard by
a speeding motorist that my new convertible was reduced to a heap of
junk. Only through kind providence was I spared the same fate.
Out of the hospital, I moved from Chance Vought over to the head
office at Pratt and Whitney, to undertake a new program. Here I set
up a small research department and, with a tight little organization,
began collecting all the facts and many fancies, with a view to
shaping a new course.
As the brains of this organization I selected John Lee of Vought. The
designer of the radical SB2U monoplane dive bomber, John had employed
his scientific mind to the company’s great practical advantage. He
would require at least a year to assemble a body of information
that might prove of value in approaching our problem. The time had
come for someone, free from administrative responsibilities, to
make a considered estimate of the new situation out of which policy
decisions might be reached. Of one thing we were sure: there is a
definite limit to the number of design projects any one engineering
department can handle. The sure way in which to break down even the
best organization is to overload it.
In order to get John Lee and his crew started on their study, I
set for them the task of making a coldblooded analysis of the
liquid-cooled air-cooled controversy. To this end they were to
design, from the ground up, a series of single-seat fighters, each
of which was to utilize each engine to best advantage. We were not
interested in proving a case for either engine, but in ascertaining
for ourselves, without prejudice, which engine was best suited to the
job. We chose the single-seat fighter because this was the type in
which the liquid-cooled appeared to best advantage. John Lee’s job
was to design a whole family of fighters, orthodox or unconventional,
and from this collection make a factual analysis that would resolve
our problem for us.
Meanwhile I would make the grand tour of the industry, calling on
everyone who might have an idea or an opinion to contribute to our
study. Out of such a tour we might gather a few valuable ideas, and
hopefully indicate to our customers our own deep interest in their
problems. I would approach the matter with an open mind, collect
detailed notes of my interviews, and assemble them in such form as
would best indicate the thinking of the whole industry on our problem.
And so, while John Lee assembled a handful of selected assistants,
I set out on my tour. At Bethpage, Long Island, I interviewed Roy
Grumman and Jake Schwoble and visited their shops. Roy, the president
of the company, was also its leading engineer—then a rather common
situation in aviation—while Jake, a hard-hitting shopman, was more or
less the business manager. Here was a competent pair surrounded by an
able team, doing a smart job, as we in Vought so well knew through
competing with them.
At Seversky’s (now Republic’s) plant at Farmingdale, Long Island,
I was impressed by the sharp contrast between the two Russians,
Seversky and Sikorsky. Both were White Russian refugees, both had
left their native land, where they were no longer welcome even to
live, much less create airplanes, and both had found in free America
a climate under which they could employ their talents. Alex P. de
Seversky, ably supported by clever engineers led by Kartveli, was a
power in the fighter field and, as an ardent advocate of air-cooled
engines, had backed Pratt and Whitney exclusively.
On arrival at the Naval Aircraft Factory, Philadelphia, I found
many old friends and associates of my days in BUAERO. The factory,
in compliance with some legislation that required them to produce a
certain percentage of all production, as a so-called “yardstick to
private industry,” had undertaken to manufacture Wright Whirlwind
engines under license. The management had little sympathy with
the idea—any such yardstick must be a rubber one—and what with
interferences by local politicos and the usual complications inherent
in government manufacture, the project had bogged down.
At Glenn L. Martin’s plant down near Baltimore, I had a good visit
with the old-timer sometimes described as “the dean of the airplane
industry.” A conservative when it came to design, Glenn had pioneered
in volume production processes, and on the financial side had taken
numerous risks that proved intelligent. And for all his ups and
downs, he had lost none of his zeal for commercial aviation, even
though he had lost his shirt as had Sikorsky and Boeing, building
Clippers for Pan American Airways.
A visit to BUAERO brought recollections of exciting days under
Admiral Moffett and emphasized his inimitable qualities. By now the
Engine Section, having lost its sense of direction, had begun to
waver in the air-cooled versus liquid-cooled conflict, and no longer
wielded its old influence.
From Washington’s hazy atmosphere I moved out to the clearer skies
of the Pacific Northwest. At Boeing, Claire Egtvedt, though reduced
by indifferent health to acting in an advisory capacity, still kept
his unimpaired view of the fundamentals of aviation. His orderly,
considered estimate of the engine problem was more than worth the
trip west; besides, it was stimulating to yarn about the good old
days.
Phil Johnson’s departure from Boeing had left a big vacuum. Having
been banished from the American transport scene, he had undertaken to
create his newest masterpiece, Trans-Canada Airlines. Phil had once
told me a story about how he had got his first job with Boeing. While
still a student in aeronautics at the University of Washington, he
had chanced to be alone in the office of the head of the department
at the moment when Bill Boeing had called on the telephone to inquire
the name of a likely student to fill a job in his new factory. Phil,
answering the ring, had promptly replied, “P. G. Johnson!”
Proud of his Scandinavian origin, he delighted in springing a pet
question, “What is dumber than a dumb Swede?” His answer, “A smart
Irishman.”
Down in Los Angeles, where a big segment of the airplane business,
attracted by the physical and economic climate, had set up shop,
I found Don Douglas at his old stand in Santa Monica, Dutch
Kindleberger in a new shop at Inglewood, Jack Northrup in a new
establishment at Hawthorne, and Bob Gross at our old flying field at
Burbank. These men, though competitive and individualistic, and as
different one from the other as night from day, were all animated by
the same enthusiasm for aviation and zeal for its advancement.
Don Douglas, conservative as to design, skillful in production,
long on timing, and alert as to customer service, had done one of
aviation’s outstanding jobs. His company, like the others, remained
pretty much a one-man show, managed by engineers with good judgment
and a limitless capacity for work. Don’s was a well-balanced show,
founded on sound character, far-sighted vision, and Scotch thrift.
“Dutch” Kindleberger, of North American, a journeyman engineer
specializing in military aircraft, delighted in personally contriving
ingenious labor-saving devices. A salty citizen, he once summed
up the case for the airplane, “There never has been an airplane
designed and built that wasn’t full of bugs. And you can’t delouse an
airplane with insecticide. Instead you pick them out the hard way,
like hunting fleas on a woolly dog, and when you finally get the one
that is making his nose twitch, it is probably biting him under the
tail!”
“Dutch,” to my shocked surprise, had shifted his allegiance to
liquid-cooled engines and was even then mocking up a new power plant
installation that threatened serious competition for Pratt and
Whitney. However, I remembered that Dutch knew how to give a customer
what he wanted, and the Army was his principal customer.
Bob Gross, who had bought Lockheed for a song, had succeeded in
giving Don Douglas real competition in air transports. While tending
to depreciate his own efforts, he managed an aggressive outfit that
placed a high premium on speed. Jack Northrup, having launched a new
company, was bubbling with enthusiasm for his newest project, a big
bomber designed along the lines of his earlier flying-wing. Always
unorthodox, yet extremely practical, he was most helpful to me with
my problem.
Following my Los Angeles visit, I flew down to San Diego to look up
Reuben Fleet of Consolidated Aircraft, an enterpriser who had lost
none of his enthusiasm for, and skill at, making an honest dollar. By
this time the Navy had become San Diego’s major industry and FLEET
AIR filled the skies with formations of carrier aircraft.
Out of this tour around the country, I not only collected every
man’s point of view as to power plants, but got an interesting
cross-section of the industry as a whole. One-man shows for the most
part, they were managed by engineer executives, a combination hard
to beat when manufacturing was involved. In contrast with the rather
studied approach we had in United, they were bold and forthright.
Averaging then somewhat under forty-five years of age, they
compressed into brief business careers the whole history of aviation.
In a brief span of two decades, they had created a whole new
technology, and this had been accomplished in the face of many
vicissitudes. Through doing business largely with a few customers
like the government or the airlines, they had developed an outlook
quite at variance with that of industries dealing with large numbers
of individual customers. As an important segment of the national
security, it was natural that they should look upon their profession
more as a public service, and thus develop an appreciation of public
relations. At a time when new enterprises had been almost interdicted
by the unfavorable economic climate and they had been singled out for
attack, they had still gone on, with youthful self-reliance, with
rugged independence, and a competitive spirit, to exploit the freedom
of their homeland and create a new art.
And out of my swing around the circuit, I reached clear conclusions
with respect to my own problem, aircraft power plants. I had heard
nothing to shake my convictions as to the superiority of air-cooled
radials. On the contrary, I had heard much to confirm them. If the
Air Corps still wanted a source of supply for liquid-cooled engines,
they should look elsewhere than Hartford. Furthermore, even if Pratt
and Whitney could create the world’s best liquid-cooled engine
as well as the best air-cooled, it would do little good. The two
required different tools, different production processes, in fact
separate factories, and we already had our hands full with our own
job.
This added up to the fact that in trying to do both jobs we were
compromising our ability to discharge our responsibility with respect
to air-cooling. We must get back on the beam at the first favorable
opportunity and devote our resources to continuing to build the best
air-cooled engines in the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A Yankee Peddler
In the spring of 1938, Tom Hamilton, our United Aircraft
representative in Europe, came home on one of his periodic visits,
to bring himself up to date on new products and to let us in on the
low-down in his territory. Ordinarily a buoyant optimist, Tom was
much depressed by the developments in Germany. Adolf Hitler had got
him down.
Tom had first taken over the European territory at my suggestion
back in the early ’thirties. His aviation interests had always been
predominantly commercial. While he had built propellers for both Army
and Navy at his Hamilton Aero Manufacturing Company, in Milwaukee,
he had built only commercial aircraft at his other establishment,
the Hamilton Metalplane Company, of the same place. His “Hamilton
Metalplane,” a high-wing metal monoplane with a single Pratt and
Whitney Hornet engine, had been used extensively by Canadian bush
flyers and The Isthmian Airways had operated them with signal success
across the Isthmus of Panama. This plane, according to Tom, had been
the prototype from which the Ford Trimotor had evolved.
At the time Tom had first gone abroad there appeared little
likelihood of any real business for United in Europe. European
aircraft were considered by Europeans to be vastly superior to the
American, and their strong nationalism caused them to prefer to buy
at home in support of their own industries. But there was one item in
which we had attained leadership—metal aircraft propellers—and even
though we might not sell the articles themselves, I thought we might
dispose of the right to manufacture under our foreign patents for a
good price. The money would come in handy in the development of the
controllable-pitch propeller.
Tom had therefore gone abroad as a direct representative of the three
companies under my management, Hamilton-Standard, Sikorsky Aviation,
and Chance Vought Aircraft. Vought, of course, had nothing to offer
at the moment. Upon arrival in Europe, Tom set up headquarters in
Paris and laid the groundwork for his business. As a Yankee peddler,
Tom displayed all the initiative and enterprise that characterized
the American in a foreign land, but combined it with a rare knack
of adapting himself to the customs of the country. In character and
outward appearance he became quite continental. He set himself up
in the George V Hotel in Paris, showed an aptitude for meeting and
impressing the right people, and gave to his business entertainment
the personal touch of a naturally warm-hearted individual. He exuded
the confidence in American products that derived from deep conviction
born of intimate knowledge of aircraft production and aeronautical
engineering, and undertook the apparently hopeless task of
penetrating the European market because he was certain that American
production techniques could compete against European cheap hand
labor. He had seen the automotive industry succeed in penetrating
foreign trade barriers to the benefit of both American industry and
American labor, and was confident American aviation could duplicate
the feat.
He had not done too well with our propeller license—it took Raycroft
Walsh and the controllable-pitch propeller to turn that trick—and
when Fred Rentschler visited Europe after a year or so, Tom had
to put on his best selling vest to keep Fred from closing out the
office. Tom finally won out by suggesting that he give up his salary
and continue on a commission basis.
In the interim between the long Armistice and Hitler’s renewal of
the World War, commercial air transport flourished on the Continent.
International competition was reminiscent of the earlier struggle
for control of the sea; one nation relied on private initiative, the
other sought to capitalize air commerce through government ownership.
Earlier in the struggle for sea power, Britain had defeated France
through private enterprise. France, under the brilliant Colbert,
had staked everything on government support of monopolistic trade
associations or guilds. When, finally, Colbert had called in the
industrialists to ask what more he might do to help them, they had
responded in unison, “_Laissez nous faire!_” (Leave us alone).
But now Britain, having concentrated authority over civil air
transport in a separate ministry wholly dominated by an air force
steeped in the Douhet doctrine, had abandoned private enterprise,
and, following the drift toward state ownership, had put commercial
aviation under government control. The effect of this had been
clearly set forth in the so-called “Cadman Report,” the Report of the
British Committee of Inquiry into Civil Aviation, published in March,
1938, which stated unequivocally that, except on Empire routes, that
country was backward in civil air transport.
This statement, of course, took cognizance of the rapid progress in
America where, following the development of the air-cooled engine,
the controllable-pitch propeller, the Boeing and Douglas transports,
the Sikorsky boats, and Lindbergh’s epic flight, commercial aviation
had flourished. These products now became Tom Hamilton’s stock in
trade and he peddled them most successfully to independent customers
whose decisions were dictated by economic considerations rather than
those of national prestige.
When Tom visited Hartford, we often gathered at the close of a
business day before the fireplace in our basement recreation
room. Its walls were hung with Indian curios and colored prints
of Indian warriors, while the corner posts of the fireplace nook
boasted accurate replicas of Alaskan totem poles carved under Tom’s
supervision and decorated by him. Both of us having been raised in
the Pacific Northwest, at a time when pioneers still lived to recount
tales of their many enterprises, we had absorbed some of their spirit.
The curious turn of events in England, where the most enterprising
nation of modern times seemed to have fallen on evil days, came in
for much discussion. Tom had accumulated a number of ideas while
traveling abroad. For one thing, England, having acquired great
wealth, seemed bent on holding onto it, preferably without having
to work. Her desire for economic security reflected a human trait
that accompanies maturity. Her government, always responsive to
business influence, had gradually abandoned free trade in exchange
for monopolies and cartels. Meanwhile business had exploited labor
as a commodity, a fact disclosed by the character of her industrial
cities. The High Street led upwind by way of wide avenues to
cultivated gardens; the crooked lane to the workers’ cottages wound
past bleak habitations blackened by factory smoke. Ultimately, labor
in revolt had replaced the business monopoly with one of its own.
Labor leaders, having acquired power, became its prisoners. Unless
they wielded their power for the material benefit of the workers they
represented, someone else would either force them to action or grab
their jobs. In time these labor monopolists would feel the force of
government in the form of a dictatorship or government monopoly. With
the nationalization of industry, initiative and enterprise were sure
to be stifled; all incentive would be lost. Tom had witnessed this in
France without dreaming it could spread to England. With the vital
spark extinguished, the body politic must decay. It always had. Yet
while watching the creeping paralysis in England, Tom observed that
certain nations continued to exercise their initiative.
In Holland, for instance, where the Dutch, though defeated by the
English fleet, had gone on to expand ocean commerce to create an
empire in the Indies, the perception of their statesmen and merchants
had suffered no obscuration. As far back as October 7, 1918, a month
before the Armistice, the Dutch had pioneered with what was to become
the world-famous K.L.M. and K.N.I.L.M., outstanding services on the
continent of Europe extending to the Dutch East and West Indies. The
Scandinavian countries, which behind the sure shield of the Grand
Fleet had expanded their sea power, now linked their homeland with
the rest of the Continent and with London, and made plans for their
forthcoming service to the Americas. In Norway, Bernt Balchen, the
well-known explorer, tied the efforts in with American products; in
Sweden, Aktiebolaget Aerotransport standardized on American aircraft
like the Douglas DC-3.
Similarly, the Belgians, always an enterprising people, covered
Europe and reached out for the Congo with their “Sabena.” In Italy,
the tendency was to use domestic types like the Savoia-Marchettis,
but the Italians purchased technical information and took licenses
to build American products. In Poland, the Polish Airlines “LOT”
operated an extensive service using American equipment. A Jugoslav
service covered the capitals of Europe. Finland connected Helsinki
with Berlin.
The Germans, after getting the restrictions of the Versailles
Treaty lifted, moved rapidly to make up lost ground. Junkers
began to manufacture its version of the Boeing 247, and Bavarian
Motoren Werke, builders of one of the best in-line liquid-cooled
engines extant, took a license to manufacture the Pratt and Whitney
Hornet. Junkers took a license to manufacture the Hamilton-Standard
propeller, but later abandoned it in favor of their own “V.D.M.” The
German Lufthansa, equipped with aircraft derived from the American
technologies, spread over Europe and reached out to the far comers of
the world, like South America.
In France, which we now recognize as a casualty of World War I, the
world’s strongest air force was dissipated by storing war surplus
aircraft and neglecting a living industry. In fact, the French
industry, suffering from subversive activities, declined to the point
where the government could conveniently nationalize it and, to all
intents and purposes, strangle it. French air transport suffered from
the internal dissensions which were rife at the time, but Air France
attempted to write its name in history with aircraft predominantly of
American conception.
In England, even the Empire routes suffered in competition with
American aircraft. Thus when Pan American was ready to initiate the
Bermuda-Azores-Lisbon transatlantic service, with the new Sikorsky
S-42 Clippers, the British delayed granting landing rights in
Bermuda to Pan American until they could build a plane of their own,
undertaken after Mr. Sikorsky had read a paper before the Royal
Aeronautical Society outlining the novel features in his design
and setting down its measured performance. During this delay, Pan
American shifted its attention to the far Pacific and, using the same
Sikorsky Clippers, pioneered the air route to Hawaii and the Orient.
The activity associated with the growth of world air transport
provided Tom with just the opportunity he had foreseen. Furthermore,
after the American air-mail contracts had been canceled and the
American long-term program had broken down, the business Tom had
brought to United enabled us to keep our heads above water. Revenue
from the sale of technical information provided us with funds with
which to keep in the forefront of technological progress. And though
we did not realize it, that morning when Tom came home from Europe,
his efforts would later provide the sustenance which would save Pratt
and Whitney and its organization for a decisive contribution to the
coming World War II. It was the war clouds from the cold front in
Europe that depressed Tom’s buoyant spirit.
“This man Hitler,” he said, “is the world’s evil genius.” We were
sitting in my office in East Hartford trying to plan our moves in a
game of blind-man’s buff.
“You people over here,” Tom went on, “tend to discount him because
he wears a Charlie Chaplin moustache. But, believe me, he is no
tramp. He knows Germans like a book and gives them just the sort of
leadership they eat up. It reminds you of the old picture of the
donkey with a carrot in front of him and a lash behind him. Hitler
knows how to hold out the carrot with one hand and pop the whip with
the other.”
Tom went on to muse about the curious way thoughts took wing. Here
was a former corporal of the Landswehr who had dreamed up a screwy
idea and by force of his own conviction had sold it to the German
people. Similarly, Lenin had generated an idea and, through sheer
fanaticism, had come up from the dregs to impose a new tyranny on
a people who had never known much else. Worse still, the cockeyed
idea had spread into other lands in the short two decades since
the Armistice from a war to make the world safe from such things.
In Italy, it was Mussolini; in Japan, Hirohito. Here were four men
on horseback, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and no one was
doing anything about a counterattack with a better idea. One was
ready at hand in the Christian faith, but subversive influences
had persuaded Christians that it was unsophisticated even to talk
about it. Protestants were so busy attacking Catholics that they
were unwittingly led into an attitude toward communism which, if not
sympathy, is at least not outspoken opposition.
Meanwhile at home we buried our heads in the sand. Unable to conceive
such an idea as attacking others, we persuaded ourselves that some
miracle would protect us. Our only means of counterattack was to
pass a law against war and the current nostrum went under the title
of “Arms Embargo Act.” It had its origin in the ancient myth of the
war profiteer, an old wives’ tale founded on the idea that greedy
munition racketeers in search of profits had fomented World War I.
Its approach to keeping the peace was to prohibit the sale of arms to
all belligerents. But, as Tom pointed out, it wouldn’t work out that
way.
To date it had served as a good excuse for French bureaucrats to
oppose the purchase of arms in the United States, on the grounds
that delivery could be cut off by Hitler; all that was necessary
was to declare war on France and convert her into a belligerent.
The Act thus became an invitation to Hitler to make war whenever it
suited his convenience. The Germans and Italians needed no American
help; they had made themselves self-sufficient. From the moment the
air-mail cancellations had thrown a rough lock on our own aviation
program, they had seized upon the opportunity to expand their own air
power as a new weapon with which the have nots could take what they
wanted from the haves. Hitler had made no bones about it; such Nazis
as Goering, Milch, and Udet bragged about their prowess to every
American who visited Germany.
Among these, Charles A. Lindbergh had sought to sound a note of
warning when he said to a Nazi assembly in Flyers-House in Berlin in
July, 1936,
Unlike the builder of the dugout canoe, we have lived to see our
harmless wings of fabric turned into carriers of destruction
even more dangerous than battleships and guns. We have lived to
carry on our shoulders the responsibility for the results of
our experiments which, in other fields, have passed to future
generations.
We in aviation carry a heavy responsibility on our shoulders, for
while we have been drawing the world closer together in peace, we
have stripped the armor of every nation in war. It is no longer
possible to defend the heart of a country with its army. Armies can
no more stop an air attack than a suit of mail can stop a rifle
bullet. Aviation has, I believe, created the most fundamental
changes ever made in war. It has turned defense into attack. We
can no longer protect our families with an army. Our libraries,
our museums—every institution which we value most, is laid bare to
bombardment.
Aviation has brought a revolutionary change to a world already
staggering from changes. It is our responsibility to make sure that
doing so, we do not destroy the very things we wish to protect.
Reports as to German preparations by Lindbergh and numerous other
competent observers had been discounted at home. A naval air attaché
at Berlin had been threatened with orders home and accused of being
pro-Nazi because he had made a factual report of German preparations.
And at the very moment when Tom could arouse no interest in France or
England looking to utilization of American products, the Italians,
the Germans, the Japanese, and the Russians had come knocking at
his door. At the time it was difficult to be selective. As the Four
Horsemen jockeyed for advantage in the race for world dominion, no
one knew who would be on our side. As it ultimately turned out, all
four were against us at one time, what with the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
axis supported by the Russian nonaggression pact. But United Aircraft
did draw the line in one situation; we quoted such high prices for
our technical assistance that the Russians refused to buy from us.
We knew, of course, that this did not prevent their getting whatever
they wanted but at least we kept them out of our plants.
Tom, having long resided in France, had a strong attachment to the
country and its people. Now with Hitler arming, he redoubled his
efforts to interest the French Air Ministry in an arrangement which
would place our facilities at their command in the emergency. After
much delay he had finally succeeded in persuading them to test our
engines in their laboratories with a view to “homologuing” them and
clearing the way for later purchase, if desired. The engines had met
all demands and had even got by in spite of some sand and glass which
somehow always tended to get into the test engines.
Moving as Tom did in military and diplomatic circles, he had
acquired an unusual outlook on the European situation. Yet he had
not, as yet, been able to forecast the final line-up. Nazism and
communism, though similar under the skin, were natural enemies. If
British diplomacy, bent on maintaining the old balance of power on
the Continent, could involve Russia and Germany, she might win a
respite for western Europe. But if Russian diplomacy could bring
Moscow into the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis, at least temporarily, Hitler
would have a free hand with western Europe—where fifth columns had
already penetrated—and might dominate British sea power with an air
force based on shore and operating from interior lines. Meanwhile
our natural friends abroad scorned our products even as our enemies
scrambled to buy our technology.
And so the Yankee Peddler who had set out to advance the new art
of air transport, and in so doing expand world trade and promote
prosperity, suddenly found himself in the cloak-and-dagger business.
The war, he knew, would set air transport back at least ten years to
say nothing of incalculable damage in every other aspect of life. We
were caught in a net spun out of the idea first suggested by General
Jiulio Douhet and later endorsed by other fanatics. And all the while
the biggest idea in human existence, the doctrine according to Jesus
Christ, lay fallow for lack of ardent advocates.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A Chill Sets In
Don Brown, our president, who had been in ill health for some time,
was now unable to give personal attention to the multitude of
matters, and it fell to me to try to get some coordinated action
on industry problems. Any sort of joint action by our Aeronautical
Chamber of Commerce had long ago been proved impossible, first
because joint action called for unanimous consent and no two of our
bully boys in the industry could agree on anything. Of course on rare
occasions we reached an agreement, and such an occasion developed one
day in the office of the Assistant Secretary of War.
Out of the confusion and extravagance incident to the last war,
Congress had passed the Army Reorganization Act of 1921, under
which responsibility for production planning and mobilization had
been lodged in the Assistant Secretary of War. That office had been
collecting an array of card indexes which purported to assign some
sort of role for mobilization to each manufacturer. After some twenty
years of this, the Assistant Secretary, then Mr. Louis Johnson,
having decided to take a look at his handiwork, had summoned the
aircraft industry. The conference was called to order by General
Westover, then Chief of the Air Corps, who was supported by “Hap”
Arnold, Assistant Chief, and by Colonel Burns, from the Office of the
Assistant Secretary of War.
General Westover stated the situation: the Army would like to have
our estimate of the effectiveness of their war plans effort. If,
after looking the situation over, we gave general approval, they
would ask us to remain over another day to suggest improvements.
They wanted our frank opinion of progress. General Westover then
introduced General Arnold, who conducted the inquiry.
Hap Arnold was a favorite with the industry. Forthright, courageous,
and decisive, he had supported Billy Mitchell at a time when less
able men would have taken the easier course. Along with a handful
of similarly able men like Hugh Knerr, a classmate of mine and rifle
teammate who had transferred to the Army, Louis Brereton, also a
Naval Academy graduate, Frank Andrews, Carl Spaatz, Jimmy Doolittle,
and others, Hap had preached the air-force doctrine in fair and foul
weather. Now he grinned at us across the table.
“Well,” he inquired, “who wants to drop the opening bomb?” From the
back of the room the salty voice of Dutch Kindleberger resounded.
“If you ask me,” he volunteered, “I think you’ve had twenty years of
hogwash.” There was a murmur of surprise.
“From time to time,” Dutch went on, “you send your bright young
men to ask us the same question: ‘how many airplanes can you
manufacture X days after M Day?’ And when I counter that question
with another—‘what kind of airplanes?’—your young men don’t have the
answer.” As Dutch finished, Glenn Martin put in his oar.
“I agree with Dutch,” he began, as a titter greeted the idea that
these two might agree on anything.
“You expect us to give you a war plan,” Glenn went on, “before you
have answered the question; and furthermore, you expect us to give
you something worthwhile at no cost. According to my estimate,” Glenn
continued, “it would cost at least ten thousand dollars for us to get
up anything useful, and you apparently expect us to advance it out of
profits. It can’t be done.” As Glenn finished, Hap glanced my way.
My experience with Army was more limited than that of the others. In
Hamilton-Standard, Ray Walsh had handled Army business. In Sikorsky
and Vought, the dealings had been mostly with Navy. In Pratt and
Whitney, “Tilly” Tillinghast, himself a former Army pilot and a
favorite with all, had handled Army contacts. However, there were
some fundamentals that seemed to apply to both.
“I agree with Dutch and Glenn,” I began, adding to the unusual flurry
of interindustry agreement, “and I’ll go a step farther. For a real
test of your war plan, I suggest that you start a staff exercise on
mobilization and watch what happens.” Hap Arnold flashed me that
quizzical Army expression that wonders how any good could come out of
the Navy. I went on to explain.
My own experience in naval operations had shown me that in a dress
rehearsal it is seldom the high private in the rear rank who
falls down. More likely, it’s the green second lieutenant in the
file closers who gets tangled up in his sword. He’s been so busy
drilling others, he’s forgotten to read his own book. You have
to put machinery into operation to find out where it creaks the
loudest. In this case, if the Secretaries of War and Navy would
order mobilization for drill purposes by designating a certain day
as M Day, Headquarters could then announce the types of airplanes it
wanted to put into production and the number of each it required, and
then procurement officers could go ahead with drill purchase orders,
and the contractors could place orders to suppliers, and so on. About
here I noticed a flicker in Hap’s steely eye.
“I guess Dutch and Glenn are right,” he said with a wry grin. “Hell,”
he went on, “I can’t begin to tell you today what airplanes we would
want to buy, let alone how many. I don’t even know who we expect to
fight, nor when, nor where.”
From here on the conference moved rapidly to the crystallization of
an idea. Since time is of the essence in mobilization, one way to
save time was to build the mobilization plan into current purchasing.
When the government placed an order for a certain type of equipment,
it could include in the original contract an item calling out a
detailed war plan to be paid for under the contract. Such a war
plan would include options for war quantities and the contractor
would place stand-by orders with his own suppliers for the amounts
of materials of all kinds required to fill the options. He and his
suppliers would go ahead with architects’ plans, drawings, and
all other paper work incident to creating the expanded facilities
required by the options, the idea being to get all contract paper
work done, even to the determination of critical materials and
priorities. Then, upon a signal of execution designating an option,
the machine could start operating, without all the preliminary
delays, and still leave the procurement agency free to make its
decisions at the last minute.
Hap Arnold listened to the discussion. “Well,” he remarked, “I see we
won’t need that second day for this conference.” With that he called
in General Westover and Colonel Burns, to whom the general plan was
explained. General Westover closed the conference with the statement
that he intended to get some such plan in operation, if it was the
last thing he did.
But of course, with things as they were, neither he nor anyone else
could put such an idea into operation. With the outbreak of the war,
responsibility for mobilization was shifted out of the Assistant
Secretary’s office and into a new and independent agency, which
started as the National Defense Advisory Committee and changed its
name, at intervals, to the end of the emergency.
Meanwhile, when I got back to Hartford and reported the experience to
Don Brown, Don sat a long while looking out the window, across acres
that had once been peaceful tobacco fields.
“Well, Skipper,” he said finally, “it looks as though you had sold
United Aircraft something, whether the Army buys it or not. We’ll
start building our own war-plans organization and get it ready for
trouble.” After our estimates of the cost of such a program had come
in, we discovered that they totaled just $10,000 per year, the figure
Glenn Martin had mentioned down in Washington, but, like Glenn, we
had no idea where the money was to come from.
In anticipation of the gradual drying up of government business and
with a view to trying to get funds from Congress to help tide us over
slack periods, Don Brown had outlined his situation to BUAERO and the
Army Air Corps. As a result of efforts by the Armed Forces, Congress
had appropriated funds for new engines to be ordered from Pratt and
Whitney. It had seemed to us at the time that, with war imminent,
the administration might have made better use of relief funds than
raking leaves. As a matter of fact, a good deal of relief money was
being invested in air fields and armament, but the program was not
coordinated; Mr. Ickes and Mr. Hopkins differed as to who was boss.
The idea prevailed that peace could be had by just wishing for it.
To have spent money for arms, or even to have directed it into the
business stream so as to keep the production machine at a high level,
would, at that time, have been considered unmoral. On the other hand,
spending money wastefully for made work seemed to meet with public
approval. The bald fact remained, however, that with war but a few
months away, Pratt and Whitney Aircraft, one of the two dependable
sources of proved aircraft engines, faced a shutdown, and with it,
dispersal of an organization which could never have been reassembled.
To our relief, however, Congress appropriated funds, and the Army
notified Pratt and Whitney that it might proceed with the procurement
of materials and the production of engines in advance of the formal
contract, with the idea of utilizing the allotment to best advantage
from the point of view of readiness for emergency. Then, sometime
after we had swung into our program, the Air Corps, to our amazement,
canceled this informal assurance, and diverted the funds to the
procurement of Allison liquid-cooled engines. At that time the
General Motors Corporation, owners of Allison, had indicated little
need for public relief funds, but to Pratt and Whitney, now almost
wholly dependent upon government business, the loss of this critical
order was a body blow.
When, later, Don called upon the Assistant Secretary of War, Mr.
Louis Johnson, to point out to him the results of his decision,
he was advised that the Army had decided to scrap all air-cooled
engines in pursuit planes. Next year would probably see the last of
air-cooled engines in bombers. He was instructed to start Pratt and
Whitney designing liquid-cooled engines at once. To Don, knowing
that Allison, equally surprised by the decision, had not yet started
tooling, while Pratt and Whitney, already tooled, must remain idle,
the decision hardly made sense.
Somewhat bewildered by the change, Don then called on Hap Arnold.
Here he learned that the secretary’s decision had also taken the Air
Force by surprise. Anxious to keep Allison ticking over, Wright Field
had built up such a strong case for liquid-cooled, that the secretary
had decided to scrap air-cooled. Since recent pursuit planes like
the Seversky had been designed for air-cooled, the decision had left
them on a spot. Apparently, however, the decision once taken could
not be recalled. No one in the Air Force had dreamed for a moment
that it would be taken, but here we were, out on a long limb, and war
was in the offing.
As the year 1938 came to a close, we began laying off men, dropping
first those who could be the more readily spared. But the time came
when the organization was being seriously hurt, and the year-end
forecast indicated that, by July, 1939, we would reach the end of our
production. Since materials must be in hand five to six months ahead
of delivery of the finished article, that meant that time had already
begun to run out for Pratt and Whitney. We had long since cut back
expenses to the bare minimum and there remained nothing but a final
decision to suspend manufacturing operations. Yet even then, Don
Brown kept the War Plans Division intact.
Now we had but a single remaining hope: Tom Hamilton in Paris. Tom
reported by radiotelephone that the French, now reduced to dire
straights, still vacillated, but had established financial credits
in the United States and would send a purchasing commission to
Washington to open negotiations direct with us. Don Brown, sick as he
was, went down to Washington with some of our staff to battle through
hours of legalistic verbiage, in smoke-filled rooms of Washington
hotels.
Here it developed that the United States Treasury would act as a
sort of intermediary between the French commission and the American
manufacturers, and that Secretary Henry Morgenthau had turned
the job over to Capt. Harry Collins, then head of the Purchasing
Division of the Treasury. With the Arms Embargo Act still adorning
the legislative library, active participation by the Treasury in
negotiations between United States arms manufacturers and a possible
“belligerent” had certain aspects of incongruity. However, the whole
situation was so phony that this detail escaped public attention.
Capt. Harry Collins provided just the _savoir faire_ necessary to
resolve an impossible situation into a completed contract. Harry
had served as supply officer on the ancient destroyer-tender _Iris_
back in the dark ages when I had commanded the four-piper _Truxtun_,
then based on San Diego. He had resigned his commission to go into
business and had there shown the same tact that had endeared him to
the temperamental skippers of the Pacific Torpedo Flotilla.
Throughout the negotiations, Don Brown stood fast on the principle
that prices to be paid for the equipment should be high enough to
permit us to take the necessary financial risks required by the
early deliveries specified. The customer should not hamstring us by
chiseling prices to the point where our willingness to accept risks
was impaired. Fortunately the soundness of this position was apparent
to Harry, and his confidence in us enabled him to support it in the
discussions with Col. Paul Jacquin of the French commission. The
colonel proved to be a man of high character with a sense of fairness
and a degree of integrity that finally brought the negotiations to a
satisfactory conclusion.
The contract was signed on February 14, 1939, at almost the precise
moment when further delay would have done us irreparable harm. As a
matter of fact, the time had long passed when a garrison finish might
be of any help to France; the chief benefit of this contract lay in
the fact that it gave the Pratt and Whitney Aircraft organization a
shot in the arm, and put us in such position that when, two years
later, the Japs smacked us at Pearl Harbor, we could swing into
full-scale production for the American account.
After Don Brown’s return to Hartford, his health forced him to turn
more and more of his work over to me. In this I functioned, much as
I had once done for Admiral Reeves, as a sort of chief of staff,
seeking to do things in the way Don himself would have done them,
had he been personally on the firing line. Somewhat earlier, when
our difficulties had become serious, I urged Don to invite Fred
Rentschler to return to our board as chairman where we could call
on him for advice and get the benefit of his judgment. Now we three
began working closely together—at least as closely as Don’s declining
health permitted.
Don, a singularly attractive and lovable person, having come
upstairs by way of the shop, always displayed a strong sense of
responsibility for his men. The specter of shutdown weighed heavily
on him and now, as the illness that was to prove fatal began closing
in on him, his thoughts were still down on the factory floor.
One day he and I walked along an aisle between the machines. Don made
some remark to the effect that he longed to be back there where the
problems were of the kind a man could get his teeth into. Behind us
we heard the voice of a young kid making some crack about how soft it
was for guys that did nothing but sit on cushions in paneled offices
and look wise. Don turned and brushed the kid away from the machine.
After running it awhile in obvious enjoyment, he turned to the
workman:
“Listen, son,” he said, not unkindly, “I’d trade jobs with you any
day if I could, but you wouldn’t take the responsibility. That’s
something you fellows never want to accept.”
Toward midsummer, we began to hear rumors that the French needed
more equipment than our humming plant could deliver. By this time
Secretary Johnson’s action had reacted to our advantage. The
inventory of raw stock, semifinished, and finished parts which they
had left on our hands when they canceled our order enabled us to get
rolling without the protracted delay which would have been inevitable
had our pipe lines been drained before the big freeze. And so, almost
overnight, we had the machines humming again and the empty parking
spaces around the plant filled up with cars. But this rumor of new
plants was a horse of another color.
First of all, we had no capital with which to construct a new
addition, nor did it seem likely we could get it had we wanted
it—which we didn’t. Having faced the cold shadows of a vacant
factory, we had no appetite for more of the same. The punitive
attitude of our own government had completely dammed up all sources
of private capital for expansion of munitions plants. Actually,
the long depression had all but dried up investment in any private
venture. The fear and uncertainty which had cast such a pall over the
land had been intensified by the drift toward government domination
of business and the rise of bureaucratic dictation.
Among other things, there was the sensitive factor of profit control.
For instance, the Internal Revenue Bureau of Mr. Henry Morgenthau’s
Treasury Department dictated, through its review of income tax
returns and its rules and regulations, the amount a manufacturer
might charge against the cost of his product for the use of his
tools. The manufacturer, having in mind the many elements of this
problem, such as the wear and tear on machines, the life cycle of the
product he was selling, and many other complex factors, would charge
against each item of manufacture what he judged to be its proper
share of the cost of the tools. The more he charged, the less was his
profit for a given year. In the long run the whole thing washed out.
But the Internal Revenue Bureau, sitting in judgment of each case and
anxious to prove high profit in order to assess higher taxes, was
interested in reducing this depreciation charge as far as possible.
Bearing no responsibility for the survival of a company, and having
little knowledge of, or interest in, the technical details of the
manufacturer’s problem, it tended to set up over-all rules which,
even though applicable to one case, might be far out of line for
another. And since munitions manufacturers were generally unpopular,
they had two strikes on them from the beginning. Real investors,
understanding this handicap, were not interested in risking their
dollars on this kind of enterprise, nor were the enterprises
interested in seeking their money.
Now, if the public policies of the period dried up the flow of
capital to private industry, or even reduced it to a trickle, the
Arms Embargo Act put the finishing touches upon the process. All
Chancellor Hitler had to do to make a “belligerent” out of France was
to open war on France, and since the French were now buying aircraft
in the United States, the sooner he did the better. On September 1,
1939, Germany invaded Poland; on September 5, France declared war
on Germany. President Roosevelt immediately issued his proclamation
of neutrality, thus putting the Act into effect and cutting off
shipments to belligerents.
Meanwhile, however, the frantic French, desperate by now, had, in
a last-minute effort to buy time, insisted upon our creating a
new plant and accepting new contracts. Our only course under the
circumstances was to insist that they advance the entire amount of
the cost of the new facilities, some eight million dollars, and
finance the additional contracts for aircraft by advancing working
capital under terms agreeable to us. However, under French law, the
state was prohibited from investing its funds in a capital outlay on
foreign shores. Further, the French, at the time, were pursuing the
opposite policy at home; they were expropriating and nationalizing
their own industry—a policy that reduced the country from a position
of world leadership, following World War I, to one of abject
dependence upon American aviation in World War II. How they could
agree to go ahead with us under the circumstances we could not see,
especially with the Arms Embargo Act hanging over them. But go ahead
they did, and under our terms.
Meanwhile, during the protracted negotiations, we went right ahead,
in our new War Plans Division, with all the blueprints and schedules,
working in close collaboration with our architect, Albert Kahn. We
broke ground for the new French plant on October 10, 1939, pushing
automobiles out of the parking space on which we had determined
to build it. The shop was to have an area of some 300,000 square
feet and be tooled to handle about 300 engines per month of our
1830 model. Since this was an engine rated at approximately 1,000
horsepower, we figured that we were going to get 300,000 horsepower
per month out of the new plant; in three months we could build enough
engines to generate the power of Niagara. Title to the new facility
would rest with United Aircraft. On November 5, 1939, Congress
repealed the Arms Embargo Act.
Shortly afterward, the British government came into the market
for aircraft. This was a surprise, for but a short time earlier,
Lord Beaverbrook, then visiting this country, had snorted at the
suggestion that Britain might have to look to America for assistance.
Yet Sir Henry Self, formerly of the British Air Ministry, arrived
in Washington and joined with M. René Plevin of France, in a new
coordinated procurement program.
It was shortly after this, on an evening early in 1940 while we were
sitting in the library at home, that the telephone rang. It was the
watchman over at the plant.
“Secretary Morgenthau has just walked in,” he said, “and he would
like to see you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
An Unfavorable Climate
As I backed my convertible out of the garage, and eased it from the
driveway onto Albany Avenue, I speculated as to what might have
brought Secretary Morgenthau to Hartford in the middle of the night.
It might, I thought, have something to do with the new British
inquiry which had been discussed earlier in Harry Collins’s office
in the Treasury. There, a number of aircraft manufacturers had met
to be introduced to Sir Henry Self and a newcomer to the French
negotiations, M. René Plevin. Sir Henry, very British, had tried not
to appear condescending to us provincials, but it was apparent early
that he had brought his trading vest along, determined to give us a
sample of British tradesmanship.
I had noticed at the time that Col. Paul Jacquin, with whom we had
had such intelligent dealings, was not present. M. René Plevin, the
new Frenchman, looked to me like the story-book Frenchman, suave,
polished, and clever. It occurred to me that Colonel Jacquin might
need a little help from us, and this was confirmed by the drift of
the conversation. Sir Henry Self made it clear that he and M. Plevin
would act in unison in all matters of future procurement. They had
looked over the earlier contracts and concluded that the terms had
not been as advantageous to the customer as must any future terms.
At any rate they appeared out of line with what had been customary
in Old England. The British were in the market for large quantities
of war material, but England was a poor country and we must learn to
sharpen our pencils and cut prices. England had shielded us during
the first war, but she was not now so strong, etc., etc.
Sir Henry had expressed interest in negotiating for the construction
of new facilities from which aircraft engine production could flow;
he had wondered if we might not now undertake immediate expansion of
our facilities—but of course under more favorable terms to England
than we had apparently exacted from France.
To this I pointed out that the French terms had been arrived at
after painstaking negotiation under the commission headed by Col.
Paul Jacquin. They had not been predicated on chiseling tactics,
but designed to give us every incentive to take the heavy risks
paramount to quick deliveries. We had found no reason to question
that procedure but had, on the other hand, experienced many incidents
in which the wisdom of this procedure had been proved. Time had been
of the essence and time had proved to be something that could not
be bought. With less time now, we could see no basis for further
discussion of the terms.
As a matter of fact, I explained, we would not undertake to even
negotiate another contract for plant expansion until we saw our way
out of our present difficulties. We suffered from chronic indigestion
and had no intention of making it acute. And even if the time came
when we believed our already overloaded organization might take on
greater responsibilities, there was one serious road block that must
be resolved. We had accepted the French order without resolving this
difficulty because we had been in a serious predicament for business;
today we could not accept that handicap.
I referred to the matter of plant depreciation and the rules and
regulations of the Treasury Department. Unless these were changed,
a sudden cessation of hostilities might leave us with an enormous
excess of plant on our hands. The burden of depreciation, however
light under maximum output, would prove overwhelming after shutdown.
The day-to-day burden of writeoff would force on us serious losses
that would, in time, bankrupt the company. I pointed out, of course,
that this was a matter for the United States Treasury rather than
the British Purchasing Commission, but that we could not undertake
to construct new facilities even under terms similar to those in the
French contract, until after our Treasury Department had resolved
this problem of plant amortization and depreciation.
Now, as I sped down Albany Avenue to North Main Street and turned
left there down the Morgan Street hill to the Bulkely Memorial
Bridge, I reviewed the atmosphere of that meeting and began to
rehearse what I would say to Secretary Morgenthau, should he bring
the matter up. I recalled that Sir Henry Self had listened to my
statement with an expression of amused tolerance. No doubt he had
in mind the power of the Treasury and the influence of the banking
fraternity as means of bringing us upstarts into line. But we were
under no great obligations to others; we were free—free to do what in
our own judgment was in the long-term interest of getting on with our
job.
And as I turned into the main gate of the aircraft factory at East
Hartford, the lights were ablaze all over the place. I parked my car
in the garage under the office building and ran upstairs to my office
where the Secretary of the Treasury awaited me. After a greeting, Mr.
Morgenthau expressed a wish to see the new French addition, and we
walked together down through the main shop and across to the new one.
We had scheduled the new building for completion in three months, and
three months had seen it finished. The new machinery, earmarked long
in advance by War Plans and ordered even before the final contract
had been signed, was already coming in. Bare spots revealed the
wood-block floor of the vast girdered structure, but millwrights were
busy sliding machinery onto prearranged spots and uncrating late
arrivals. One complete production line was already set up and working
to relieve a bottleneck in the main shop.
After a look-see, the secretary and I made our way back to my corner
office upstairs. He sat down in one of the big chairs and I slid
into the swivel seat behind my desk. On my walls hung the mementos
of bygone days. There in a silver frame was my commission as a
commander, and beneath it, all the others from passed midshipman
on up; beside it hung my certificate of graduation from the Naval
Academy. On other walls were collected the photographs of my friends:
Admiral Moffett, pipe in hand, with that alert look; Admiral Reeves,
from an oil painting by his own son, bearded like the seamen of the
old school and with that gleam in his eye; Chance Vought, dapper with
his waxed moustache; George Wheat, wise in the ways of a newspaper
man; Comdr. Charles E. Kennedy-Purvis, Royal Navy, a friend of my
Grand Fleet days; Hap Arnold, of the Army Air Corps; Jack Towers, of
Naval Aviation; and Captain Marco Zar, Argentine Navy. They were a
goodly company. The secretary glanced at them and then came to his
point.
It was the British matter all right. Time was fleeting and he thought
we ought to get down to business and sign the contract. In reply, I
pointed out our position. We had accepted the French order without
first getting a commitment from the Treasury Department to treat
plant depreciation on a more realistic basis. We had, however, set
up our own books on the basis of synchronizing the plant writeoff
with the shipment of the product called for on the engine contract;
on this basis the plant would be completely written down when the
product shipments had been completed. That would tend to reduce our
taxable income for the period, but it would have the advantage to
our own government that all subsequent products of that facility
could be invoiced to it at no charge for depreciation of plant. In
case we became involved in a war, and that now seemed probable, the
government would recover in reduced costs everything it might now
lose in taxes.
I had the impression, as I talked, that the secretary did not
entirely follow me. I therefore went on to explain the situation
more fully. The rules promulgated by the Internal Revenue Bureau
might or might not be satisfactory to some ordinary peacetime
businesses. I suspected they were not, as the desire to assess taxes
currently might easily lead to poor judgment for the long term. This
was a serious matter, since it tended to increase product costs by
retarding the purchase of improved machinery and thus impaired the
whole capital replacement problem. With us it was even more critical
because our situation was most unusual and called for broad vision
and judgment. I then took a long breath and said the little piece I
had rehearsed in the roadster on the way over.
“Mr. Secretary,” I said, “for the Treasury to treat this problem in
a way other than the one which we have set up would put the Treasury
in the position of profiteering—through excess taxation—on munitions
contracts let here by foreign governments. We aircraft manufacturers,
having been maligned as profiteers, would not like to see our
government in the same boat.”
The secretary blinked at this, but did not reply.
“Mr. Secretary,” I continued, “we feel so strongly about the
principles involved here that we have taken a firm decision: we will
not go ahead on your British plant, until we have assurance of the
treatment we require.” The secretary still appeared unimpressed.
However, he did reply in his flat voice.
“I will see that it is done.”
The problem of plant expansion was but one of our many headaches. In
due course we signed the British contract calling for an addition
over half again as large as the French addition, and on generally
similar terms. For the next several years we waged fierce battle with
the Treasury Department over that problem of accelerated depreciation
and amortization of emergency facilities, only to learn that the
basic law precluded such treatment and could not be amended save by
act of Congress. But as luck would have it, when the Treasury finally
turned us down, the tax rates had been boosted so high that their
adverse decision actually gave us a better break than we would have
had with an earlier approval. And though this proved gratifying from
the balance-sheet point of view, the principle remained an issue
until finally resolved after the outbreak of the European war.
To a harassed manufacturer, intent on production, it seemed
incredible that we Americans could be so stupid. At the time, we
ascribed it to ignorance. In our shop experience, no deliberate
saboteur could throw such backlash into a production line as just
comes naturally when a dumb-bunny do-gooder gets to messing around.
In the light of subsequent revelations, I am not so sure.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A Spark Is Struck
Don Brown’s death left a big gap in our ranks with no file closers
available to fill it. United Aircraft, once the only company in the
business with real depth to its management, had got thin on top.
In reorganization, the directors elected Fred Rentschler chairman,
with responsibility under the by-laws for the general conduct of the
business affairs of the company. I was elected president with the
authorities and responsibilities of chief executive officer. Raycroft
Walsh succeeded me as senior vice-president, and J. F. McCarthy
continued as controller with responsibility direct to the board of
directors in financial matters. This rounded up a top organization
in which the several personalities complemented each other in a way
calculated to promote the closest kind of teamwork. In the four
divisions, Jack Horner headed Pratt and Whitney, Sidney Stewart
succeeded Raycroft Walsh in Hamilton-Standard, and C. J. McCarthy
became general manager of the Vought-Sikorsky Division.
Then came May of 1940. The President of the United States in his
fireside chat electrified the country with his announcement of a
fantastic airplane production program. The total mentioned was 50,000
airplanes. Only two weeks earlier, a House of Representatives’
Report on the War Department Appropriation Bill had lopped all but
57 airplanes off the Army Air Corps’ own modest request for 496. By
that time, some 2,800 airplanes had been contracted for under the
previous year’s appropriations, of which some 2,200 had been training
planes. Practically the entire capacity of the American aircraft
industry had been allotted to foreign sales. On the morning following
the Presidential foray into the numbers racket, I sat behind my desk
working on the mail.
Through the open door to the anteroom, I could see my secretary,
Mrs. Dexter, typing out some of the faultless copy with which she
kept our business flowing. She had come up to the front office
with me from Chance Vought Aircraft, and was one of the leading
women of the inner circle of highly trained and competent women who
managed the routine of the top executive offices. As the only member
of my office staff, she sorted out the mail and handled visitors
or outside calls. On the mail, she slid into the wastebasket the
bulk of it that was obviously part of the advertising matter which
Uncle Sam so kindly subsidizes at great expense to himself and
the recipient. A large part of the remainder Mrs. Dexter answered
outright—and more effectively than if I had handled it. The part that
called for decisions came to me—and even that was enough to keep
a man scrambling to try to keep the desk clean. How Mrs. Dexter,
singlehanded, could manage the flow of mail and calls was more than
I could understand but some wag of a punster had opined that she was
dexterous indeed. As I turned to my own pile of papers, the phone
bell jingled and she reached for the receiver.
“The Secretary of the Treasury is calling, sir,” she said, and then
added, “just a moment, Secretary Morgenthau.” I lifted my receiver.
“Could you come down to Washington,” came the flat voice, “and have
supper with me at my home Sunday evening?”
“Certainly, sir,” I replied.
“Would you mind,” the voice inquired, “if I invited a competitor?”
“Not at all,” I answered. “May I ask who you have in mind?”
“Vaughan,” came the reply. “Guy Vaughan, of Curtiss-Wright.”
Something impelled me to try to inject a little humor into the
colorless colloquy.
“An honest competitor,” I laughed, “but with an inferior line.” The
phone clicked and I sat back to try to dope out what was going on. A
50,000-plane program and the two big suppliers of aircraft engines
dining at the secretary’s home on a Sunday night! Shades of Franklin
D. Roosevelt, Senator Black, and Postmaster General Brown! Phil
Johnson, of United Airlines, had chanced to drop in on an informal
conference called in the daytime to take away from him air-mail
contracts he had won under competitive bidding and Congress had
crucified him for it! It all seemed to depend upon whose political ox
was to be gored.
I met Guy Vaughan in the Carlton Hotel on Sunday afternoon. Guy had
already scouted the terrain and discovered from “Tommy the Cork,”
so he said, that the bright boys intended to give us the works at
supper and force us to agree to license the government to build
aircraft engines under our patents. Why they should resort to the
cloak-and-dagger technique remained a mystery; they already had such
rights under numberless Army-Navy contracts. But there seemed no
mystery about why they wanted the licenses; the big idea was to set
up a string of big government-owned-and-operated aircraft factories
in the several distressed areas of the country to give relief to the
unemployed, and votes to their new employers.
Our quiet little supper party with Secretary Morgenthau did seem to
bear out Guy’s dope. For afterward, the secretary informed us that
since we were already overloaded with the foreign business, our
government would have to look elsewhere. He served notice on us that
we would be expected to license the government under our patents.
Guy Vaughan, on being questioned, advised the secretary that in his
opinion Curtiss-Wright could build all the engines the government
might require, and stated further that his company would not license
the government voluntarily on a program that would put competitors
into his business—and at government expense—who would, after the war,
put his company out of business. In reply to the same question, I
stated that we would license others to build our engines.
The secretary indicated some surprise and inquired what our price
would be. When I replied that we would license them without fee, the
secretary appeared to disbelieve the statement and remarked that he
had never seen anything yet that was worth more than it cost. To this
I replied that there was a catch to it, and now the secretary seemed
ready to believe me.
From here I went on to point out that the manufacture of an aircraft
engine was an art that required skill, experience, and know-how;
few organizations anywhere had been successful in this field. If
we licensed someone to build our product, we must still accept
responsibility for its performance—a responsibility that we had
always accepted. And since we accepted the responsibility, then
we must insist upon retaining authority over the choice of our
licensees. We had thought this through long ago as a part of our
war plan; a major war would stop production of many articles and
throw men out of employment. It would break up organizations and
teams that had the know-how of production and had demonstrated their
competence in their own lines. We would train such organizations
in the specialized technique of our business and thus get a good
job. As examples we suggested such organizations as the Ford Motor
Company, of Detroit, the Buick, Chevrolet, or Cadillac Divisions of
General Motors, the Nash-Kelvinator Company, the Packard Company,
Studebaker—in fact, you could go down the whole list and find a great
untapped source of skilled production experts.
I went on to contrast this with the possibility of government
undertaking the job. Without mentioning the difficulties peculiar to
government business, I stressed the responsibility that goes along
with aircraft production. When the engines fail, the airplane cracks
up and young men get killed. We had got many gray hairs carrying
this responsibility. If the government wanted to take it off our
shoulders, that was their privilege, but they should go into it with
their eyes open.
It was apparent by now that their eyes were fully open and we said
good night with mutual expressions of esteem. Soon George J. Mead,
once chief engineer of United Aircraft, then serving as vice-chairman
of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, had been
appointed to supervise the Treasury Department’s functions in the
50,000 program. This was good news indeed. For aside from the fact
that George Mead knew his airplanes, there was the further and more
important consideration that George knew the Army and Navy each had
skilled organizations, schooled in the procurement of aeronautical
materials, and was likely, after the details of the still nebulous
program had been determined, to give the highly technical procurement
job back to the Armed Forces. For had fate left this problem in the
hands of one of the political agencies then springing up all over the
place, we might today be slaves of Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and
Joe Stalin.
The government had either forgotten that the Army Reorganization Act
of 1920 placed responsibility for industrial mobilization upon the
Assistant Secretary of War, Louis Johnson, or, noting the controversy
between him and his chief, Secretary Woodring, had changed its mind.
In any event, Bill Knudsen was appointed Chairman of the National
Defense Advisory Committee and George Mead took over the aircraft
job. At the time, no one was able to enlighten us on the real meaning
of the 50,000-plane program; it might be a yearly output, a war
total, or anything else the fancy might suggest. Nor could anyone
advise us what types of aircraft were contemplated. Scuttlebutt
rumor had it that the President had first asked the Army and Navy to
submit estimates of the maximum number of aircraft they could use but
upon receipt of the figures had been disappointed at their lack of
imagination. They couldn’t seem to add up to more than a few thousand.
His own first figure, so the gossip went, had been a nice round
25,000, the very number, curiously enough, which had been hit upon
back in 1917 as the number required to “darken the skies” over
Germany. But later, so ran the story, the President had tried out his
fireside chat on Lord Beaverbrook, the same “Beaver” who, not many
weeks earlier, had snorted his scorn at the suggestion that England
would ever have to look to America for aircraft production. And
the Beaver, so we were told, had advised the President not to be a
piker—100,000 airplanes would make better headlines—and the President
had compromised on 50,000. In any event, BUAERO and Wright Field had
now dubbed the announcement “the numbers racket,” so the fact that
a fellow like George Mead, who not only knew the words and music
of aviation but could actually sing the song, was now handling the
aircraft program seemed to us an incredibly lucky break.
And so it proved, for George got the two services to agree upon the
reasonableness of some kind of program that seemed to add up to
50,000 and then passed the job back to them for execution. This put
the ball back in play on a field where we knew the score and where
the officials knew the rules and the game. It converted the war from
a phony to a shooting war, and gave us the signal for take-off.
Now as the new British addition began to take form, we put our War
Plans Division to work on a new American addition. This we decided to
create in two steps and to finance with funds to be acquired in the
market. Designed to utilize the entire capacity of the East Hartford
area, the addition would double the total facilities already in hand.
Our carefully prepared war plan contemplated farming out more and
more of the work to subcontractors and suppliers as rapidly as they
could be trained to manufacture to our high standards of precision
and workmanship. The original manufacturing concept of Pratt and
Whitney, Hamilton-Standard, and Vought had contemplated utilizing
the skills and facilities of other competent shops in peacetime and
in the interest of economy; now we embarked on our long-contemplated
program of expansion of this technique in the interest of accelerated
war production.
The capacity of any working area such as East Hartford is definitely
limited by physical characteristics, such as transport, electric
power, water supply, labor supply, housing, and so on. These limits,
as they existed in peacetime, could be expanded to meet wartime
needs by close cooperation with the management of the utilities. The
War Plans Division, having foreseen the limitations of the several
factors, had provided us with the information on which to approach
our numerous suppliers of all kinds. Certain of these, like the
power companies, whose normal business contemplated a continuous
expansion of facilities to meet normal demands, used the information
furnished them to arrive at decisions to advance their schedules
wherever necessary to meet peak demands. Now “the aircraft,” as we
were called in Hartford, moved out of the category of a speculative
venture and into the position of the controlling industry of the
area. Our whole philosophy of leadership, based as it was on the
cooperative process, now paid off, not alone in returns to us but to
our neighbors and, in fact, to the whole country.
In this connection, reference can be made to a report on “Industrial
Mobilization and Design and Development of Nazi Germany,” issued by
the Office of Military Government for Germany under date of October
5, 1945. The report is based on an examination of Albert Speer by
several officers of the Intelligence Department, and deals with the
part Speer played subsequent to the year 1942 when he was directed
to take over the administration of German war production. Speer had
realized immediately what great fundamental errors had been committed
and how small armament output had remained prior to his taking over.
The Reichswehr had dealt with armament problems theoretically and
industry generally had had no great inclination to participate in
preparatory work. The government organizations had become so large
that they had managed only to keep each other busy; they committed
what might be called mental incest and paved the way for all the
mistakes that had later kept armament production at a surprisingly
low level.
Speer had gone on to say that the Germans had been at a great
disadvantage because their rearmament had been planned too long
on a theoretic basis. A strict system of discipline and orders
fully in accord with their authoritarian regime had replaced what
this apparatus lacked in knowledge and ability. He had written a
memorandum to Hitler on July 20, 1944, in which he stated that
Russia and the United States were to be envied because external
circumstances had forced them to improvise. The United States had
had to raise their armed forces quickly and therefore could not
do without the active personalities in industry, politics, and
public life. In Germany, on the other hand, those who occupied
themselves with war production were professional soldiers, a closed
corporation without the benefit of fresh outside minds. For this
reason, Speer believed that the extended theoretical preparation of
German armaments had been mainly responsible for their low level of
production until after 1942 when he had restored the principle of
individual initiative by putting war production back into the hands
of private industry. Within a year he had completed an organization
of completely new leading personalities to restore the autonomy of
industry and preserve its unity even in the most trying times.
The virus that infected Germany also attacked us, but our rugged
constitution enabled us to throw it off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
For What Is a Man Profited?
The selection of Bill Knudsen to head up the agency charged with
coordinating war production was a happy one. Just as George Mead knew
his aircraft, so did Bill Knudsen know his production. Furthermore,
he knew the men who knew production and he held their confidence and
regard. This was important at the moment when business and industry
had reason to fear and suspect government; the drift in this country
toward the omnipotent state had aroused intense bitterness and might
have bogged down the whole program had not Bill Knudsen attracted
to his organization other men who held the respect of their fellow
manufacturers. These men began immediately on the complex task of
unraveling all the mare’s nests that had collected around government
procurement.
About the middle of the summer of 1940, Fred Rentschler and I went
down to Washington to call on the Grand Old Man and outline to him
the key to our whole program. The President’s 50,000-plane program,
when superimposed on the already staggering foreign purchases, was
clearly beyond the total capacity of the New England area. And if we
undertook further expansion in other areas, we would impose further
burdens on an already hard-pressed staff. The time had now come to
bring in the great automotive industry.
Since Knudsen had, until recently, been president of the General
Motors Corporation, we saw little hope of interesting him in
diverting Buick or Chevrolet to aircraft-engine production just yet.
For our automobile manufacturers still remembered the treatment given
them back in 1918 when, after the Armistice, their war contracts had
been ruthlessly canceled—torn up like so many scraps of paper—and
their “war profits” had vanished from view except in the news
headlines of the next twenty years. It would take some doing to
persuade Bill Knudsen to our cause, and even Bill Knudsen would have
his work cut out to get his automotive friends on the beam. As a
matter of fact, without Bill Knudsen it could never have been done in
time.
For Bill was animated throughout his wartime service by a great
motive. He had come to the Land of the Free a penniless immigrant,
and had there won not alone riches but the respect and esteem of
the great men of the land. And whatever the generation which had
inherited liberty might think about it, Bill Knudsen knew what
liberty meant; his whole being was imbued with a love for the country
of his adoption, with a devotion to the spirit which animated it and
an intense zeal to pay back in part some of the privileges it had
extended him. And so deeply was this zeal imbedded in his character
and so honestly did he seek to pay back his debt that even men grown
cynical under the lash of government were impelled to go along.
His simple fundamental character combined with his native wit and
intelligence gave Bill Knudsen such qualities of leadership at the
very moment they were most needed.
The day Fred Rentschler and I walked in on him, we found him leaning
over a plain table pawing around among some engine parts with George
Mead and Henry Crane. “Uncle Henry” Crane, one of the great engineers
of the automotive industry, had been called in for a conference over
the failures of the Allison liquid-cooled engine. While Fred and
I cooled our heels waiting for experts to decide upon what design
changes were necessary to make the Allison run, before they could
discuss policy with us, we thought we saw a certain irony in the
situation. For the Allison engine was the power plant that had taken
the business away from our 1830 engine in the critical months of 1939
when that one contract meant so much to Pratt and Whitney.
When, finally, it came our turn, we broke the news to Bill Knudsen
that, with the completion of the new American addition in Hartford,
we would reach a saturation point in Hartford and must look elsewhere
for new facilities. Bill knew that Wright Aeronautical planned to
build a big new shop somewhere in Ohio and presumed, of course, we
would go and do likewise, but when we explained the differences in
our two situations, he understood. Wright Aero had been formed out
of the consolidation of two big engine companies, Curtiss and Wright,
and had more topside staff than Pratt and Whitney. Guy Vaughan was
still its president, but Don Brown had died. Now when we mentioned
licensing the automotive companies, Bill’s first question was who did
we have in mind. When we told him Ford, he at first shook his head,
but when we stressed the point that selling Uncle Henry was his job
and that no one except he and George Mead could do it, Bill Knudsen
reluctantly agreed to try.
And Bill and George succeeded. Within a few days we received word
that Ford Motor would send a group of shopmen to look over the job
and see what could be done. Bill Knudsen, familiar with the Ford
setup, had suggested that the machinery in the great Ford tool room,
along with some six thousand men employed there, would take the
Pratt and Whitney job in its stride. To automotive men, the aircraft
industry still looked something like the ancient “carriage trade,”
and they discounted our insistence that our standards of quality and
precision were not easily come by in the mass-production industries.
Edsel Ford and Charles Sorenson met with Fred Rentschler and me in
the boardroom in East Hartford. Sorenson did most of the talking,
though Edsel Ford was president of the company. A rough-and-tumble
shopman of the Ford school of give and take, Sorenson wasted few
words. His men had looked the shop over and found nothing complicated
about it—nothing they didn’t savvy. The machine tools seemed standard
and the processes excellent. At first his boys had thought the job
looked easy, but the more they had seen of our precision, the more
they had become impressed with the task before them. At first they
had thought we might be overdoing the quality but after a look at the
test-shed running and studying the high demands for durability and
dependability, they had changed their minds. They realized it was a
tough racket but were prepared to go ahead on two conditions.
First, they would have to adopt our technique in every detail and
even have to build a complete new aircraft-engine shop; the idea that
their tool room would serve was fantastic, the machines wouldn’t
do at all. Second, they would have to have access to our suppliers
and subcontractors for parts; they could not find other sources
of supply. He presumed, of course, that we would give them every
assistance and even detail our foremen and leading men to duty in the
Ford shops as necessary.
Sorenson’s requirement as to our suppliers posed a problem; most of
them were already overloaded. Some like Wyman Gordon, of Worcester,
source of our crankshaft and other forgings, were already suppliers
to the automotive industry, and could shift their production from
autos to aircraft. This had been a long-time feature of our war plans
and it applied to many of our parts. On the others we would share
the output with Ford and join him in creating new sources. With that
decision we all shook hands and it was a deal.
One thing that had impressed the Ford people was the vast difference
between the aircraft and automotive processes. Our production was
based on the use of standard machine tools; we had few of the special
single-purpose machines designed for low-cost volume production
of automobiles. Our practice had been deliberately adopted for
several reasons. In expanding for war-emergency production we could
expect machine tool builders rapidly to expand delivery of standard
machines, where special machines would require much longer. Again,
whereas automotive production could be standardized for reasonable
periods, in aircraft engines we must be able to incorporate every new
design change without seriously retarding production. To accomplish
this, we had fitted special jigs and fixtures to our standard
machines; for a design change we could scrap the fixtures but keep
the machines running. No such flexibility as this could be had with
the special machines of the automotive shops, and Sorenson’s crew had
spotted this right away. In fact, if anyone thought we could learn
much about production from the automotive boys, he soon found it was
the other way around. They learned from us our secret of aircraft war
production, the revolutionary idea of flexibility in volume.
Along with this idea we had developed the aircraft-type assembly
of components. Instead of using a conveyer to regulate production
rates, we used it to transport materials to the assembly points. Here
the workers built up complete units or subassemblies and inspected
them on the spot. Aside from the flexibility thus introduced, the
idea had an impact on our production workers. We did away with the
deadly monotony of repetitive processes, by feeding to the operators
such precisely machined parts that even the unskilled could assemble
finished devices and test their functioning. And now as we lost our
experienced workers to the armed forces and began replacing them
with recruits from the white-collar trades, we found this gave a
tremendous boost to shop morale. In the development of this process,
I found myself thinking frequently of the scene in Charlie Chaplin’s
picture where he finally uses both hands and both feet to feed nuts
and washers into the ever-moving and compelling assembly.
Now after Ford had broken the ice, Bill Knudsen began bringing in
other automotive plants to help us. The great Buick and Chevrolet
companies of General Motors joined up, followed soon by Nash. After
Curtice of Buick and Coyle of Chevrolet and Mason of Nash had worked
out general principles with our top management, the jobs were taken
over by the keen shopmen who had made all those organizations
great. In some cases our new allies took on responsibilities for
Hamilton-Standard Propellers and, in the case of Nash, they even went
into production on helicopters when, later on, we faced that new
demand. Chance Vought teamed up with Goodyear Rubber and others, on
the licensing of product and every division of United spread out all
over the country to bring in competent suppliers, large and small.
Meanwhile, after Bill Knudsen had set up the aircraft program
and George Mead had turned it back to the armed forces for
administration, we ran into stormy weather on the matter of
deliveries. The schedules set up by the Army and Navy were fantastic.
Among other things, the two services had long neglected to buy
engines and propellers for training planes and now, of course,
immediate delivery of these was called for. Our plants had been
tooled for foreign account on the 1,000-hp 1830’s, and the trainers
called for 400-hp Wasp Jrs. for which we had no jigs or fixtures in
quantity. Save for our flexible-production scheme, this problem
would have thrown us for a loss, and even then we had to hustle
to retool. Before we had learned the rudiments of the expanded
program, the politicians had begun scrambling for cover. Even some
of our military friends began casting about for excuses to blame the
manufacturers for their own shortcomings. Newspaper columnists and
radio commentators who had previously castigated us as war mongers
now began screaming “too little and too late.”
One of the most acid of these, Fulton Lewis, Jr., made a special
trip to Hartford to give his public an on-the-spot disclosure of
the shortcomings at United Aircraft. His Hartford outlet then was
WTHT, _The Hartford Times_, whose publisher, Francis S. Murphy, was
familiar with our problems “Over East,” as we say up here. Frank
suggested that Fulton Lewis call on me, and I, all unsuspecting,
gave him a personally conducted tour of the shops and then, back in
my office, told him some of our problems. Fulton Lewis, surprised
by what he saw, asked me if I would go on the radio with him that
night. Afterward, he sold the National Association of Manufacturers
on his idea of sending a group of commentators of press and radio on
a nation-wide tour of factories to learn the truth about “too little
and too late.”
As I came to know some of the radio commentators, I was impressed
by the skill with which some of them dug the germ of the news out
of the ruck and got it over to their listeners. After Cedric Foster
left Hartford for Boston to take over his spot on Mutual, he made
it a habit to call his old friends for their slants on spot news.
My experience with Admiral Reeves having taught me to delve for
fundamentals in strategy and tactics, I was able to give Cedric some
slants on the progress of the war. I was always impressed by the
way in which he put his finger on the key items and summarized the
situation succinctly and competently.
Our rate of production was largely dependent upon things outside
our control. Both Army and Navy made contracts with us and each
administered his own business in his own peculiar way. Each
maintained a staff of inspectors at our plants, men who sometimes
liked to show their authority over us and to put each other on the
spot. Each specified the accessories to our equipment according
to his own fancies, and even specified details. On this matter of
accessories, the British and French had their own ideas, and in some
cases these differed from either Army or Navy. A single model of our
engine might have as many variations as there were customers to buy
them or airplanes in which to install them, and the permutations and
combinations ran into complications of all sorts. In an effort to
correct some of this, I used the delivery schedule as a lever.
I agreed to accept their fantastic schedules _in toto_, provided
three requirements were met: First, one of the services would handle
all contracts for our company and administer them for all the
others; second, all the services would standardize their accessories
and attachments as well as their specifications so as to simplify
models; third, the service administering the contracts would require
its inspectors to do all those reasonable things intended to
expedite deliveries according to the terms of the contracts and its
specifications, rather than operate as an obstacle. To the degree
that any or all of these requirements were not met, we now submitted
delayed delivery schedules to correspond with each degree. Under this
pressure, the services agreed to divide the two engine companies;
Pratt and Whitney became the charge of the Navy.
It was when we came to prices for engines that we ran into trouble.
After Jack Homer had discussed the problem with BUAERO as to
details, J. F. McCarthy and I went to Washington to face the issues
with Comdr. L. B. Richardson, then in charge of Procurement. This
was not the Captain Dick Richardson of the big-boat formula fame,
but a younger Dick with whom I had flown in the service. He knew
his business and had positive ideas based on wide experience. On
contracts calling for such large volume, the Bureau would expect a
far lower price than any we had quoted—and in principle it was right.
Our problem was that, pending expansion of the shop, the training
of new operators, the testing of tools, and all the other problems
of getting into production, we would run into high costs. That had
been our experience during the expansion periods with the French and
British contracts and now with the likelihood that we would lose even
some of our key men to the armed forces, we could expect spoiled work
and scrap to skyrocket costs. No one could guess when costs could be
brought into line, and it seemed almost impossible to arrive at a
price agreeable to both sides.
And this problem of price might have delayed negotiations
interminably had we not taken an important decision to break the
deadlock. This decision was based on long experience in business
for government account and on a background of events that have been
herein related. It dated back to that provision in the Air Corps Act
of 1926, in which we granted the government the right to keep cost
inspectors in our plant. To break the impasse we now proposed that
if BUAERO would establish fixed prices on our contracts on the basis
of our earlier experience, we would undertake voluntarily to reduce
future invoice prices on products yet to be shipped, to the end that
we would never accumulate any excessive profit. In other words,
since neither we nor the Bureau could stand any future criticism
on profits, we would voluntarily renegotiate ourselves to avoid
excessive profit. The Bureau’s resident cost inspectors, with access
to all our books, would furnish the data on which the Bureau could
judge the reasonableness of our performance, and we would abide by
their judgment.
This fateful decision removed the last obstacle and cleared the right
of way to the high ball. The remaining problem was to settle upon a
sound principle for determining fair profit. During the busy year
1940, one which could be taken as indicating the return which a plant
of our character could earn under other than wartime conditions, we
had earned $12,000,000 with a plant provided by our own capital, on
sales made of our own initiative, and on shipments that included
practically no business with the United States government. If now we
were to freeze our annual net earnings at that figure no matter how
our sales might soar nor how our plant might be increased at public
expense, we would be stabilizing our earnings at an experienced level
that seemed capable of justification from the points of view of the
stockholder and the public. If in this process we could earn that
return and still pay our employees reasonable wages and salaries,
then we would be discharging our responsibility to all concerned.
As a measure of the effectiveness of this principle we may
have recourse to an incident that occurred some months later,
when production had begun to roll and costs had cascaded to
unprecedentedly low levels. After assembling the figures, we had
advised the Bureau formally that, effective at the beginning of the
next quarter, we would reduce invoice prices below the contract
fixed prices by a certain figure per engine calculated to avoid
any accumulation of excessive profits. The total relinquishment
of potential profits was calculated to amount to approximately
$10,000,000. Meanwhile, we had adjusted wages and salaries on a merit
basis for all except top executives. On the day this news appeared I
was making one of my customary tours through the shop when one of the
workers detached himself from a big Bullard machine and headed out to
cut me off in the aisle.
He was a big brute with beetling black eyebrows and a sullen mouth,
yet as he caught up with me the hard look melted away before a big
grin and he stuck out a grimy fist.
“Mister,” he said, gripping my hand in his big paw, “I’d go to hell
for a company that won’t profiteer. And, mister,” he added, “that
goes for a lot of other guys in this shop, too.”
Despite the fact that the Air Corps Act of 1926 had made provision
for this type of profit control, Congress had passed an amendment to
the Vinson-Trammel Act in 1934, imposing a further statutory limit
on profits under contracts for shipbuilding and aircraft production.
The wartime Excess Profits Tax purported to further regulate profits
but of course only created waste. The manufacturer had to add the tax
to the price of his product anyway. The act encouraged management
to take decisions which, though unsound economically, looked smart
taxwise. Expense accounts chargeable to cost of product soared to
heights undreamed of in competitive business. Political in character,
uneconomic in principle, the Excess Profits Tax swelled the costs of
war while giving a false impression of profit limitation.
The Price Adjustment Act, commonly called “renegotiation,” was the
really effective means of profit control. Under it, competent price
adjustment boards set up the ground rules and administered them with
justice to those concerned. Yet this legislation, despite the fact
that it was fundamentally in the interest of private industry, was
passed with such a flavor of punitive action against business that
even the wisest industrialists were tricked into fighting it as just
another attack on the profit motive. Too many of us, unfortunately,
were so busy hating Roosevelt that we forgot how to use our brains.
Under wise leadership the whole thing could have been turned around
into a constructive effort. Had the administration called in
representatives from the many industries and put the problem squarely
before them along with an appeal to their patriotism, there would
have been no problem. Voluntary, industry-wide action would have
been forthcoming to keep industry on a sound financial basis, and
the example thus set must certainly have brought wage rates within
bounds. Had a routine been set up under which the government agreed
to utilize privately owned facilities on terms that would compensate
owners for their use and restore them as nearly as possible to
their original status, details could have been handled by price
adjustment boards in a cooperative manner. Punitive laws could have
been reserved for culprits, and industry would have helped police the
economy.
My own convictions as to the efficacy of voluntary processes stem
out of experiences in two wars. In World War I, Herbert Hoover,
relying upon good leadership to prevent shortages, gave a convincing
demonstration of what the American people can do voluntarily in such
an emergency. In World War II, at the very moment when my company was
being frustrated at every turn by arbitrary controls on men, money,
machines, and materials, I acted as chairman of the Connecticut State
War Finance Committee and saw the people rally to the brilliant
leadership of two able young men in the Treasury Department, Ted
Gamble and Bob Coyne, who raised billions of dollars that would never
have been forthcoming under any compulsion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Off the Beam
The German attack on Russia immediately converted a lot of former
pacifists into bloodthirsty warmongers. With that everybody began
trying to get into the act. We, who had once been crucified for
warmongering, now found ourselves charged with “too little and too
late.” The war cry now became “unconditional surrender,” a phrase
that had a hollow ring to men who had watched Woodrow Wilson end
World War I with his “Fourteen Points” by dividing the German people
and the German Kaiser.
In this country everybody became overnight an expert on war
production and a critic of the professionals. The professionals,
unfortunately, must always bear the responsibility for their
actions, while their critics can and do speak with the advantage of
irresponsibility. The newspapers now began to ballyhoo the “Reuther
plan” as the answer to everything and news commentators belabored
the ether with a cacophony of approval. From his office in the War
Production Board, Bill Knudsen called us on the telephone.
“You know this fellow Reuther?” he inquired, pronouncing the name as
if it spelled Rooter.
Yes, we knew about Reuther from the headlines. With his usual flair
for publicity, he had crashed the front pages with the bright idea of
putting all the machine tools of the automotive industry, now laying
off men to convert to war production, into construction of airplanes
under the mass-production principle. To an expert like Reuther, the
idea of buying new machinery just to build airplane engines smacked
of another grab by the bosses. Its reaction on Bill Knudsen had
prompted this call for help.
“Well,” he said, with that delightful Danish accent, “what are we
going to do about him?”
Fred Rentschler thought a moment. “Send him up here,” he replied.
“We’ll take care of him.”
And when Walter Reuther arrived at “The Aircraft” in East Hartford,
he was mustered into the board room and received by all the principal
officers of the company. After he had stated his case bluntly,
sparing no wallops at the “carriage trade,” we assured him that if he
knew where we could get the kind of tools we needed, he was just the
man we were looking for. Maybe he had better quit the union and go to
work for us. We had combed the countryside for suitable tools but had
not been able to find any. As a mechanic, Reuther would know machine
tools, and we would like to have his help.
Reuther descended into the shop with our supervisors, who walked him
for miles over the entire layout. On his return he pronounced the
verdict. The stored machines he’d had in mind were no good for our
job, after all. He’d had no idea we were doing a watchmaker’s job.
What he didn’t know was that watchmakers’ tolerances were far too
crude for the exacting demands of aircraft engines.
After Reuther had gone back to Washington, one of our old-timers
lingered a moment in the board room.
“You’ve got to hand it to that cocky little redhead,” he said slowly.
“He sure knows publicity.”
But aptitude for show business was not wholly monopolized by either
labor leaders or politicians; some industrialists got around, too.
Notable among these was Mr. Henry J. Kaiser. After the private
shipbuilders had developed their new technique of constructing
components for assembly in the finished vessel, it was Mr. Kaiser,
the dam builder, who caught the public eye as the boss shipbuilder
of them all. And his activities were not limited to shipbuilding;
he was into everything. After Igor Sikorsky had finally performed
the impossible by creating the helicopter, his fame was almost
overshadowed by headlines hailing Mr. Kaiser as the great producer of
this new contraption. Again, when the German submarine blockade had
attained the peak of its effectiveness, it was Mr. Kaiser who crashed
the headlines with that hair-raising proposal of his, calling for the
construction of 5,000 huge flying boats weighing 500,000 pounds each,
with which to leapfrog the German submersibles.
A recognized aircraft constructor with the temerity to point out
that no such craft had even been projected, let alone designed or
tested experimentally, or that the industrial capacity of the nation
had already been stretched to the elastic limit, would put himself
in the position of lacking imagination. And when, finally, the tide
of public opinion forced the President to place an order for such a
craft, the contract was awarded to Howard Hughes, and Mr. Kaiser,
having promoted the idea, stepped gracefully aside. The President
afterward testified to the power of such propaganda when he told Don
Douglas he had felt compelled to award the contract to get Henry
Kaiser off his neck.
The appointment of Sidney Hillman as co-chairman with Bill Knudsen
on the War Production Board was consistent with the philosophies
of a period that held management responsible for production over
which labor exercised authority. The idea that labor should earn
the right through production rather than the blackjack was too, too
old-fashioned. When, therefore, the big unions moved in on the West
Coast aircraft companies in an attempt to dictate industry-wide wage
rates, Sidney Hillman, after beating the drums to arouse the tribes
to the necessary frenzy, summoned leaders of the aircraft industry
to Washington for a little “collective” bargaining. The idea, it was
said, was “to put the ‘C’ in ‘D.C.’”
At the moment, this looked like but one of the fantasies of that mad
era. In retrospect it takes on definite form. We who had created a
vital industry were put on the defensive as profiteers by leaders of
a publicly supported labor monopoly, itself bent on profiteering.
Whatever profit we might be allowed was a matter of law. As suppliers
to the government, we were responsible to the people for keeping
costs down. The workers, largely unskilled, were being urged by their
leaders to slow down, while the same leaders blackjacked the public
for higher wages for less work. All this, in the task of making the
tools for the public’s defense.
The situation, largely chargeable to the Nye investigation and
similar episodes, could have been avoided under leadership of
a different character. A clear statement of the fundamentals,
accompanied by an appeal to industry, labor, and the public, could
have resolved the internal conflict into an all-out cooperative
effort, but none was forthcoming. The political atmosphere of the
time resembled that described by C. W. C. Oman in his book, _The
Seven Roman Statesmen_, first published by Edward Arnold & Co.,
London, 1902. In Rome, the politicians from Tiberius Gracchus to
Pompey, who paved the way for the Emperor Julius Caesar, bought the
votes of the proletariat with money created by enterprising men and,
while they gained fame for themselves, deprived the people of freedom.
The formal meeting took place in an ornate conference room on the
fifth floor of the new Social Security Building. We manufacturers,
after proving our identities, were shown the entrance to an escalator
which we discovered went only as far as the fourth floor. That word
“escalator” had been borrowed in war contracts as a means of partial
protection against unforeseen wage hikes.
To a large gathering round the council table, Sidney Hillman pointed
out that, since collective bargaining in Southern California had
broken down, Washington had been forced to settle wages, working
conditions, and similar matters—for the entire industry. The
decision, it appeared, had already been taken at a high level and we
might just as well relax and enjoy it.
Our position was stated by a spokesman who pointed out that if labor
would step up its output and reduce costs, the employer could meet
the demands out of savings in cost. If, however, government increased
labor rates without correspondingly modifying sales-prices, it would
bankrupt manufacturers.
Sidney Hillman listened to our point of view with amused tolerance
and then played his ace.
“Of course,” he remarked, “you are protected by the escalator clause.”
Reuben Fleet, of Consolidated, twisted in his chair and swallowed an
aspirin tablet.
“When we came up to this fifth floor this morning,” he said, “they
showed us the escalator. But,” he added, wagging a finger in Sidney
Hillman’s face, “the escalator stopped at the fourth floor.”
At this pat retort the contractors gave vent to a whoop that broke up
the meeting.
Shortly after President Roosevelt’s announcement of his
50,000-airplane program, or the “numbers racket,” newspaper headlines
flared the story that government had called industry leaders to
Washington to tell them off for their crime, “too little and too
late.” The call brought Phil Johnson from far-off Seattle, Donald
Douglas, Bob Gross, and Dutch Kindleberger from Los Angeles, and
others from farther or nearer. Phil Johnson, once driven out of air
transport, had now been called back to Boeing to build heavy bombers.
But when we manufacturers foregathered together and proceeded to the
assigned meeting places, we found the rooms so jammed with sound
cameras, klieg lights, and heavy cable, there was room for but a few
of the better-publicized culprits. The others watched through doors
and windows while big politicos mugged cameras that would flicker
their message to the hinterlands. Most of us had to see the newsreels
to find out what message it was we had traveled so far to receive.
The problem of how to expand production, train licensees, and meet
all Selective Service demands was always with us. For all United
Aircraft divisions had accepted the responsibility for servicing in
the field all equipment of our design whether manufactured by us or
anyone else. This kept hundreds of trained service men in the field,
including many in the front lines.
One day I received a visit from my old friend Joe Beach, former
mayor of Hartford, once a good citizen but then a major assigned to
the Army Personnel Procurement Branch. Joe, who knew our problems,
regretfully advised me that he had received orders to recruit, from
Pratt and Whitney, several hundred men conforming to a specification
that described our best-trained field-service men, specialists who
could be replaced only with the greatest difficulty. Joe tried to
soften the blow by saying the men would be immediately commissioned
captains or colonels or something. The Army would not take “no” for
an answer; it was come across or else.
In this tough spot, I phoned for “Tiny” Flynn, our service manager,
and with Joe listening asked him how many of his staff had been
inducted into the Army and what the Army had done with them. The
answers were “plenty” and “K.P.” or “latrine duty.” I then asked Tiny
if he had their present addresses, and when Tiny answered in the
affirmative, Joe grinned and walked out. Later he confessed to having
never sprung one of these men out of “K.P.”
After the Jap sneak attack on Pearl Harbor I called on my old friend
Admiral Reeves in Washington to get his slant on what had happened.
The admiral, now retired, had been recalled to active duty and
assigned to the Navy Department in charge of Navy lend-lease. Always
an Anglophobe, he there tried to keep our English cousins within
reasonable bounds. Considerably older now, the admiral was said to
require two traffic lights to get across the expanse of Constitution
Avenue, but the old spirit flamed.
“The one thing the administration needed to bring the people into the
war on the side of the British,” he explained, with that sweeping
gesture of his, “was Pearl Harbor. Who could have expected them to be
so dumb as to play right into our own hand? Our big surprise wasn’t
Pearl Harbor; what defeated us was that the Japs could be so dumb.”
After the attack, the admiral was ordered to Pearl Harbor as a member
of the Roberts Board to investigate the efficacy of the Japanese
assault under a strategic concept which the admiral had conceived but
his contemporaries had not understood.
Following Pearl Harbor, aircraft production shifted to full
throttle. Under Bill Knudsen’s leadership, Ford, Buick, Chevrolet,
and Nash created new facilities and shipped United products.
Wright Aeronautical first built a huge plant near Cincinnati and
then drew Studebaker and Chrysler into the complex. At United we
stepped employment up to 75,000 and thought we had attained our
peak production. Then we were called to Washington and told to
build a new plant somewhere out west, one bigger than the Hartford
establishment. This looked at first like the straw to break the
camel’s back, yet Jack Horner discovered an ideal plant site in
Kansas City, Missouri.
In undertaking this job for BUAERO, we pointed out that we had
no funds of our own with which to finance either construction or
operation. We therefore suggested that we take the job on without
profit to ourselves. The plant could be constructed by the Defense
Plant Corporation under our plans and, when it came to operations,
the Navy could put a disbursing officer at Kansas City who would
pay the vouchers and invoices certified to him by our manager and
approved by the Navy inspector. This was a procedure we had tested
in Canada where James Young, president of our Canadian Pratt and
Whitney, had been called on to build a propeller plant in Montreal.
Under that program His Majesty’s Government had deposited funds in
the local bank which were disbursed by His Majesty’s disbursing
officer in payment for services and materials approved by His
Majesty’s inspector. And if His Majesty’s inspector elected to reject
work in process, or exercise any other authority commonly assumed
by government inspectors everywhere, then it was His Majesty’s hard
luck, not the manufacturer’s. In other words, our nonprofit proposal
was not entirely altruistic; we were also concerned with avoiding
losses.
But now it developed that we must be allowed to earn some profit,
in order to be able to absorb items of cost which one inspector or
another might not allow. Thus when we made a contribution to the
local Community Chest drive, and a cost inspector ruled it out as
illegal, there must be some place for us to recover the expense. And
so we finally accepted a nominal “profit” with the provision that any
amount left over after all “illegal” fees had been paid would revert
to His Majesty—or rather to Uncle Sam.
But the important fact developed by this transaction was that it was
entirely possible for a reputable constructor in wartime to perform
a public service without “profit” in the usual sense, and do an
outstanding job at it. As a matter of fundamental equity, United
Aircraft Corporation risked none of its funds in this effort and
was not, therefore, entitled to receive profit for it, especially
when its own resources were being fully employed and were earning
a fair return. The principle here is that each enterprise engaged
temporarily in the war effort has a distinctive problem of its own
and no over-all legislation can be written to cover individual cases
in an equitable manner. The place to reach decisions on these matters
was the Price Adjustment Board.
As between United Aircraft and its licensees, the relationship was
one of mutual respect and close cooperation. We spoke the same
language and subscribed to the same principles. One could not say as
much for relations between the airplane builders and the automotive
industry. One day Dutch Kindleberger trumpeted a blast, pooh-poohing
the automobile manufacturers as significant producers of airplanes,
an outburst that threatened to revive the ancient feud between
the mass production industry and the “carriage trade.” This snort
coincided with the mailing of a letter I had written to President
Harlow Curtice of the Buick Division, complimenting him on the job
Buick had turned in by constructing a new engine plant near Chicago,
and getting it rolling. In reply to my letter Mr. Curtice later used
a pat phrase which seemed appropriate to an address I was scheduled
to deliver before the annual meeting of the Union League Club in
Chicago.
I therefore suggested to the Union League dinner committee that they
invite Mr. Curtice to sit at the speakers’ table so that I might
make acknowledgment of the Buick performance. The address was being
broadcast over a nationwide hookup and I had taken for my title “The
Fundamentals of Freedom.” I reviewed the airplane story and took as
my theme the idea that the magic of the aircraft performance lay in
the creative power of individual freedom. And when the time came to
quote the Curtice letter, I read it verbatim:
“I believe,” read the letter, “that the people of this country will
be happy to know that we manufacturers can cooperate in a crisis, as
effectively as we are accustomed to compete in normal times.”
In order to simplify the Pratt and Whitney problem, we had taken
certain decisions with respect to standardizing our line of engines.
First of all, we had definitely scrapped the abortive liquid-cooled
program and had ceased to produce certain air-cooled models. With
this behind us, we now faced a critical situation that threatened
to negate some of our efforts along this line. Back in the late
’thirties, Bill Patterson, president of United Air Lines, had asked
us to assist him by making a study of a completely new airplane,
capable of coast-to-coast flight with two stops en route, and having
such economic characteristics as would make it a great advance in air
transportation.
We had studied the problem along the lines followed in developing the
Pan American Clipper series, and had forced ourselves to conclude
that we would need an engine somewhat larger than our popular 1830.
The airplane would be a four-engined job carrying approximately forty
passengers and would, at current rates for mail pay and passenger
fares, be very attractive to all the airlines. We had recommended to
“Pat” that he turn the study over to one of the established airplane
companies with plenty of experience in producing transports. Pat had
interested Don Douglas in the project, and Don had brought the other
airlines into the picture with the idea of making the airplane a
joint project. One ship had been built but when no production orders
were forthcoming, and the armed forces had shown no interest, the
project had lain idle.
Shortly after the outbreak of the war, the Army had issued orders to
halt all production of transports, a mandate that was revoked only
after a Congressional delegation had intervened. Later, in a quick
turnabout, the Army tried to take over the airline transport system
intact. Yet even after it had absorbed nearly half of the airplanes
in service, along with a large number of key men, the commercial
airlines stepped up their plane utilization to the point where they
were carrying more passengers than ever before but with half the
equipment. On January 19, 1942, the Navy organized the Naval Air
Transport Service, or NATS, and on June 1, the Army followed with
the Air Transport Command, or ATC. Out of the confusion as to the
functions of air transport, these two military services emerged to
become indispensable to the prosecution of the war.
After this, the Douglas four-engined transport project was revived
and rushed into volume production. Almost overnight, Army and Navy
C-54’s, and the commercial version, DC-4’s, began winging all over
the world to carry important people and critical materials to meet
desperate situations. Now as this service expanded, it hurdled the
submarine blockade and became in fact the safest means of transport,
as well as the most expeditious. Of all the various world services,
that across the Himalayan Hump became the best known, but the
over-all performance of the military air-transport services and the
commercial operators was so outstanding as to lead to the conviction
by many that economic air transport had arrived.
In United Aircraft, we lived in mortal terror of a sudden cessation
of hostilities which, like that following the Armistice, would
lead to disorderly reconversion, and the extinction of the private
aircraft-manufacturing industry. For by now we were blown up so
far beyond any size warranted by our own resources or possible for
postwar production that we could not possibly survive the deflation.
As a hedge against this debacle, we decided our only recourse was to
build new engines as the basis for new and more economical commercial
aircraft which would replace the war-surplus DC-4’s and put the
airlines in position to make money under peacetime conditions. In
face of the feeling of certainty among our engineers that they just
could not undertake any further developments with their current war
load, management took responsibility for the decision and we set up
the project.
With a view to strengthening our research division we made a number
of changes. Frank Caldwell moved over from Hamilton-Standard. My old
friend Dr. Lucke, now retired from active teaching but very much
alive to new developments, joined John Lee on a consulting basis. To
utilize the experience and facilities of scientific institutions, we
farmed out numerous research projects pertaining to jet propulsion.
As a final accomplishment, we enlisted the help of Charles A.
Lindbergh.
After President Roosevelt had refused Lindbergh’s offer to serve
in the Army, rugged old Henry Ford had taken him on as research
assistant in Detroit. Here Lindbergh, now fortyish, carried out some
very high altitude research under conditions that would have tried
the skill of the ablest young pilot. I wanted him in United as a
personal aide to help resolve some of the conflicts in the latest
revolution in aviation, jet propulsion. Aside from his unexcelled
knowledge of aviation and his proved pilot’s skill, Lindbergh had the
clear incisive mind which we needed so badly in appraising some of
the implications of jet power.
For jet propulsion was not quite so simple as the art of building
piston engines; such problems as air-cooled versus liquid-cooled or
in-line engines versus radials belonged in the kindergarten compared
with the complexities of turbo-jet versus turbo-prop. And whereas
our air-cooled radials had promised improvement in every factor
pertaining to aircraft propulsion, these jets suffered the serious
handicap of profligate fuel consumption at the moment when maximum
range was a fundamental requirement for air tactics and commercial
air transport.
While Lindbergh’s sound judgment proved valuable in this role, it
was back in his natural character as the Lone Eagle that he went
to town for me. On a trip to the Pacific, made at my suggestion
with a view to helping the Vought Corsair play its lawful part in
carrier operations, Lindbergh flew with a squadron of Army Lightnings
on a long-range over-water mission. During this period of island
hopping, advances were restricted to the operating radii of escorting
fighters. Charles Lindbergh, utilizing some of the savvy that had
shown the way from New York to Paris, was able to stretch his own
range some five hundred miles. Following his quiet example, the
remaining squadrons were soon able to go and do likewise.
He dropped in unobtrusively one day on some marine fighter squadrons
left behind to harass by-passed Jap installations on adjacent
islands. The marines were accustomed to strafing Jap positions
with the guns and light bombs of their Corsairs. Lindbergh quietly
constructed a bomb rack for heavy bombs and progressively increased
his load from 1000 to 2000 pounds and finally to 3000-pound bombs.
When the marines discovered that the Corsair was truly a heavy
dive bomber, they demanded a chance to participate in carrier-based
close-support operations for amphibious forces. On receipt of this
news, the Navy “discovered” the Corsair—so much so in fact that Adm.
J. S. McCain, who had earlier confirmed current opinion that Corsairs
were too big for carriers, now charged me with losing the war because
Vought deliveries were inadequate to his needs over the Japanese
island of Honshu.
At home a new threat appeared. A rumor ran like wildfire through the
shop that Senator Truman’s War Investigating Committee had discovered
evidence of fraud in the inspection department of the Wright
Aeronautical plant at Cincinnati, and was on the way to investigate.
Almost immediately, the news headlines confirmed the story and the
fat was in the fire. The reaction on Wright was practically to halt
production; at Pratt and Whitney it threatened serious reductions in
output, just at the time when demand was at its highest.
The matter of the inspection on a production line is one of its most
delicate factors. No specifications or instructions can be written
without leaving an element of judgment to an inspection department.
All that is needed to freeze up the whole process is the threat of
Congressional inquiry, especially when accompanied, as was this case,
by jail threats for the guilty parties.
The investigation ran its customary course in the newspapers. The
Committee had its innings. No crime was discovered that had warranted
such a complete shutdown on deliveries of vital war materials. And
after it was over, the manufacturers all over the country picked
themselves up out of the gutter and went on with their production.
In light of the production miracles performed by private industry in
spite of a militantly unfriendly administration, it is interesting,
even though futile, to speculate what might have been done under
an inspired leadership that had faith in the cooperative process,
understood the technique of the voluntary method, and was determined
to give it a friendly opportunity to perform. From the point of
view of costs alone, results would have been startling. The impact
on the human spirit would have been far-reaching. Too many of us
functioned under little more inspiration than that associated with
pride in craftsmanship. I had witnessed the magic that can be worked
by inspiring leadership while under Admiral Beatty’s command in
the Grand Fleet. As World War I dragged to a close, two facts had
become clear. Despite all the bloody trench warfare along the Western
Front, victory would again rest with the nation which held command of
the sea. In the existing stalemate, with the Hun unwilling to risk
action, ultimate victory would crown the head of the fleet commander
who displayed the best leadership; it was all a matter of morale.
It is now part of history that Beatty, himself a hard-riding fox
hunter, succeeded in bringing his command to the peak of its fighting
efficiency at the precise moment German sailors selected to mutiny.
I had got an insight into Beatty’s mind one day just prior to the
Armistice when he had called me aboard the _Queen Elizabeth_ to
compliment me on some verses I had published in _The Arklight_, our
ship’s paper, under the title, “When the Grand Fleet Goes to Sea.”
On the settle before the open coal fire in his cabin, Admiral Beatty
summed up a discourse on leadership.
“I appreciate the tribute in your verses,” he had said, “because
morale is the first responsibility of the leader and my every
conscious and subconscious act has been directed toward maintaining
high morale here in the fleet.”
As United Aircraft spilled over into every vacant loft in the
Hartford area and then expanded into huge satellite plants in
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, morale became my first
responsibility. In order to indoctrinate our many new supervisors
in our underlying philosophies, we organized seminars and conducted
classes in leadership. In these I personally made it clear that
United management had no faith in “shovership”; we would stand or
fall on leadership.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
For Survival
In the anteroom to the office of the Secretary of the Navy, Fred
Rentschler and I waited our turn. A stream of visitors, mostly naval
officers of high rank, swept in and out of the sanctum. The men who
were furnishing the leadership for this war were contemporaries
of mine back in those brave days at the turn of the century when
Pax Britannica still reigned and when the chances for professional
advancement or even a career looked slim indeed. Now as they moved in
and out, many paused to greet us and say a word of congratulation on
our industry’s production miracle. Meanwhile, we wondered what the
secretary might have in store for us.
Jim Forrestal sat behind his desk, taking a telephone call. As we
took chairs in front of him, I glanced around at the flag-draped
room and its collection of trophies. Jim had made a bid to refurnish
the long room, decorating the walls with blow-up photos and seagoing
mementos but even a powerhouse like Jim could not dispel the musty
odor of the temporary structure or paint out its shabbiness. By 1945
that collection of shacks had served twenty-five years and seen two
world wars, and it bid fair to go on indefinitely. Jim hung up the
telephone, flicked a switch to his “intercom-squawker,” barked a
sharp order at the answering voice, and then turned to us.
James Forrestal, like Fred Rentschler, was a Princeton man. Curious
how you can spot the stamps of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth,
and other Ivy League colleges. Schools like this leave as much of an
imprint upon their alumni as do West Point and Annapolis. Jim was a
close-knit, clean-cut, youngish fellow, dark-complexioned, with the
muscles of an intercollegiate boxer bulging around his shoulders and
upper arms. A man of few words, he packed almost as much meaning in
them as did Fred Rentschler.
“I am going to tell you fellows something, now,” he began, “and if
you repeat it, I’ll deny I ever said it.” He paused to pull open the
upper left-hand drawer of the desk and remove a packet of gum. After
offering us some, he wadded the wrapper of his own piece, flicked it
into the wastebasket, and went on.
“You fellows are swamping us with your production,” he said.
“Engines, propellers, and airplanes are running out of our ears. The
time has come to slow down.”
I couldn’t resist a crack. “So it’s now ‘too much and too soon.’”
Fred Rentschler looked serious.
“Jim,” he began, “that remark of yours gives us the opening we have
been waiting for. We have been worried about the same thing for some
time, but with the criticism that has been leveled at us, we just
didn’t think it was time to bring the matter to you.” He lighted a
cigarette.
“Of course you know,” he said, “that the aircraft industry has been
blown up like a balloon. Our present output is all out of proportion
to our own meager resources. If there should be a sudden cessation
of hostilities, as in World War I, and that seems highly probable,
and if no more preparation has been made for such an event than now
exists, the whole aircraft industry will be wiped out in a matter of
days. If any company could survive such a catastrophe, it would be
United Aircraft, for we have been ultraconservative and taken every
possible precaution against just this contingency, but I promise you
even United would go out like a light.” Jim Forrestal sat silent,
watching Fred as he went on.
“We have made a quick study of our own situation,” he said, “and
concluded that, upon the sudden termination of existing war
contracts, which under the law occurs immediately upon the cessation
of hostilities, we could not complete the mechanics of paying off our
employees in time to prevent liquidating our resources. The pay roll
is so big,” he added, “and the job of paying off is so complex, that
the outgo would break us before we could finish the task.” He paused.
“To sum up our position,” he concluded, “the disorderly reconversion
that seems sure to follow this war will wipe us out even more
completely than it did after the Armistice. In our opinion,” he
added, “it’s up to you military fellows to do something about it.”
Jim Forrestal nodded. “I go along with you,” he said, “up to the last
statement. There is nothing the Army and Navy can do about this. We
are public servants and, even under Franklin D. Roosevelt, subject to
the people’s will. The only people that can do anything about it,”
he added, “are you men. Your industry has got to carry its story to
the public.” Again his telephone rang; again Jim handled the call. He
turned back to us.
“Your industry,” he went on, dead-pan, “is the choicest collection
of cutthroat competitors in the country. Maybe it’s because pioneers
still manage it. But if you pioneers expect to survive,” Jim went on,
“the industry must unite and do battle for its existence. Frankly, I
doubt if anyone can unite the aircraft industry, but someone has got
to try it.” He glanced my way.
“If anyone can do it,” he added, putting a finger on my knee, “you
can.”
He might as well have landed a fist on my chin. What he meant was
that having come out of the Navy, and escaped the early personal
rivalries, I was freed of a handicap.
Even as Jim had talked, orderlies had entered the room and begun
shifting chairs, lining them up in an arc around the secretary’s
desk. Through the open door I caught glimpses of the uniforms and
gray thatches of ranking department heads, standing by for a council
meeting. As Fred and I stood up to leave, Jim walked us to the door.
“Why not stay for the council meeting?” he asked me, as we shook
hands. “You’ll see a lot of old shipmates.”
“Thanks,” I replied, “I guess we’d better go home and digest what
you’ve just told us.”
Back in Hartford, the four members of United’s war council gathered
around the long table in the board room where Fred Rentschler had his
office. On the walls hung the portraits of men who had helped make
the company—men like Chance Vought, George Wheat, George Mead, and
Don Brown.
After discussing the problem Jim Forrestal had put up to us, we
agreed that this new responsibility would require rearrangement of
our own topside organization. An effort to organize the aircraft
industry for a public relations effort just didn’t fit in with the
detailed administration of any single company. I would have to
relinquish my job as chief executive.
And so I came face to face with the decision that I had known to
be inevitable the moment Jim Forrestal put the finger on me. I had
been in at the inception of Pratt and Whitney and United Aircraft.
I had managed three of its four divisions and participated in vital
decisions as to the other. I had helped hold it together in the
trying days following the Black and Nye investigations, and had been
its chief executive through the critical phases of the war expansion.
Now that we were over the hump, I would have to give up my cherished
title of president in order to try to help the company to survive.
As a matter of fact, we had long discussed the possibilities of a
reorganization following the war. We well knew that the reconversion
job would try the nervous and physical capacity of a man younger than
any of us four seniors, and that our duty to the company demanded
that we start bringing juniors along. We four would graduate into
the category of elder statesman while my successor took over the
reins. The logical man was Jack Horner, of Pratt and Whitney. Ray
Walsh and I would fleet up to vice-chairmen and Jack in due course
would become president. Meanwhile I would assume responsibility for
“general-industry” matters and retain supervision of research. Jack
would take over operations, and Fred would continue to exercise
authority over the business affairs of the company. Ray Walsh, who
had a unique capacity for handling policy, personnel, and legal
matters, would continue on his course.
With these decisions reached, we began a discussion of the course
to be followed in getting our story before the public. Had there
been some independent aviation organization capable of doing the
job, we should have looked to them, but under the circumstances, it
seemed clear that we must depend upon our trade association, the
Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, in Washington. The war production
councils, then functioning effectively, would automatically disband
upon cessation of hostilities; the Aeronautical Chamber must be
rejuvenated.
Discussion of the course to be followed brought out a key suggestion
by Raycroft Walsh. Ray had been in the Air Corps in Washington during
the Moffett-Mitchell dogfight and had participated in the hearings
before the Morrow Board. Having in mind the constructive influence
of the Board, he now suggested that we campaign for a new public air
policy commission.
Fred Rentschler rather pooh-poohed the suggestion but, when I
supported it, finally agreed wholeheartedly. Here was a little
indicator of how difficult it might prove to sell the idea to the
company presidents; if Fred Rentschler needed selling, how about
the others less profound in their mental processes than he? We now
decided that I should make a swing around the circuit to appraise
the states of mind and try to plant the idea before we committed
ourselves irrevocably to changes in our own organization that our
directors might not approve. On our board, aside from the principal
officers of the company, we had enlisted the help of several
distinguished “outside directors.” Joseph P. Ripley, president of
the New York investment house of Harriman Ripley, had been active
in the original incorporation of United Aircraft and Transport.
Harry G. Stoddard, president of Wyman Gordon, had long served on our
executive committee. Morgan B. Brainard, president of Aetna Life and
Affiliated Companies, was a man of broad wisdom and wide business
experience. Francis W. Cole, a prominent Hartford lawyer and later
board chairman of the great Traveller’s Insurance Company, brought
us mature counsel. Mr. Peter M. Fraser, later president of the
Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, completed our coterie of
able men. And if at times the technicalities of our business confused
them somewhat, nonetheless, their unexcelled fundamental business
knowledge was a priceless asset to the company. We outlined the plan
to them but decided to defer final decision until I could check
industry sentiment and determine if the Forrestal suggestion could
command its support.
This check took me westward to Los Angeles, the center of the
air-frame section of aircraft production. As our representative
in that territory, Russell R. Vought, younger brother of Chance
Vought, had long maintained an office in Beverly Hills. Russ had
gone west while still a young man, and founded his own business in
San Francisco. Then back in 1928, when we had equipped the _Langley_
with the new Corsairs, and especially the single-float amphibians, he
had agreed to represent Chance Vought Aircraft on the West Coast on
a part-time basis. Now he made his home in Beverly Hills and had a
bungalow in Palm Springs. Arrived in Beverly Hills, I called up John
G. Lee, the manager of the West Coast War Production Council, and
asked him over to the office with a view to getting his appraisal of
the problem.
John Lee, through his close association with the presidents of the
West Coast companies, was able to give me an authoritative estimate
of the sentiment out there. The presidents, he thought, were too much
engrossed with their own immediate problems to become interested
in the long-term difficulties. They were aware of the threat to
survival but not as yet concerned with it. Like many other business
chief executives, they were groggy and punch-drunk, and you couldn’t
blame them. As a reward for their pains they had found themselves
characterized as munitions racketeers, war profiteers, and merchants
of death. Now, through production miracles, they had given the lie to
their detractors. The profit motive no longer provided an incentive
to creative endeavor.
“Take Mr. Douglas, for instance,” John summed up. “He is the key to
the West Coast situation. If you could enlist his support, you could
also get the help of the others; without it you’d be licked before
you started. _Time_ magazine recently quoted him as saying he had
the perfect postwar plan: ‘lock the door and throw away the key.’ Of
course Mr. Douglas didn’t say that, even though he may have thought
it, but the quote is significant.”
Ever since that day in Jim Forrestal’s office, I had been mulling
over an idea evolved one evening at Admiralty House, Bermuda, where
my wife and I had been the dinner guests of Vice Adm. Sir Charles E.
Kennedy-Purvis, RN, K.C.B., Commander in Chief of British Forces in
the Western Atlantic. As Comdr. Charles E. Kennedy-Purvis, Executive
Officer of the light cruiser _Southampton_, I had known him well in
the old Grand Fleet days. “K-P,” as we called him, had recently been
advised of his pending assignment as First Deputy Sea Lord, at the
Admiralty, London, where he would be charged with responsibility for
recreating the British carrier force after the decline suffered under
the Air Ministry. He had asked us down for a visit in order to get my
slants on the principles involved.
My idea had first come to me the evening following the German
surrender in World War I when several of us wardroom officers had
gone ashore to pay a social call on K-P and his wife in their tiny
apartment over a cottage in the village of Limekilns. Upon my
referring to Beatty’s congratulatory signal to the Grand Fleet, K-P
had taken pains to remind me that the message had been addressed to
the British Empire.
“Beatty,” he had said, “was not talking to the fleet but reminding
the people that it had been the nine-knot tramps, the rusty colliers,
the huge transports, the drifters and trawlers, all the ‘Merchant
Men’ which had kept the Empire lifeline open. These,” he had added,
“are the backbone of our sea power.”
K-P, who like most English officers was much better schooled in
public affairs than were we, had gone on to give us a discourse on
transportation. From the days of the aborigines’ pursuit of game
herds, the progress of civilization was marked by the milestones of
the development of transport. In America, the railroads had sparked
reconstruction after the Civil War by opening up the resources of the
West. Following the World War, the automobile would likely perform
the same function. Improved transportation had always increased the
number of persons who could subsist on a given area and had always
increased the wealth and living standards of lands in which it had
been exploited.
When I had inquired what future K-P foresaw for the airplane he had
shaken his head.
“The economics of the thing are all against it,” he had replied. “The
cost and complication of the airplane are out of all proportion to
its limited useful load.”
Subsequently, with the coming of age of air transport, I had
begun to visualize an analogy between sea power and air power, a
line of thinking that had led naturally to Pax Britannica and Pax
Aeronautica. About this same time John W. Donaldson published a paper
on the same subject. This would become the keynote of the aircraft
manufacturing industry’s struggle for survival, but first we must
establish a wholly new definition of air power. Instead of its being
synonymous with air force, the term must incorporate such other
elements as aircraft production, airline transport, private flying,
finance, public support, in fact everything that helps make a nation
strong in the air. While advocating the preservation of our industry,
we must predicate the need upon the public interest.
When I outlined this idea to John Lee, his eyes lighted up.
“It will take an idea like that to interest Don Douglas,” he said.
“Remember,” he advised, “Mr. Douglas responds to the eye rather than
to the ear.”
In order that we might concentrate on this job, the Voughts now
suggested that my wife and I join them at their cottage on the
desert. Here at Palm Springs, the task was to do a sort of Mahan
analysis of air power in history, and boil it all down to the
simplest terms. After a lot of head-scratching, pencil-pushing, and
earnest discussion, I finally got it in form.
Feeling now the need for the best possible counsel on this important
matter, I wangled an invitation from Rear Adm. John H. Towers, then
on duty at Pearl Harbor, and hopped out to Honolulu in a Pan American
Boeing Clipper that left San Francisco before supper and arrived at
Pearl before breakfast next morning.
Curiously enough, Jack had as his guest a young English lieutenant
commander of the Royal Naval Flying Service, who had been sent out
by my friend K-P to observe American carrier operations. After two
decades, he was doing the Godfrey de Chevalier act in reverse.
During my two-day visit at Pearl Harbor, Chester Nimitz, Commander in
Chief, entertained at a luncheon for his top commanders who had been
called in by air for briefing on the next operation, and he invited
me to join the party. As I sat down, the single civilian in a galaxy
of top brass, I estimated that the average number of gilt stars among
thirty-odd officers must be about two and a half per man. These
fellows, all either contemporaries at Annapolis or men with whom I
had been shipmates prior to leaving the Navy, had fought through two
world wars and participated in world events none had even remotely
foreseen.
After a review of my program with Jack Towers and Forrest Sherman,
the latter now Nimitz’s planning chief, I caught the Clipper back to
San Francisco. We had a full load, top brass returning to Washington
and young bluejackets returning home on top priority because of
illness in their families or other personal difficulties. Arrived
back at Beverly Hills in time for lunch, I called Don Douglas on the
telephone, and made a date with him for the morrow.
As our company car pulled up at the entrance to Don’s plant in Santa
Monica, the California sun shown on the camouflaged village, which
so completely concealed the sprawling plant that it was hard to find
the gate. Don sat behind the desk in the shadow of his lightproof and
soundproofed ground-floor office, and stood up to greet me as I came
in. After a few words to state my business, I handed him his copy of
the air-power statement and as Don sat down to read it, I opened my
copy with a view to pacing his reading. Don Douglas read carefully,
noting every word.
“I’ll go for this,” he said simply, speaking in the soft voice that
made it difficult to hear him at times. Then after a moment he added,
“What do you want me to do?”
I explained the need for a meeting of our Aeronautical Chamber of
Commerce at which the board of governors should adopt the program. We
must reorganize the Chamber and give it a set of officers who could
direct the program; I suggested that he become chairman of the board
of governors. He countered with the statement that this job should
be mine, but agreed to accept the vice-chairmanship of the board. I
suggested that we borrow John G. Lee from the West Coast Aircraft
War Production Council to head up the reorganization of the chamber
and, after some consideration, he agreed. We would bring in Clyde
Vandenburgh, of the East Coast Council, and Frank Russell, of the
National Council, to assist. A meeting of the National Council was
scheduled to take place in Los Angeles late in April, 1944, which
would be attended by all the company presidents. We would call a
simultaneous meeting of the Chamber and put the air-power program
before the Board for consideration at that time.
On April 26, 1944, the board of governors of the Aeronautical Chamber
of Commerce met in Los Angeles. In presenting the program, still
in its tentative typewritten form, I pointed out that this was a
preliminary statement and subject to revision by the members. After
all, the Constitution of the United States had been no one-man job
but the painstaking effort of many men of different minds; we needed
the thoughts of everyone on what would prove an important action by
the board. A number of constructive suggestions were offered and
voted, after which the revision was adopted unanimously. The preamble
to the resolution ran as follows:
The Board of Governors of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of
America, in order to “provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our posterity,” and in order to ensure that the airplane which
America created shall be used to maintain peace and secure the
blessings of peace to mankind, does unanimously recommend the early
formulation of an American Air Power Policy under the following
guiding principles:
And the essence of these principles was summarized toward the end of
the pamphlet in this paragraph.
The public character of aviation imposes upon it a dual role.
Commercial companies, to advance their private interests and
stimulate technical progress, must compete in the realm of
operations. At the same time, they must collaborate in the realm of
policy to promote the public interest.
We had naturally expected that when this document was released to
the aviation press it would create something of a stir, but in this
we were disappointed. After this warning that the idea would need to
be sold, even to aviation writers, we began to appreciate the fact
that we had a job on our hands. Through Deac Lyman, an old _New York
Times_ reporter, we were invited to lunch with Arthur Sulzberger
and his editors in the executive dining room of the Times Building,
where we briefed our situation. The _Times_, always alert to aviation
matters, subsequently covered aviation news and handled aviation
editorials against the background of the policy. The magazine
_Aviation_, whose editor, Leslie Neville, was author of numerous
books on aviation, caught the new spirit and developed the theme.
Soon all the members of the Aviation Writers’ Association took a
hand in developing the broad background of air power as a trinity of
commerce, industry, and security.
Subsequent events proved that we had acted none too early. Within a
matter of weeks, we were haled before a Congressional investigating
committee, the War Contracts Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on
Military Affairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Toward Public Inquiry
Having developed a certain gun shyness before such Congressional
inquiries as the Nye inquisition and the air-mail investigation
conducted by Senator Hugo Black, now Mr. Justice Black of the United
States Supreme Court, we air craftsmen might have shied away from
Senator Murray save for a bit of sage advice given me by Mr. Sam
Rayburn, then Speaker of the House. When I called on him for counsel
as to how we should proceed with our air-power program, the Speaker
offered it as his opinion that we should avoid lobbying as we would
a plague. All trade associations were suspect; they usually devoted
their energies to the search for special advantage for their clients.
And the munitions business was condemned out of hand. Besides, that
was the wrong way under any circumstances. Congressmen, the Speaker
assured me, were just average people, no wiser, no dumber than anyone
else. But there was one thing a Congressman had to understand if he
wanted to stay in politics, and that was the will of the people. He
thought we had a good case for public approval in our air policy, and
he advised following Jim Forrestal’s advice and taking it direct to
them.
He thought one of the best ways to get our story to the public was
to appear at the public hearings held by Congressional committees.
These, according to the Speaker, were good sounding boards from which
to beam your point of view. Besides, you might actually influence a
committee if you had an especially strong case. But it was a mistake
to send lawyers or staff members of an association to these hearings.
The company presidents should appear themselves; they were more
convincing, and Congressmen liked to look them over. They respected
men who had won their spurs in competition, especially if they also
knew how to stand up and speak their pieces.
“Don’t send a boy,” the Speaker concluded, “to do a man’s work.”
By the middle of 1944, with the outcome of the war no longer in
doubt, men began worrying about postwar and the inevitable letdown
of peace. Nation-wide unemployment was taken for granted, and what
to do about it became a live political issue. The aircraft industry,
now one of the largest industries in the history of the world and one
wholly dependent upon an inflated demand for war materials, seemed
headed for the biggest bust imaginable.
And while this was a problem of national interest, it had its focus
in Southern California. Thousands of people had left their homes and
jobs and migrated toward the setting sun there to do their several
bits and incidentally enjoy the climate. Almost immediately, public
officials sensitive to the reactions of the working class began
proposing legislation to meet the problem; a ticket back home for the
dispossessed worker and six months’ unemployment compensation were
widely advocated. The fact that high wages had been paid them and
that the thrifty could probably take care of themselves seemed to
have been lost in the shuffle.
Looking back on this situation now, we can see how completely wrong
the forecasts were. Most of those workers, having basked in the
California sunshine, had already determined to settle there and
could not have been driven out by an air raid. Their newly acquired
mechanical skills would find ready employment in new industries. The
war demand and the “total war” policy had drained all the pipe lines
of consumer goods while the cold fear of the ’thirties had frozen the
investment market and stopped the normal expansion of housing, plant
construction, and so on. What the country really faced was a pent-up
demand that would lead to a postwar boom, and a dearth of labor. The
automotive industry, for instance, could expect to reconvert to a
demand of unprecedented proportions; the aircraft industry, on the
other hand, would face an overwhelming war surplus. The problem that
faced the country was not that of unemployment; the real job was to
keep alive a remnant of vital defense industry.
But this was not the problem before the War Contracts Subcommittee of
the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and its chairman, Senator
James E. Murray, of Montana. “Full employment” was the war cry of
that era, and the C.I.O. echoed it through the halls of Congress.
Full employment, it appeared, was the right of every citizen, and
the government must guarantee it to him whether he wanted to work
or not. Some industrialists applied similar thinking to their
corporations; the idea of government-guaranteed corporate social
security had prompted the creation of the NRA and the formulation of
its monopolistic codes. Now labor unions on the one hand and trade
associations on the other vied with each other in bringing pressure
to bear on Congress to relieve them from the necessity for struggling
to survive.
And so when Senator Murray extended us an invitation to appear
at a hearing to be held on July 10, 1944, we decided to conform
with the Speaker’s advice. The C.I.O. had tipped its hand in a
circular distributed in advance, castigating aircraft manufacturers
as profiteers who had averaged as high as 3,000 per cent on war
contracts. Since we manufacturers were scheduled to make the first
appearance and be followed by the C.I.O., it was a fair guess that we
had been selected as whipping boys.
And so our association, using the air policy as its bible, prepared
its case with a special slant at this matter of war profits. We
divided our presentation into four parts, with a separate witness
for each. I was to make the general introduction of the industry
viewpoint, and submit our statement of air-power policy. J. C.
Ward, president of Fairchild Aviation Corporation and a convincing
witness, was to cover postwar national defense and the aircraft
industry. Harry Woodhead, president of Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft
Corporation, was to discuss the George-Murray bill, manpower
demobilization, contract termination, disposal of war surplus, and
reconversion. Joseph T. Geuting, chairman of the Personal Aircraft
Council of the Chamber, was to discuss the role of personal aircraft
in postwar readjustment.
When the hearing opened in one of the large committee rooms of the
Senate Office Building, the place was crowded and the press table
filled by Washington correspondents attracted by the C.I.O. handout.
Senator Murray sat on the dais while the witnesses were called to
testify from a table at his feet. This layout put the witness at
something of a disadvantage and news photographers sometimes used
it to get worm’s-eye shots of bigshots looking anything else but. I
recalled one taken of a friend of mine in the Black investigation,
and widely used by the press, in which my friend, who was really a
good egg, looked like nothing so much as a praying mantis.
This inquiry, however, appeared friendly. It wasn’t important enough
to warrant klieg lights or a radio hookup, but attracted the usual
barrage of flash bulbs touched off at the instant best calculated to
catch the witness with his mouth open or his guard down.
In my extemporaneous introduction, I pointed out to the Committee
that we welcomed this inquiry and especially the Committee’s interest
in postwar unemployment. We had taken the position early in the
war that the government should permit us to earn enough money on
war contracts so that we might discharge our responsibilities to
employees terminated by the cessation of hostilities. We had had in
mind that, by adjusting each case on its merits, and out of funds set
aside from earnings for that purpose, the employer could handle the
problem with fairness to the employee as well as to the public which,
after all, was the customer in this case.
However, Congress had disapproved that procedure and, through the
excess profits tax, the Price Adjustment Act, the cost inspection
service, and all other controls, had so limited our earnings that we
now had no funds available for the purpose. As a matter of fact, our
companies had been so blown up by war demands that a sudden cessation
of hostilities must inevitably wipe out all our resources before we
could reduce our working forces in any orderly manner. In short, our
problem was not one of war profits; it was rather a question of how
to survive.
But while on the subject of profits, it might be noted that only
recently the National City Bank of New York had printed in its
_Bulletin_ an analysis of profits as a percentage of sales of the
several groups of industries doing war work. This report had shown
that the aircraft industry ranked lowest of all industries, with a
record of approximately 1½ per cent. The same table had revealed that
the automotive industry, now busy manufacturing products designed and
developed by the aircraft companies, had earned nearly twice as much.
This fact had resulted from the automotive industry’s better tax base.
Meanwhile, I pointed out, my own company, United Aircraft, had
from the beginning voluntarily stabilized its earnings at a figure
based on the use of its own facilities and resources prior to the
commencement of the United States aircraft production program.
All these figures were, however, quite academic; they were simply
estimated results of current operations based on an assumption
that the war contracts might be terminated in an orderly manner.
In the last war, no such thing had taken place; contracts had been
closed out so brutally that, according to another National City
Bank _Bulletin_, many companies had gone through the wringer and
even the strongest, in the number of some sixty-six representative
suppliers, had been forced to write down their apparent net worth
by approximately one billion dollars, or 50 per cent. Our present
“profit” was therefore but a temporary bookkeeping entry; no company
could even guess where it would come out unless Congress proceeded
with all speed to write new legislation that would facilitate orderly
reconversion.
While I developed this testimony, our staff circulated a summary of
the figures among the men and women at the press table, some of whom
had, no doubt, read the C.I.O. pamphlet charging us with having made
3,000 per cent. C.I.O. figures showed gross profit before taxes as
a percentage of net worth and, while accurate enough, manifestly
emphasized what wide variations can result from the mere definition
of the naughty word “profit.”
In continuing my testimony, I went on to point out that the
aircraft industry, now the biggest industry, was a vital factor in
our domestic economy and that the public interest as well as the
worker’s interest demanded that we not upset the whole national
picture through disorderly or even punitive procedure. By this we did
not mean for a moment that our industry should be subsidized in any
way; we hated subsidy because it tended to throttle technological
progress. We had made rapid strides only because we had had rough
going; in our struggle to exist at all we had been forced to conceive
and create devices that would otherwise have never seen the light of
day. What we asked of the government was that it make up its mind as
to what it needed and then let us go back to cutting each other’s
throats in that exciting way which had kept United States technology
in the forefront of world progress.
At this remark, I noted a stir among the newsmen and women; long
accustomed to hearing special pleaders demand special privilege, they
were taken aback by the aircraft industry’s expressed preference for
competition. Such unheard-of conduct was news of the “man-bites-dog”
variety.
From this beachhead I went on to urge the appointment of a
presidential advisory commission on aviation, one like the Morrow
Board of 1925. After reviewing some of the background, I pointed
out the rapid advances in technology since the day of that report,
especially in the key element of air transport. This alone would seem
to warrant a reappraisal of air policy, one based on the new concept
that air power was not a military striking force but a trinity
composed of air commerce, aircraft industry, and the armed service as
well as all the other factors that went to make a country powerful
in the air. All these factors were mutually interdependent and must
be closely integrated if we were to employ our air power to keep the
peace. The need for thinking through a new policy based on these
ideas was obvious; it concerned government, labor, management—all the
elements of the community.
In summing up, I pointed out again that our problem had never been
a matter of profits but one of survival and that survival was our
immediate concern. However, we were confident that, given an orderly
reconversion and the necessary constructive air policy, air power
could become the new reagent for keeping the peace of the world and
better still, through the medium of improved transport, lead to the
era of prosperity so vital to keeping the peace.
Following me, Harry Woodhead gave specific answers to eight questions
propounded by the Committee and concerned with the industrial and
human aspects of demobilization. Speaking in his clear, strong voice
he made a convincing impression. Following Harry Woodhead, Joseph T.
Geuting, Jr., submitted a comprehensive summary of things necessary
to the orderly development of personal airplanes during the postwar
adjustment period. Both Joe Geuting and Carl Ward, who now followed
with his presentation, had been selected because of their knowledge
of their subjects but even more important because both were good
extemporaneous speakers and both had strong convictions as to the
soundness of the industry policy. Carl Ward especially handled a
complex subject with a knack rare in professional men; he reduced
technical jargon to popular language.
At the close of the day, Senator Murray thanked us warmly for
our constructive approach to the problem. During the sessions of
the following days, Artemus L. Gates, Assistant Secretary of the
Navy for Air, endorsed the industry stand. Robert P. Patterson,
Undersecretary of War; Charles E. Wilson, executive vice-chairman of
the War Production Board; and representatives of the U.A.W.-C.I.O.
and I.A.M.-A.F. of L. made recommendations generally in accord
with the suggestions of the industry representatives. The C.I.O.
barrage on profits broke down against the record established by the
industry, and Senator Murray himself later introduced a bill in
Congress calling for the appointment of a new presidential advisory
commission, like the Morrow Board. However, many critical months must
pass before such a board would see the light of day.
Meanwhile, press comment on the hearing was favorable and David
Lawrence dug the meat out of the cocoanut in an article in which he
said that the aircraft industry had revealed its postwar plan to a
startled Congressional committee. The industry, he said, had thought
its problem through. And to the surprise of all, it had not asked
for subsidy. It had asked only that the government make up its mind
what it wanted and leave the rest to competition within the industry.
We drew encouragement from all these events. We knew that Senator
Murray was close to the White House and that his introduction of
the bill implied at least that the President was not unfavorably
disposed to it. For prior to the hearing, Fred Rentschler and I had
taken pains to cover this angle, by making a call on John W. Snyder.
Mr. Snyder had recently come to Washington at President Truman’s
request and was destined to do a statesmanlike job in many fields for
the Truman administration. We found him well informed on the whole
air-power problem and fully prepared to advise the President on the
industry’s plans to bring the matter before the public. Early in the
program we even hoped that the President might appoint the committee
himself, even as President Coolidge had done, but now to our surprise
we found active opposition in two quarters.
The Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air, William A. M. Burden,
developed no enthusiasm for the idea, and when Don Douglas, Bob
Gross, and I called on him one day, he explained why. He felt
that the existing legislation on the subject of air commerce was
adequate and feared that a protracted public inquiry might hamper
things already in the works and thus retard progress. But the big
complication we faced came from the Army Air Forces.
The ancient Army-Navy rivalry had not died down under the impact of
war but had flared anew and on many fronts. At heart it was the same
old dogfight that had engaged Billy Mitchell and Billy Moffett twenty
years earlier. The Army Air Force still battled for control of all
military aviation, and the Navy scratched gravel to hang onto its
own. Within the industry itself, whatever might be our private views,
we took no position on the matter. After all it was a private grudge
fight between two customers. We had hoped that the Air Force, now
that it had won its battle for autonomy and demonstrated its decisive
character, would welcome an opportunity to plead its case before a
public tribunal. Instead, it resorted to the same tactics Billy
Mitchell had used and thus confused the whole matter of air-power
policy. The fact was that the Army Air Force, for all the miracles
performed by the military air-transport services—managed as it was
by personnel from the commercial air-transport lines—still remained
blind to the significance of air transport.
In an effort to overcome this resistance we now asked the National
Planning Association to study air power, hoping that this
distinguished organization might support us with a recommendation for
a national air policy board. For the National Planning Association,
a private organization comprising men in all walks of life and of
all shades of opinion had been organized to study just such problems
as ours, namely those of vital import to national policy. Before
a matter could be studied at all it must first be passed upon by
a tough board of trustees who carefully screened out all subjects
not included in its charter. Then after a problem had been accepted
for study, it had to be debated by a selected panel in an open
forum before which the burden of proof lay upon the proponents. The
association finally accepted our request for study and numerous
meetings were held under the supervision of competent moderators.
Some of the labor representatives on the panel were especially keen,
and since the industry’s position safeguarded the working man and the
public as well as the industry, we found ourselves on the strongest
possible grounds.
Our problem lay with some of the many government agencies on the
panel, for aviation concerned a whole flock of such agencies, many
of whom were naturally more concerned with protecting their vested
interests than with advancing the art of aviation as a whole.
Debates before the panel helped us to crystallize our own ideas and
to adjust them to practical circumstances. When, for instance, the
representative of the Director of the Bureau of the Budget questioned
the soundness of our view as to the fundamental economics of air
power, he started me off on an expedition the results of which
startled even our research group.
Having in mind, from my youth in the Northwest, the story of the
land-grant railroads, I had begun a search for a factual basis with
which to support the air-power theme. I knew that, following the
Civil War, the whole force of the United States government had been
placed behind the expansion of the railroads as a means of opening
up the great West, providing jobs for discharged war veterans, and
developing a vast area of rich territory. To encourage this expansion
the government had given some 180,000,000 acres of undeveloped land
to certain roads and in return had passed legislation requiring the
railroads to rebate to the government a percentage of the charge
for hauling government freight and passengers. The balance sheet on
this project, if one could be found, might prove interesting to the
air-transport situation.
Inquiry among railroad operators disclosed no record of the
transaction and little interest in it, but research in the government
records produced the surprising information that the roads had repaid
their debt to the government however one might figure the original
land values. If the figure selected was $1.00 per acre, the estimate
at the time of the gift, the roads, having at the time of inquiry
rebated some $640,000,000, had paid the debt back threefold. If the
figure selected was $3.00 per acre, a fair average of the selling
price the roads had received for the land, then they had still broken
even. In other words, the government had not subsidized the roads
with this grant; it had made instead a profitable investment. A short
while after this inquiry was made, Congress revoked the land-grant
rebates.
Similar inquiry into the air-mail situation now revealed an even
more startling figure. At the time of the inquiry, the airlines
were still making money. Having lost half of their equipment to the
military air-transport services, and having supplied a large part
of the operating leadership, they had stepped up their utilization
of equipment, and reduced their costs, to the point where they
were earning satisfactory profits from mail and passengers without
yet having exploited the possibilities of air cargo. Had they been
“reasonably regulated” as required by law, they might have continued
their record instead of running into serious losses as they have
since done. But at the moment of the inquiry, the Post Office
Department could make the proud boast that receipts by the government
from the sale of air-mail stamps alone had already exceeded payments
made to the operators for carrying the mails, even after a heavy
loading of Post Office Department overhead. The United States
government was not subsidizing the airlines with mail pay; it was
taking a nice profit from that operation. Post Office subsidies were
granted for several different classes of mail by palpably low rates
but the special air-mail stamp carried its own freight.
And so, out of the need for justifying our theory of air power, we
discovered the greatest possible justification of it, namely, its
economic soundness. The Post Office Department, like all government
departments subjected to the handicaps of political patronage,
was notoriously uneconomical, yet the air-mail operation could
support a large slice of this excessive overhead and still show the
department a profit on the operation. The railroads argued that the
hidden subsidy of government airports and airways nullified the
arguments, yet there was a long history of similar government support
for highways and waterways. Meanwhile the Post Office subsidized
directly the carriage of periodicals, and took serious losses on
rural delivery and other classes of service. Here was a fact of
profound importance to our air-power program: air mail was already
self-sustaining and if subsequently the situation changed, losses
could not be charged to air mail as such, but must be credited
directly to inept management; that is, government regulation.
This raised the whole question not alone of the reasonableness of
the “reasonable regulation” but also of the principle itself. There
is nothing in the history of the railroads to support the principle;
cutthroat competition could hardly have been more disastrous than
the present regulation. When, earlier, the railroads had found
themselves face to face with the penalties of their own mistakes,
they had sought to lean on government; they had asked for regulation
and they had got it. Of course they had sacrificed their birthright
for a mess of pottage because, having eased the economic pressure
of the struggle to survive, they had removed the chief incentive to
technological development.
This point was admitted by Fred Williamson, then president of the New
York Central, when he and I discussed the matter on a salmon-fishing
trip to Anticosti Island. It had started as a bantering argument
at a time when the New York Central was giving consideration to a
suggestion that the railroad start its own airline. After I had set
forth the case for air transport, Fred Williamson looked off down the
Jupiter River and remarked in all earnestness:
“You know, if the railroads had invested in engineering all the money
they have spent seeking to gain legislative advantage over motor and
air transport, we’d be in a far better competitive position today.”
This whole matter of “reasonable regulation,” so critical with
respect to a healthy air-transport industry, the key to air power,
was one we had hoped to have studied by our air policy board,
but in that hope we were disappointed. The National Planning
Association issued a fine report on air-power policy, but certain
government agencies blocked its support of our recommendation for
the appointment of a presidential aviation commission. Under the
circumstances we were not surprised when the President withheld
action.
Now since one of the most important questions to come before a new
board must be that of the long-term programs of procurement for
air-force naval and commercial needs, we suggested that a study of
this should be inaugurated. Meanwhile, in order to bring the many
government agencies now concerned with aviation into some semblance
of accord, the President had appointed an informal group called
the “Air Coordinating Committee,” an organization which included
the Assistant Secretaries for Air of the War, Navy, and Commerce
Departments. This committee now initiated a study by the Harvard
School of Business Administration, to determine the absolute minimum
of aircraft production of all types under which an aircraft industry
might exist. Such an industry must, of course, keep in the forefront
of world technological progress and be capable of rapid expansion in
times of emergency. As the keystone of air commerce and air forces,
the public interest seemed to require at least a minimum industry.
The report, when finally issued, clearly indicated the vital need
for a long-term, continuing program that would correlate all needs,
public and private, and it specified the size of a minimum program in
pounds of air frames to be built each year.
In order to remove any misunderstanding as to the character of
our association we had earlier changed our name to the Aircraft
Industries Association of America, and to help direct our
public-opinion work, we employed skilled public relations counsel.
From them we learned that one of the first steps in creating public
opinion is to bring your case before writers and speakers everywhere
whose comments and opinions command public respect. One method
of accomplishing this is for industry speakers to address public
gatherings, where writers and speakers are in attendance, and to
bring a message that will command sufficient attention to warrant
comment by the public press. Our air-policy program contained such a
message and it now devolved upon me to carry the message to Garcia.
Time was, in this land of ours, when public speakers were few and far
between; today they are many and underfoot. When any organization
decides to hold an annual dinner, it must first recruit a speaker
whose name may attract enough customers to help the dinner committee
break even. And since the audience are themselves all public
speakers, they will be less interested in what the speaker has to
say, and more in how he says it; a new technique or a new story is
of unusual interest. Having had no other training in public speaking
than that which goes along with standing in front of a squad of
bluejackets and selling them on hitting the target, my technique
was informal, conversational, and flowing. I might have memorized
and carefully prepared my extemporaneous address, but I tried not
to reveal the fact. And when, after giving my air-power theme the
particular twist that belonged with the particular audience, some of
them came up to congratulate me, I soon discovered that few ever
remembered the words, though some recalled the music. With this in
mind, it is often more effective to slant the speech at the newsmen
or the newsreaders; the listening audience is only waiting to get it
over with anyway—even as you and I.
Meanwhile our several companies used their own resources to carry
our story to their own localities where workers and businessmen
were interested in the survival of the enterprise. Some of this, as
Speaker Rayburn had foreseen, percolated back to Washington whether
in the form of resolutions by various farm, labor, or business
organizations, or just by letter or word of mouth. And so, with
the hand of some government aviation agencies against us, we were
encouraged by the reception given us by a group of senators and
representatives who had come to dinner.
At an informal affair arranged to introduce our company presidents to
some of the leaders in Congress on aeronautical matters, men who had
previously known each other by name only, we divided our guests among
small tables at each of which one of our presidents acted as host.
Afterward, we called on our guests to speak to us and to our surprise
found the burden of their discourse to be something like this: “You
fellows have sold the public on air power, what do you think we ought
to do about it?” In reply we pointed out that the whole problem
was too complex for us; neither we nor anyone else could have the
answers. We thought the matter deserved an airing before a public
commission like the presidential advisory committee of twenty years
ago.
Concrete action along these lines was forthcoming at the instigation
of an able senator, Mr. Hugh B. Mitchell, from my native state of
Washington. As chairman of a subcommittee of the Senate Military
Affairs Committee, one that contained a number of outstanding men,
the senator began conducting hearings on the subject. Our company
presidents who appeared before this committee to present our case
were much impressed by the fact that committee members attended the
hearings and took an active interest in the problem. Before going
back home to stand for reelection, Senator Mitchell introduced a bill
calling for the appointment of a board to be constituted along the
lines of the old Morrow Board. When the senator failed of reelection
in the Republican year of 1947, a Democratic colleague, able Senator
Brian MacMahon of my own state of Connecticut, reintroduced the
Mitchell bill. Not to be outdone in courtesy, Republican Senator
Brewster of Maine introduced the Brewster bill, one that differed
from the MacMahon bill in that it provided for a purely Congressional
committee.
From this point forward, matters dragged interminably. Most of
us manufacturers, sold on our own doctrine, had now moved into
the design and production of new transport aircraft intended to
replace the war-weary war surplus. In United Aircraft, for instance,
we had undertaken to expand the power output and increase the
dependability of our current commercial engines and had at the same
time inaugurated a wholly new engine, a twenty-eight-cylinder Wasp
Major with a capacity of 4,360 cubic inches and an initial rating of
3,000 horsepower. This was over three times the cylinder displacement
of the original Wasp but over seven times the power output, with
possibilities of reaching ten times that output. It was expected to
cost ten million dollars for development alone, or some ten times the
original investment in Pratt and Whitney at the inception of the Wasp
production.
Around these new models and the competitive engines under development
by our rivals, Wright Aeronautical, the airplane manufacturers
had gone overboard on new transports designed to carry increased
loads at greatly reduced costs, and at much higher speed. All these
companies appreciated the risks involved, but faith in the future of
air transport justified to them the investment of their war earnings
in the expansion of American air power. And this faith might have
been justified had we been able to bring about the formulation of a
dynamic national air policy, for the designs were sound in conception
and well executed.
But now as time passed without concrete action, both air-transport
and aircraft production drifted into severe difficulties. Save for
a curious chain of circumstances, it is unlikely that the aircraft
industry could have survived the long wait for an air policy board.
Following the resignation of Charles E. Wilson, the great president
of General Electric, from the War Production Board where he had been
a bulwark of strength, and the subsequent departure of Donald Nelson,
Julius Krug became chairman. By that time reconversion had become
a live subject and a young lawyer on Cap Krug’s staff, Mort Wilner
by name, had become much exercised over the threatened extinction
of the aircraft industry. While, under existing law, cessation of
hostilities would automatically cancel all aircraft-production
contracts, a provision in Section 102 of the Reconversion Act
authorized the President to continue such contracts as could be shown
to be clearly in the public interest. At Mort Wilner’s suggestion I
took John E. P. Morgan, able manager of the association, and called
on Cap Krug to suggest that he obtain in advance a list from the War
and Navy Departments of such contracts as could be shown to be in
that category, and hold it in readiness against an emergency.
Thus it happened that when President Truman returned from Potsdam,
Cap Krug gave John Snyder a letter for the President’s signature,
which John Snyder carried to Norfolk with him. In this letter
addressed to the Secretaries of War and Navy, the President directed
that the specific contracts primarily connected with research and
development be continued in effect. On this slender thread the
aircraft industry subsisted until Congress could make appropriations
for a temporary program.
Meanwhile with both the aircraft manufacturers and the transport
operators hanging on the ropes, a fortunate break occurred. Maj. Gen.
Oliver P. Echols, United States Air Force, returned from duty with
the military government in Germany and asked for retirement. Oliver
had been to the Air Force Matériel Command what Admiral Moffett had
been to BUAERO. Having lacked any interest in personal publicity,
his name was not widely known, but his achievements had long been
recognized by all those in a position to appreciate them. In a way
he was reminiscent of the old aviation story about Charlie Lawrance,
designer of Lindbergh’s Wright Whirlwind engine. When asked why
he had received so little recognition, Charlie is reported to have
asked, “Whoever heard of Paul Revere’s horse?” Now Oliver Echols had
the qualities required of the president of the Aircraft Industries
Association. He had the respect of the industry, the Air Force, and
the Navy; he knew aviation; he was familiar with the routine of
Washington; he had the respect of legislators; he was in sympathy
with the principles of the association; and finally, because he had
zeal for air power, he was willing to accept the appointment, though
tired by arduous service.
Meanwhile, in an effort to crystallize opinion as to air policy, I
had published a book called _Air Power for Peace_, which was issued
early in 1945. Patterned on Mahan’s method, this little book reviewed
the history of aviation and appraised the impact of air power upon
the war. And though history was still in the making and available
only in censored headlines, the conclusions drawn in the book were
later supported by the reports of the postwar Strategic Bombing
Surveys. In light of the extravagant claims that had been made for
aviation, it was necessary to keep the book wholly objective and,
therefore, like Mahan, hard reading.
The outstanding conclusion drawn from this study was the important
place air transport had held in the war. When the sea had been
blockaded by enemy submarines, air transport had retained freedom
of movement. With the Japanese in control of sea communications to
China, air transport had hurdled the Himalayan Hump. With access by
sea to Europe and Africa denied by German submarines, air transport,
even though hastily improvised, had not only surmounted the barrier,
but had become in fact the safest, cheapest, and often the only means
of communication. Important persons and critical materials were
delivered at critical points often just in time to exercise decisive
influence on the outcome.
This fact was the result of the mobility of the airplane. On the
ground, where movement can take place in but two dimensions and
is often restricted by physical obstacles, blockade is relatively
simple. At sea, where movement is still in two dimensions,
obstructions are fewer and blockade is more difficult. In the air,
where movement is three dimensional, and fixed obstructions few,
effective blockade becomes almost impossible. And since freedom of
communication is vital to security, the basic strategy in both war
and peace is to guarantee freedom of communication to one’s self and
to deny it to an enemy. This must be the beginning and end of foreign
policy and the basis of strategy in both war and peace. The actual
performance of air transport in World War II therefore becomes one of
the most vital factors of modern times. By comparison, the atom bomb
is a dangerous explosive; air transport is a new key to economic,
social, and military security.
While writing _Air Power for Peace_, I had been impressed by the
need for presenting this point of view in another manner. In the
case of sea power, Mahan, the historian, had deduced the lessons of
history. But Hakluyt, the author, had helped create the history that
Mahan recorded three hundred years later. Born in England, somewhere
around 1553, Hakluyt had been depressed by the backwardness of his
people. While on a visit to the Temple, his uncle had shown him a map
of the world and had given him “a lesson in geography,” which had
inspired him to “prosecute that knowledge and kind of literature.”
After studying languages so as to be able to read whatsoever
printed or written discoveries and voyages he found extant in many
lands, he made himself acquainted with the chiefest captains at
sea, the greatest merchants, and the best mariners. Hearing other
nations extolled for their discoveries and notable enterprises, and
depressed by the sluggishness of the English and their neglect of
the opportunities afforded them, he undertook to edit the original
journals and narratives with a view to showing that in sea power
lay the means for abolishing squalor and poverty in England. Today
Richard Hakluyt’s _The English Voyages_ is one of the English
classics.
Having in mind the possibility of utilizing his method for the
air-power story, I looked around for material. However, Americans
seldom pause to record their observations, as did the explorers and
merchants of the pre-Elizabethan era, and I was forced to fall back
on my own experience. Fortunately, this had been varied and I had
played in the backfield of a number of Bowl games. The air-power
story might be told from my own point of view.
Decision to undertake this, plus a number of other circumstances,
including a visit to a hospital, prompted me to resign from business.
In order to approach the task objectively, I found it necessary to
detach myself from active operations. Since we had long ago laid
the groundwork for bringing a younger generation into the picture,
nothing seemed to stand in the way.
With the passage of time, the situation in aviation became more
critical. Then at the moment when both air transport and aircraft
production showed staggering losses, we got an unexpected assist from
the Bear That Walks Like A Man. When he began showing his claws, a
great public clamor arose in the United States and was quickly heard
by sensitive Washington ears. Whatever the politicians may have
missed about air power, the American people knew the answer. On July
22, 1947, the United States Congress passed an act to provide for the
establishment of a temporary Congressional Aviation Policy Board.
Four days earlier, on the eighteenth of July, the President appointed
his temporary Air Policy Commission. The Congressional Aviation
Policy Board, under the chairmanship of Senator Owen Brewster, of
Maine, was made up of senators and representatives. The President’s
Air Policy Commission, under the chairmanship of Mr. Thomas K.
Finletter, consisted of the chairman and four civilians. Now where we
had asked for one investigation, we got two.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Before the Bar of Public Opinion
The Finletter Board, convened by the President under date of July 18,
1947, held extensive hearings and on December 30, 1947, submitted its
report, “Survival in the Air Age.” Like the Morrow Board before it,
the Board comprised able and distinguished men, including besides
its chairman, Mr. Finletter, its vice-chairman, George P. Baker, and
members, Palmer Hoyt, John A. McCone, and Arthur D. Whiteside. Prior
to the Board’s being convened, a step of far-reaching importance
had been taken—the reorganization of the armed forces and the
establishment of the Department of Defense, under the able leadership
of James V. Forrestal.
Prior to this step, the Aircraft Industries Association had
inaugurated an annual conference of its board of governors held in
Williamsburg, Virginia, to provide a forum for the interchange of
ideas among the representatives of industry and those of government
and military services concerned with aeronautics, with a view to
acquainting industry and government with each other’s problems and
responsibilities and to aid in finding solutions to these problems.
At the first conference in 1946, it developed that the Army and Navy
had become concerned over their faulty public relations and wanted
advice and assistance.
Of course their unfavorable press had resulted from the ancient feud
still being carried on in the press by Army and Navy over the problem
of “integration” and “unification.” Behind its façade, the battle
was still the same jurisdictional dispute that had agitated Admiral
Moffett and General Mitchell back in the early ’twenties. From the
industry point of view, the dogfight tended to neutralize our efforts
to develop a public understanding of air power in its broad aspects,
and the board of governors now asked me to confer with Army, Navy,
and Air Force with a view to relieving the situation.
Since the industry had always refrained from participation in the old
feud, this mission posed a problem. To me, the arguments against the
organization of a separate air force had always outweighed those for
it, but I now realized that I had been influenced against the project
by the Army’s insistence on trying to grab off naval aviation. The
record of what had happened in England under the Air Ministry had
always stood out in my mind. But now, with commercial air transport
coming of age, and with the brilliant record of military and naval
air transport in the war, I began to see the problem in a different
light. Air transport had opened up a new frontier. If the mission
of the ground forces was the defense of the land frontier, and the
mission of the seaborne forces was the defense of the sea frontier,
then, logically, the mission of the air force must be the defense of
the air frontier. The key to the problem was the advent of commercial
air transport.
Pursuing this idea further, I came to the conclusion that our
thinking had been confused by two unsound concepts. First, we had
tended to organize the military on the basis of types of weapons
or vehicles, and second, we had looked at the airplane as a weapon
instead of a vehicle. Clearly, if the ground, sea, and air forces
were to be held responsible for the defense of their frontiers, then
each must have the implements essential to the discharge of that
responsibility, and must have full authority over their design,
development, and use. The ground, sea, and air forces must each have
the aircraft necessary to the discharge of their responsibilities.
The air is an ocean that gives uninterrupted access to every corner
of the land and every reach of the sea. The air force is charged with
responsibility for keeping the airlanes open to aerial commerce and
should be provided with the ground or sea transport necessary to that
job, but by the same token the ground and sea forces must develop and
control all the instruments they require to perform their functions.
And aside from the sound basis for this concept that lies in logic,
the record is clear that it is equally sound in practice.
With this idea clarified in my own mind, I called on Vice Adm. de
Witt C. Ramsey, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, and later on Gen.
Carl Spaatz, Commander, United States Army Air Force, to sound them
out on this concept as a solution to the conflict. In the Navy, Vice
Adm. Forrest Sherman, when called in by Admiral Ramsey, pointed out
that this was the traditional position of the Navy but that they had
been forced to fight to retain their own aviation. However, Vice Adm.
Arthur Radford, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air, looked
at the matter somewhat differently. He saw the Naval Air Force as a
mobile air force, one, to quote Admiral Moffett, “able to go anywhere
on the backs of the fleet.” The Army Air Force, anchored as it was,
to the ground, was less mobile. From the Army’s point of view, the
vulnerability of the carrier to submarine attack compromised its
usefulness. And here, I found, lay the nubbin of a great conflict of
opinion. For my part, this difference of opinion was not one to be
resolved on theoretical grounds alone. Our whole experience showed
how dangerous it was to take decisions, especially those involving
the national security, on the basis of prejudice or partisanship. The
only safe course was to pursue both developments with an open mind
and be ready to adapt either or both in support of national policy.
General Spaatz, after our interesting discussion, suggested that I
call on Mr. Stuart Symington, Assistant Secretary of War for Air, and
lay these ideas before him, in the hope of contributing something to
the solution of the ancient dispute. I did so, but was disappointed.
Mr. Symington, recalling my old Navy background, apparently
recognized in me a trojan horse, a partisan bent on dividing the
Army and its Air Force so that the Navy might defeat both in detail.
Wholly unprepared for this novel reception, I was forced to retire in
disorder. As time passed, however, it became clear that my one-man
foray in the role of interservice peacemaking had not been without
result. After my visit with “Duke” Ramsey, Secretary Forrestal
abandoned his opposition to autonomy for the Air Force and supported
reorganization along lines recommended to him by Ferdinand Eberstadt.
That my visit may have helped tilt the scales in favor of unification
is indicated in a letter to me from Jim Forrestal dated August 4,
1947, in which he said, “Your thinking and mine has had an evolution
which has been more or less in phase.”
A few months later, prior to the publication of the report of the
Finletter Board, I discussed with the secretary some of the problems
he faced in his effort to get agreement among the military with
respect to a long-term program for aircraft procurement, development,
and research. He expressed deep concern over the implications of
the many major decisions he was called on to make in areas where no
precedent or experience existed and asked me if I were in a position
to help him.
To men like Jim Forrestal who understood the principles of war,
catch phrases like “strategic bombing” and “unification” aroused
deep concern. The first phrase overemphasized that doubtful tactic
of indiscriminate bombing of nonmilitary objectives, and obscured
the decisive character of such real strategic bombing as the assault
on the Ploesti oil fields which brought German transport to a
clanking halt. The second phrase screened a dangerous drift toward
such a national general staff as had cost Germany two wars. Earnest
students, fearing a dominant Air Force, leaned toward the opposite
idea that the Ground Forces, like the Navy, must control its own air
arm. Civilians like myself hoped to see such fundamental questions
of national policy resolved by an informed public opinion through an
air policy commission, but such was not to be. What might have been a
decisive moment in history proved but another victory for the Douhet
doctrine.
Even though Congress had supposedly integrated the armed forces by
the time the Finletter Commission convened, the interservice feud
raged worse than ever. The Board was unable to draw from Defense
Secretary Forrestal any concrete program for aircraft procurement;
the Chiefs of Staff had not been able to agree on one. Thus died the
first objective of the manufacturing industry’s air-power program.
However, when the Air Force took the stand before the Board, Stuart
Symington, now its secretary, moved swiftly and decisively to
the attack with a concrete recommendation for a “seventy group”
air force. Out of his forceful presentation came ultimately
appropriations by Congress which proved to be the salvation of the
aircraft manufacturing industry. Congress, fully alive to the role of
the aircraft industry in national security, was largely motivated by
considerations of preservation of the establishment.
The air-transport people, shoved into the background by superior
showmanship, made a sorry presentation. It had fine leadership
in Adm. Jerry Land, its president, and in two vice-presidents,
Bob Ramspeck and Milton Arnold. But its membership was torn by
dissension over that time-worn conflict, the “chosen instrument.”
President Juan Trippe, whose creation of the great Pan American
Airways system is one of the shining examples of inspired leadership
in private enterprise, favored the policy of a single overseas
American-flag airline, as the only means of competing with foreign,
government-owned, or subsidized air lines. Other operators strongly
opposed this concept as constituting a monopoly, and favored the
system of “reasonable regulation” as practiced with domestic airlines.
This fundamental issue, long bitterly fought behind the scenes, had
previously burst into the open at Chicago during the first meeting
of the International Civil Aviation Conference. The United States
State Department, ably represented by Adolphe Berle, had fought hard
for the “five freedoms,” a modern counterpart of the old doctrine
of freedom of the seas. Against the powerful opposition of certain
foreign governments, notably that of Great Britain, the United
States, weakened by the inner controversy, had been forced to settle
for three of its five freedoms. This same issue now confused the Air
Transport Association’s presentation before the Finletter Board. On
this rock, a second great objective of the inquiry, an investigation
of the reasonableness of regulation, was scuttled.
After exhaustive inquiry, the Finletter Board recommended numerous
improvements as to policy in its report “Survival in the Air Age.”
The Congressional Aviation Policy Board, after waiting for this
report, issued its findings on March 1, 1948, in a joint-committee
print entitled “National Aviation Policy.” But with echoes of
Hiroshima still ringing in the ears of the investigators, air force
displaced air commerce in top billing. The Congressional Board held
frankly that a strong, stable, and modern civil aviation component
is essential to air power for national security and that domestic
and foreign commerce of the United States should be promoted by
whatever means appear most practical until it reaches such stature in
passenger and cargo capacity as to constitute in a crisis an adequate
logistical arm of the national defense establishment. In other words,
air commerce exists to support the armed forces. We in the aircraft
industry had naïvely insisted that it must be the other way around.
With the Congressional Committee’s profound observation on the place
of civil air transport in air power, and its denial of the first
premise of the aircraft industry’s air-power policy, we lost our
third great objective.
While appropriations for military aircraft served momentarily
to preserve the manufacturing industry and keep the military
establishment from further deterioration, funds were forthcoming only
on a hand-to-mouth basis. So long as Stalin continued pressure on
Europe, Congress would appropriate; the moment he eased up, Congress
would revoke. The essential long-term continuing program so necessary
to technological progress went by the board. Even Representative
Carl Vinson, whose vision had built the Navy of World War II and
whose leadership had implemented the aviation programs, seemed unable
to formalize a program to put into effect this generally accepted
principle. Adding up the results of five years’ effort, the Aircraft
Industries Association had to admit failure to reach its goal. To
me the reason was abundantly clear. We had failed to enlist the
cooperation of the armed forces and airline transport operators under
the basic precept of cooperation in public policy and competition in
operations.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Hand on the Stick
Early in 1949 the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee of
the Senate, under the chairmanship of Senator Edwin C. Johnson of
Colorado, began inquiring into the ills of the airline transport
industry. Senator Johnson had sat at my table at the dinner given by
the aircraft manufacturers to Congressional leaders in aviation in
Washington some five years earlier. A man well informed on the whole
subject, he now began directing an inquiry that promised to initiate
an important forward step in the formulation of American air policy.
Unlike the Finletter Commission and the Congressional Aviation Policy
Board, both of which had been held under the overcast produced by
the cold front of fear incident to the Berlin crisis, the Johnson
inquiry, following close on the brilliant success of the Berlin
Airlift, focused attention solely on airline transport.
Curiously enough, the underlying significance of the Berlin Airlift
was seldom touched upon in the flood of commentary that accompanied
the lifting of the blockade. While it was generally recognized as
a defeat for the Soviet, and served to ease the tensions and allay
the fears of war, the epochal character of the operation went
almost unrecognized. Paul Fisher, in the _Bee Hive_, house organ
for United Aircraft Corporation, in a brilliant article written on
the spot, hailed the victory of air freight. For the first time in
world history, commercial air transports—not combat aircraft—had
spearheaded United States foreign policy in a victorious action
against the swashbuckling Soviet. The very forces which had once
reduced Berlin to rubble with bombs had now saved the population from
starvation with air cargo.
Meanwhile, rapid progress in the development of guided missiles had
raised the question of the future of the airplane as a major weapon
carrier. Some strictly military manufacturers had already begun
giving serious consideration to the problem of whether to continue
to specialize in aircraft or to shift over to the development of
guided missiles. And once experimental aircraft had exceeded the
speed of sound, some began to wonder if that velocity might not one
day mark the division between combat aircraft and those designed for
commercial purposes. In other words the Johnson Committee began its
hearings against the background of a changing weather map.
Airline testimony before the Committee revealed some wide divisions
within the transport industry itself. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker
for example blamed the ills of the airlines on “too much coddling
and wet nursing,” while Carleton Putnam ascribed them to “slow
starvation.” The individual outlook reflected the color of the
financial statement. And the airline operators, in making their
“policy” recommendations, seldom came to grips with fundamentals but
focused their attentions on revisions of administrative procedure. In
this respect they reflected their long association with government
agencies to whom policy so often means the detailed management of
public affairs rather than a course of conduct. If the airline
operators’ recommendations seemed slanted toward measures calculated
to advance the special interests of their individual companies, the
fact was entirely understandable.
To us aircraft manufacturers who, five years earlier, had covenanted
to cooperate in the public interest where policy was concerned, while
continuing to compete with each other in operations to our own—and
likewise—the public interest, it appeared that a precarious existence
under government economic regulation had blinded the operators to
the broad public interest, and hence, to their own enlightened
self-interest. Leaning on government for a guarantee of their
economic security, they competed with each other for legislative
or administrative advantage, and primarily before Congressional
committees or government agencies. And if some of them made forays
into politics and acted more like rusty railroad executives than like
jet-propelled pioneers, it was in keeping with the principles under
which they operated.
Yet out of the confusion of conflicting testimony it was possible,
by keeping in mind certain fundamentals learned from the history of
aviation, to arrive at certain conclusions. The airline operators
for all their controversies were unanimous on at least two points:
they endorsed the principle of “reasonable regulation” upon which
the Civil Aeronautics Act had been founded, and they condemned the
administration of the Act by the Civil Aeronautics Board.
Yet in the face of the airlines’ unanimous approval of the Act,
an objective study of the testimony raises a serious question as
to its soundness. Sifting out the wheat from the chaff, one could
not help wondering whether Solomon himself, with the aid of all of
his wives, could have administered such a document. Providing as
it does for economic regulation of privately owned industries by
political appointees, the Act flies in the face of the fundamental
fact that politics and economics function under different basic
precepts; in the one the ballot box calls the turn, in the other
the cold arithmetic of an inescapable financial statement. But if
the airlines’ endorsement of “reasonable regulation” proved open
to question, the testimony before the Committee left no doubt that
recent regulation had been, in fact, wholly unreasonable.
It developed that the Civil Aeronautics Board had cut the mail
rates in 1945 to a point well below the actual cost of transporting
the mail. Furthermore it had authorized widespread duplication of
existing services and had subsidized these duplicating services in
competition with those already established. And when this action
resulted in crippling losses, the Board compounded its blunder
by making retroactive increases in mail which had the effect of
putting the whole rate structure on a cost-plus basis. Captain Eddie
Rickenbacker, of Eastern Airlines, voiced the position of the “Big
Four” when he said, “The confused state of mail rates destroys all
incentive for economy and efficiency—it discourages good management
and high performance. It puts a penalty on accomplishment, and
rewards the wasteful and inefficient.”
Another diagnosis of the airline ills was offered by Harold A. Jones,
a member of the Civil Aeronautics Board itself, when speaking before
the San Francisco Advertising Club. The airlines, he thought, were
ill from a “mysterious disease known as ‘subsiditis,’” which disease
he ranked “somewhere between bubonic plague and leprosy.” However
his shotgun diagnosis lacked clinical confirmation before the Senate
Committee by his boss, Joseph J. O’Connell, Jr., chairman of the
Civil Aeronautics Board.
“We are not in a position,” testified Mr. O’Connell, “to give an
accurate estimate as to the amount of the total air-mail pay bill
which represents fair compensation for the carriage of the mail, and
that portion that represents subsidy.”
Postmaster General Donaldson agreed with the Board chairman and
stated that the Post Office had long held the opinion that the mail
rate, if shorn of its subsidy elements, should not in any case be
greater than the passenger rate. On this basis the Post Office
Department would have been credited with approximately one-half its
present transportation expenditures inasmuch as passengers were
paying approximately 50 cents per ton mile, while the Post Office was
paying more than double that amount. This over-all figure, of course,
obscured the wide variations between the compensations paid airlines
thought to be self-sufficient and the much larger payments to those
known to be heavily subsidized.
In the absence of even the most elementary data it is difficult
to see how any regulation could be called reasonable or how the
government could support any subsidy charge either against the
industry as a whole or against any segment of it. The situation was
further obscured by the Postmaster General’s estimate of the total
domestic and foreign air-mail subsidy for this year.
Using the excess of the cost of the service to the Post Office
Department over the department’s air-mail revenues, he arrived at the
figure of $35,000,000. The cost to the department included of course
all expenses allocated to air mail including department overhead,
but it did not substantiate the reasonableness of any allocation.
Under questioning by one of the senators of the Committee, this all
inclusive definition of “subsidy” was discounted. Under business
accounting principles the figure might have been labeled “deficit”
and would have been charged against the Post Office rather than
pinned on the airlines as a “subsidy.” After all, the Post Office
Department overhead, an item perhaps more political than economic
in character, was not subject to airline control and was therefore
the responsibility of the department. A subsidy is a public grant or
subvention to aid an enterprise for the public convenience and not
the deficit of a government department.
In the face of such fuzzy accounting the figure is interesting
chiefly because of its small size. The Postmaster General, after
referring to statistical exhibits, reported the total deficit
incurred from the inauguration of the first air-mail service in 1918
up to 1948 as a little over three and one-half million dollars per
year for the thirty-year period and added, “Probably no investment
made by this government ever returned greater national benefits in
commercial and cultural progress, and national security. The over-all
value of air transportation system to the nation, particularly as an
arm of defense, has been incalculable.”
It is interesting in passing to compare the air-mail deficit with
others submitted by the Postmaster General: penny postcards,
$57,000,000; fourth-class mail, $82,000,000; third-class mail,
$139,000,000; and second-class mail, $237,000,000—a total of
$515,000,000. And so the air-mail deficit is but one of many and the
least of them all. On the basis of such approximations as have been
presented by government agencies, the airlines might have argued
that by absorbing a portion of the vast overhead of the Post Office
Department they were actually “subsidizing” other types of mail
service.
In light of the dearth of figures that would indicate an
approximation to the true air-mail subsidy, if any, Carleton
Putnam, of Chicago and Southern, made an exhaustive analysis of
government cost records, during which he checked his assumptions with
responsible persons in the government. This indicated that from the
inception of the air mail down to the year 1948, the postal revenues
had exceeded the added costs of air mail to the Post Office by some
$54,000,000. Summing up for the Committee, in a statement which was
not challenged by the government, he testified, “Hence the American
taxpayer has not only gained the greatest air transportation system
on earth ... plus an adjunct to the national defense which would
otherwise have cost him untold millions to provide—he is $54,000,000
ahead in cash as well.”
And after charging the airlines for their share of the cost of
building and maintaining the nation’s airways and airports, an
expenditure which would in any case have had to be made for the Army
and Navy, the airlines would still owe the taxpayer but $61,000,000,
all of which relates to maintaining the national airways system.
Furthermore this clear demonstration that the air mail has not been
subsidized comes in the face of grievous blunders by the Civil
Aeronautics Board in certifying uneconomic competing services at
extravagant mail rates.
One of the most extreme cases of this kind was reported by Captain
Eddie Rickenbacker. The Civil Aeronautics Board had in the past two
years certified twenty-one “feeder lines,” some of which had been
authorized to divert mail poundage from some stations which Eastern
had served for twenty years without subsidy, and to charge ten times
as much to transport the same mail between the same points. In
other words, the Civil Aeronautics Board, impelled by some sense of
political necessity to provide competition for the major airlines,
had in effect forced them to subsidize competition for themselves.
Meanwhile the government had paid such niggardly rates to others that
the stockholders of the enterprises had been forced to subsidize the
United States.
Such “reasonable” regulation had reduced the airlines from their once
proud state of self-sufficiency to a critical status, and at the very
moment when their futures should have looked the brightest.
“There can be little doubt,” stated the chairman of the Civil
Aeronautics Board, “that if our airline system were today the same
size as it was in 1941 in terms of routes, points served, and service
provided, it would be completely independent of government support.”
It was certain additions to the service, he further pointed out, and
the fixing of certain “fair” compensations by the Board that slowed
all airlines save Eastern down to stalling speed and all but put them
into a flat spin. He shared his responsibility with the appropriation
committees of Congress and thought that if funds were provided for
an adequate staff the Board might do a competent job. However the
fact that the Civil Aeronautics Authority and Civil Aeronautics Board
already had 18,000 employees as compared with approximately 80,000
employees for all domestic and overseas scheduled airlines rather
discounted this opinion.
That the damage did not end with heavy losses imposed by arbitrary
rates but was multiplied by the award of retroactive payments is
evidenced in the testimony of Roger F. Murray, vice-president of the
Bankers Trust Company of New York.
“The Board’s thinking,” he said, “has apparently been that rates
should be set so that _each_ carrier will break even and perhaps
earn some so-called ‘fair’ rate of return on it’s ‘used and useful
investment.’ Under these circumstances, enlarged payments have been
made to rescue some airlines in difficulties or keep others going on
a subsistence basis. While this may be reassuring to creditors of the
airlines, it is the poorest kind of an appeal to potential purchasers
of equity securities.”
Translating this into lay language, the private investor or his
agents just cannot be interested in buying stock in enterprises which
are suffering economic regulation by political agencies. And once
an enterprise is denied access to the highly competitive markets
for risk capital, it is indeed on the verge of bankruptcy or about
to crash into the abyss of nationalization. And if the government,
after having reduced the market value of the airlines by its own
mismanagement, then takes possession of them, it becomes guilty of
expropriating the capital of private investors, some of whom had
risked their savings in an enterprise they deemed secure because it
was government regulated.
Now mismanagement of the airlines was not necessarily the fault of
wicked or even stupid men. As Speaker Sam Rayburn had pointed out
to me in the case of Congressmen, government administrators are no
smarter nor more stupid than the average. But they hold their jobs
by knowing which side their bread is buttered on and making the
correct estimate of what action will produce the most votes.
The Civil Aeronautics Board, in light of current public opinion
with respect to the profit motive, could hardly be expected to
accept public responsibility for such economic regulation as would
permit any airline to make a profit, especially one such as might
be subject to political attack. Nor could it be expected to muster
courage to defend such an apparent monopoly as its own route pattern
had created, even though the law authorized it. Although the Board
was directed to so administer the Act as to prevent “unfair or
destructive practices,” it must permit “competition to the extent
necessary to insure sound development of an air transportation system
properly adapted to the needs of the foreign and domestic commerce of
the United States, of the Postal Service, and the national defense.”
Its decisions, predicated on an attempt to administer such complex
mandates and still keep out of hot water, brought the airlines into
jeopardy at the very moment when they had established their economic
self-sufficiency and faced the brightest futures of their turbulent
careers. In other words, economic regulation by political agency is
an anachronism.
Meanwhile, with the real solution to the Board’s competition problem
ready at hand, the Board even messed that up. This drama was unfolded
before the Committee by a group of enterprising young veterans who,
having participated in such wartime miracles as the transportation of
air cargo over the Himalayan Hump, had concluded that this and other
services as yet unexploited by the certificated passenger carriers
offered unique opportunities for their postwar reconversion. Perhaps
the gist of their testimony can be extracted from the statement
of Amos E. Heacock, executive committee chairman of the National
Independent Carriers, and president of Air Transport Associates.
“Let me review briefly,” he said, “the near miracles that have
been wrought in the development of air transportation by United
States veterans.... In the international contract air carrier
field, Transocean Airlines, Seaboard and Western, Pacific Overseas
Airlines, etc., have found an entirely new market for air
transportation, formerly practically untouched by the scheduled
airlines.... I want to point out to you an additional and perhaps
the greatest air transportation feat performed by the veterans of
World War II. I am referring to the amazing record of the Pacific
Northwest-Alaska nonscheduled carriers.... The scheduled carriers
that were subsidized to do the job of developing air transportation
to Alaska were a miserable failure. The bulk of the cargo, 73.6 per
cent of the northbound and 83.5 per cent of the southbound, was
transported by the much maligned nonscheduled air carriers.... The
records show that the non-skeds pioneered a wealth of new business.”
After referring to Section 2(d) of the Act, which provides for
competition, the witness stated, “With an unprecedented opportunity
to preserve competition to develop the air transportation system and
so provide adequate and economical service, the Board’s actions have
provided for just the reverse.”
One explanation of the Board’s action might be derived from the
statement of C. R. Smith, chairman of American Airlines, one of the
largest of the “Big Four.”
“If the law of the land is to be enforced against the certificated
air carriers,” he said, “it should have similar enthusiasm of
enforcement against the irregular carriers who compete directly for
the same business of air transportation. We cannot live with economic
health in an atmosphere half legal and half illegal. If this business
is to be regulated, all should be regulated.” It would be interesting
to know just what significance attaches to the use of the word
“against” in this statement.
“If the Civil Aeronautics Act is to mean but little,” continued
“C.R.,” “then let us return to the rules of the road which obtained
before the Act was passed, when competition was direct and
unregulated.” Had “C.R.” gone on to urge this course, he might have
given a demonstration of the rugged individualism for which he is
credited; instead he summed up, “We were in favor of the Act, we are
in favor of the continuation of the Act, but if we are to abide by
the terms of the Act, we ask that our competitors be bound by the
same rules of public conduct.”
Juan Trippe, president of the Pan American Airways System, stated the
issue in similarly clear terms:
“The fundamental problem, both domestically and internationally,
is that although Congress intended to place the airline industry
in the category of regulated public utilities, the airlines, while
treated on one hand as public utilities, have, at the same time,
been made subject to all of the competitive pressures proper and
appropriate only in an unregulated industry. There is no precedent in
American industry that I know of for such a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
arrangement.”
After developing the principles under which public utilities are
regulated and financed and suggesting that Congress should make
up its mind as to whether or not they want to return the airline
industry to its intended status as a regulated airline industry,
Juan, like “C.R.,” mentioned the alternative of eliminating the
relative provisions of the Civil Aeronautics Act and exposing the
airlines to the full competitive force which exists and should exist
in ordinary commerce.
“There will be no real progress in the solution of the airline
problems,” he summed up, “until this issue is met squarely. An
airline can’t be a regulated public utility and a free enterprise at
the same time.”
However, the witness did not waste further time on this alternative
but, acting on the assumption that the doctrine of regulating the
airlines as a public utility would be preserved, went on to develop
his own case with all the unique persuasiveness that had helped
him pioneer Pan American in one of the most impressive displays of
self-reliance, individual initiative, and private enterprise of
modern times. His discussion led up naturally to the merger of Pan
American with American Overseas Airlines which he and “C.R.” had
earlier submitted to the Civil Aeronautics Board. In justifying this,
Juan expounded his well-known thesis of the “chosen instrument”
advocating a government policy of maintaining one American-flag
system—Pan American Airways—in the international field, supported
with frank outright subsidies such as those paid under the Merchant
Marine Act of 1936. He justified his position by citing its benefits
to the stockholders of the company and argued that the higher wages
thus made available to American workmen employed in international
aviation would constitute a subsidy to them.
With the major certificated airlines mobilized solidly in support
of the “chosen instrument” policy, the Committee received a clear
statement of the opposing point of view from Raymond A. Norden,
president of Seaboard and Western Airlines, Inc. One of the
independents who had been characterized by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker
as “irregulars,” “latecomers,” “interlopers,” “pretenders,” and
so forth, Mr. Norden undertook to support Eddie’s contention that
the airlines were suffering from too much coddling. In perhaps the
outstanding statement to be made to the Committee, he put his finger
on the crux of the airline controversy.
“The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938,” he said, “is unusual among
regulatory statutes in one very important respect. Other forms of
transportation have not customarily been subjected to comprehensive
regulation until the pattern of growth has been assured and until
the industry has become so highly developed competitively that
there is need for rigid controls and restraints in order to prevent
destructive practices.” Out of the background of the airplane story
to date, one might argue the other way around, namely that once the
rigid controls and restraints are imposed, the growth pattern becomes
stabilized. Mr. Norden went on to argue with persuasion:
“Aviation is relatively a new business. Air freight, as distinguished
from other forms of aviation business, is in its infancy. Yet the
entire aviation industry is hedged about with red tape, the like
of which has never been encountered in any other form of American
industry. One has merely to look at legal payments made by some of
the certificated carriers. TWA, for example, in 1948 alone, paid a
single law firm the sum of $340,000. My own small company spent in
excess of $50,000 in legal expense. Sometimes I feel as though I had
more lawyers than pilots.”
When the Russians blockaded Berlin in June, 1948, according to the
witness, the Air Force, lacking reserve planes, called upon three
certificated, subsidized North Atlantic carriers, Pan American,
TWA, and American Overseas Airlines, to lift essential material
between this country and Germany. Those carriers failed miserably;
of the three irregular international carriers called upon to assist,
Seaboard and Western lifted more than twice as much tonnage over
the North Atlantic in the next six months as Pan American, TWA, and
American Overseas combined. Yet under pressure from the certificated
carriers, the Civil Aeronautics Board revoked Seaboard’s authority
to fly under its Letter of Registration, as of May 20, 1949, along
with all other large irregular airlines in this country. In his
indictment of the certificated carriers the witness said, “In their
zeal to keep the air transportation field to themselves and to
obviate the chance that a measurement will be set up against their
operational efficiency, the North Atlantic carriers are doing a great
disservice to the country. To put it bluntly, they are sabotaging the
development of airlift which is vital to national security.”
Mr. Norden then went on to quote from an article by J. A. Durham and
M. J. Feldstein in the _Virginia Law Review_ entitled “Regulation as
a Tool in the Development of the Air Freight Industry”:
“But where an agency is charged with creating new national wealth
by developing an infant industry, the consequence of permitting
established interests to employ the forms of justice to obstruct the
attainment of statutory objectives may well destroy the value of the
administrative process.”
A less reasoned but even more revealing statement was that of Charles
F. Willis, Jr., president of Willis Air Service, Inc., one of the
“irregulars”:
“Consequently it is with great bitterness that we have seen ourselves
singled out by the Civil Aeronautics Board for denial of a
certificate of public convenience and necessity.... It is even harder
to accept the decision because the only reason we are given for it is
that we don’t have a million dollars. We never had a million dollars
and we never needed a million dollars to perform our operations, but
we do have almost all the dollars we started with. We feel that we
have successfully demonstrated that an airline can be kept going, at
a profit, if hard work, ingenuity, and a desire to make a profit are
substituted for lavish spending of other people’s money.”
In such a sketchy review of the reams of testimony submitted to the
Committee it is quite impossible to do more than attempt to summarize
the major points of view and try to pan out the nuggets that reveal
the vital issues. After sluicing away the rubble and uncovering bed
rock, my own impression is largely one of intense sympathy for the
Civil Aeronautics Board. Charged with an almost impossible task, it
has been subjected to terrific forces by organizations skilled in the
art of influencing public opinion. I also come away with a feeling of
regret that airline management could not have approached the problem
under the precepts adopted by the Aircraft Industries Association.
Most American early birds will recall with a nostalgic smile a
cartoon that once adorned the walls of many a pioneer flight school.
Entitled “His First Solo,” it depicted a forlorn fledgling perched
out on the end of a bare limb. Near its root poised an impatient
mother bird from whose beak floated the command, “Come on, kid! Give
’er the gun!”
One day, while studying the conflicting testimony of airline
operators in an endeavor to predict the next twist of the slipstream,
I recalled this early masterpiece of contemporary art. The fledgling
on the end of the limb seemed now to have feathered out; he
appeared, in fact, almost overgrown. The mother bird cocked her head
questioningly, “I wonder if he’s got what it takes?”
* * * * *
From the days of Wilbur and Orville Wright on down to the present,
aviators have groped for an understanding of the airplane’s destiny.
Charles A. Lindbergh, in his book _Of Flight and Life_, has stated
the problem:
The tragedy of scientific man is that he has found no way to guide
his own discoveries to a constructive end. He has guarded none so
carefully that his enemies have not eventually obtained it and
turned it against him. He has developed a system in which his
security today and tomorrow seems to depend on building weapons
which will destroy him the day after. He has become so hypnotized
by his search for knowledge that he must go on discovering and
experimenting even though it leads to his own annihilation. With
the key to science he has turned loose forces which he cannot
re-imprison.
In the closing paragraph of his book Lindbergh states, “Our
salvation, and our only salvation, lies in controlling the arm of
western science by the eternal truths of God.”
Igor I. Sikorsky, in _The Invisible Encounter_, goes back two
thousand years for his solution. In a chapter called “Kingdoms of the
World,” he quotes from the Gospel according to Matthew: “Again the
devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth Him
all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them and saith unto
Him. All these things will I give Thee, if thou wilt fall down and
worship me.”
Mr. Sikorsky then goes on to say:
The crown and recognition as Messiah the king were offered to
Christ. But He refused to accept them. However, He offered his
spiritual leadership to the whole Jewish nation but his offer
was disregarded.... The real cause of the tragedy was the
irreconcilable conflict between the Divine ideology of Christ and
the supremely evil spirit of the impending revolution.
After drawing an apt parallel in current history, Mr. Sikorsky
remarks, “If the world is to be controlled by spiritually dead men,
it is as if an unconscious crew were placed at the controls of an
airliner.”
* * * * *
Civilization stands today at the same crossroad. It need but accept
the proffered leadership to commence an era of spiritual and material
progress such as it has not yet known.
A single characteristic differentiates America from all other lands.
Ours is a nation created by God-fearing men and women in search of
liberty. Liberty is a force more explosive than atomic bombs. It
created America. America stands today both as God’s living proof of
the power of human freedom and as the negation of conflicting human
doctrine.
As we have seen from the record, the airplane is one of the
miraculous creations of liberty. No result of human foresight or
planning, it is a Divine revelation. And though, as yet, largely
prostituted to the folly of war, it embodies in itself the potential
of world peace and freedom.
For always the hand on the stick has been the Hand of God. The Berlin
Airlift, hastily improvised amid the rubble of war, contrived out of
dire necessity, uncertainty, and fear, gave the world an American
answer to that eternal question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The
unequivocal answer came, not in a rain of destruction but on a flood
of life-giving necessities.
“Yes, I am his keeper. I am the keeper of the peace!”
The triumph of the airlift was not one of men and machines but of the
Christian spirit.
Index
A
Aeromarine Airplane and Motor Corporation, 18, 32-33
Aeromarine Inertia Starter, 33, 40-41
Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, 213, 264, 268-269
Personal Aircraft Council, 273
reorganization of, 269-270
“Affair Fleet,” 47-48, 99
Air cargo (_see_ Air carrier service)
Air carrier service, 280, 296, 306
certified, 303-304, 306-307
international, 303-304
uncertified, 304, 307
(_See also_ Air transport; Airlines)
Air Coordinating Committee, 282
Air Corps Act of 1926, 69, 72, 244-245
Air Force, appropriations for, 293-295
and Berlin blockade, 307
created by Navy, 10, 20, 148
mobility of, 292
independent, 10, 25-26, 58-70, 107, 278-279, 291
and procurement, 282, 293
seventy-group, 293
and strategic bombing, 293
unification of, 293
(_See also_ Army Air Corps; Aviation, naval)
Air France, 208
Air freight (_see_ Air carrier service)
Air mail, 280
ocean, subsidies for, 187
revenues from, 300-301
Air-mail contracts, canceling of, 181-182, 186, 209
Air-mail rates, 298-299, 301
cut in, 298
and subsidies, 298-301
Air Policy Commission, temporary, 289
Air power, 5, 267-268, 285, 293
American, Lindbergh’s influence on, 103-104
economics of, 279-282
and foreign policy, 288
new concept of, 276-277, 287-288
public relations program for, 270, 283-284
and sea power, 267
studies of, 279-283
_Air Power for Peace_, 287-288
Air transport, commercial, 97, 186-187, 255, 267, 285, 288, 291,
294-296
and foreign policy, 295
military, 279-280, 291
veterans’ development of, 303-304
wartime importance of, 287-288
(_See also_ Air carrier service)
Air Transport Association, 294, 303
Air Transport Command (ATC), 255, 279
Aircraft, 4
carrier, 21-22
combat, 195
experimental, 297
foreign, 95-96, 204
personal, 96, 273, 277
rigid, 10, 56, 58, 67, 70, 181
styling of, 110
and world freedom, 310
(_See also_ kinds of aircraft, as Bombers)
Aircraft carriers, 5, 21-22, 127-128, 182, 190, 257-258
deck landings on, 116, 122, 125, 249-250
number of planes on, 116, 194
in relation to battleships, 134-135, 141-142, 147-148
vulnerability of, 292
Aircraft Industries Association of America, 283, 287, 290, 295, 308
Aircraft industry, 16, 23, 29-36, 51, 66-67, 72, 109-111, 183, 197,
199-203
air-power policy of, 276-277, 295, 297
assembly line in, 240-241
conference of, 1938, 213-216
consolidations in, 153-154
foreign, 196
and foreign markets, 188-192, 204, 220-222, 229
and foreign policy, 195
importance of, 275-276
investigations of, 181-182, 187, 249, 258, 270-287
nationalization of, 23
postwar difficulties of, 285-286
and public relations, 262-271, 283-284, 297
reconversion in, 260-262, 272
and red tape, 306-307
unification of, 262-263
and the unions, 249-251, 273
wartime criticism of, 242
Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet (FLEET AIR), 111-112, 117-118, 121,
123-124, 126, 129-130, 137, 151-152, 157, 183, 187, 202
Airfoil, wing-flapped, 179
Airline operators, policy recommendations of, 297
Airlines, 280
“Big Four,” 298, 304
feeder lines for, 301
legal fees paid by, 306-307
mismanagement of, 302
monopoly in, 303
number of employees in, 302
overseas, 294, 305-306
private investment in, 302
reasonable regulation of, 280-281, 294, 298, 303-308
and subsidies, 299-301, 306
(_See also_ Air carrier service; Air transport)
AIRONS (_see_ Aircraft squadrons)
_Airplane, The_, 91, 188
Airplane catapults, 5-6, 21, 49
Airplane engines, 9, 27, 222
air-cooled, 18, 30-31, 35, 38, 44-45, 49, 50-51, 78-80, 119, 134,
147, 188, 196-200, 203, 206, 217-218
commercial, 14
cost and price of, 243-244
early history of, 13-18
government building of, 231-232
Japanese, 193
licensing production of, 232, 239
liquid-cooled, 13-14, 18-19, 30-31, 35, 50-51, 74-75, 78-79, 134,
147, 196-200, 202-203, 217-218
military, 14, 22
precision tools for, 247-248
types of, 12-13, 16-18, 49, 193
variations in, 243
(_See also_ kinds of engines, as Liberty)
Airplanes (_see_ Aircraft)
Airports and airways, 301
Aktiebolaget Aerotransport, 207
_Akron_, dirigible, 70, 181
_Alabama_, battleship, 25
Alaska, air transportation to, 304
Allison Engineering Company, 197
Allison liquid-cooled engines, 217, 238
Altitude, high, research on, 257
Alvis, Limited, Coventry, 171
Amphibians (_see_ Sikorsky planes)
American Airlines, 304
American Export Airlines, 183
American Overseas Airlines, 305, 307
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 93
Anacostia Naval Air Station, 99, 104
Andrews, Frank, 214
Annapolis, 2, 142, 268
(_See also_ U.S. Naval Academy)
Approved Type Certificate (ATC), 176-177
Argentine Navy, 189-190
_Argus_, carrier, 5
_Arkansas_, battleship, 4, 121
_Arklight, The_, 259
Armed forces, 295
procurement for, 66, 187, 232
reorganization of, 290
(_See also_ Army; Navy)
Arms Embargo Act, 210, 218, 221-222
repeal of, 222
Army, 19, 25, 35, 41, 58, 72, 147, 290, 292-293
and aircraft industry, 23, 65, 172, 213-216, 243, 262
General Mitchell’s attack on, 58-59
Personnel Procurement Branch, 251
and procurement, 66, 187
war plans effort of, 213-216
war schedule of, 241
Army Air Corps, 196, 203, 214, 216-218, 229, 278, 292
Army Air Service, 9, 23-24, 71, 98, 148
Army Engineering Division, 33, 39, 191, 197
Army-Navy rivalry, 10-11, 24-27, 34, 43, 278, 290-292
Army Ordnance, 24
Army planes, C-54’s, 256
DH’s, 17, 29, 110
F4B’s, 134
Jennys, 14, 43
Lightnings, 257
PT’s, 44
Thunderbolts, 195
(_See also_ kinds of aircraft, as Bombers)
Army Reorganization Act of 1921, 213, 233
Arnold, Gen. “Hap,” 213-214, 217
Arnold, Les, 118, 147-148
Arnold, Milton, 294
_Aroostook_, mine planter, 122
ATC (_see_ Approved Type Certificate; Army Transport Command)
Atkins, Capt. A. K., 17
Atom bomb, 288, 293, 310
Aunt Lucy, 85-86, 90, 92
Automotive industry, 237
and aircraft engines, 14-16, 238-240, 249
and foreign markets, 205
reconversion in, 272
_Aviation_, 270
Aviation, 9-10, 298
civil, 69, 76, 206
commercial, 110, 174, 179, 212, 276, 279
foreign, 205
overseas, 180, 183, 208-209
(_See also_ Air transport)
government agencies concerned with, 279-282, 284, 297
government control of, 205-206
investigations into, 60-62, 181-182, 187, 289-290, 293-298
Lindbergh’s influence on, 103-108
and mass production, 14-15
naval, 5-8, 10, 19-20, 26-27, 68, 70, 278, 291-296
naval, five-year building program for, 71-72, 95
proposed advisory committee for, 276-277, 282, 284-285
appointment of, 289
opposition to, 278-279
service rivalry in (_see_ Army-Navy rivalry)
(_See also_ Aircraft; Aircraft industry)
Aviation Game, 28
Aviation mechanic schools, during World War I, 5-6
Aviation Writers’ Association, 270
B
Baker, George P., 290
Balchen, Bernt, 207
Baldwin, Hanson, 149
Ballanca, Giuseppe, 96
Bankers Trust Company, New York, 302
Battle of Britain, 171
Battle fleet, 151
morale of, 132-133
organization of, 130
Battleships, 134-135, 141-142, 147-148, 152
Bavarian Motoren Werke, 208
Beach, Joe, 251-252
Beatty, Adm. Sir David, 4, 259, 266
Beaverbrook, Lord, 222, 233
_Bee Hive_, 296
Beisel, Rex, 186
Belgium, 207
Bell, Larry, 97
Berle, Adolphe, 294
Berlin Airlift, 296, 310
Berlin blockade, 307
Bermuda, 208, 266
Berrien, Capt. Frank D., 127
Bethpage, Long Island, 199
Beverly Hills, California, 265, 268
“Big Four” airlines, 298, 304
Bingham, Hiram, 61
Biplanes, passing of, 170, 190
Black, Hugo, 181, 187, 263, 271
Bloch, Capt. Claude C., 29, 138
Boeing, William E., 66, 76-77, 105, 110, 153-154, 182, 185, 200-201
Boeing Airplane Company, 48, 73, 76-77, 153, 169, 182-183, 194,
200-201, 251
fighters, 73, 75, 76, 134, 147
mail planes, 40-B’s (Monomail), 76, 169
Stratocruiser, 180
training planes, 98
transports, 169, 171, 208
Bogan, Gerry, 125-127
Bogusch, Harry, 89, 141, 147, 152
Bolling Field, 99
Bomb rack for Corsairs, 257
Bomber escort planes, 195
Bombers, 202
heavy long-range, 194, 251
twin-engined, 198
Borrup, Jack, 55
Boston, Massachusetts, 33
Botta, Lt. Ricco, 23, 38, 48, 78
Brainard, Morgan B., 264
_Breck_, destroyer, 144-145
Bremerton, Washington, 153
Brereton, Louis, 214
Brewster, Owen, 285, 289
Brewster Bill, 285
Bridgeport, Connecticut, 164, 172
_Bridgeport_, destroyer tender, 7, 11, 145
Bristol airplane factory, 188
Bristol Jupiter engine, 56, 193, 196
British Air Ministry, 10, 170, 266, 291
British Committee of Inquiry into Civil Aviation, 206
British Grand Fleet, 4-5, 21, 207, 259, 266
British National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 94
British Purchasing Commission, 224-225
British Spitfire fighters, 171
Brown, Admiral Moffett’s messenger, 60
Brown, Donald L., 55, 182, 185, 213, 216-220, 229, 239, 249
BUAERO (_see_ U.S. Navy Department, Bureau of Aeronautics)
Buffalo, New York, 35, 43
Buick, 232, 237, 241, 252, 254
Buivid, Mr., 179
BUNAV (_see_ U.S. Navy Department, Bureau of Navigation)
Burbank, California, 201
Burden, William A. M., 278
Burns, Colonel, 213, 216
Business cycles, 163
Businessmen _vs._ professional men, 163-164
on United Aircraft board, 264
Butler, Admiral, 151
Butler, Congressman, 71-72
Byrd, Dick, 96, 104
C
Cadillac, 232
Cadman Report, 206
Caldwell, Frank, 78, 155, 165-167, 169-171, 256
_California_, battleship, 152, 182
Camp Perry, 2
Canadian Pratt and Whitney, 253
Carburetors, 42
Carriers (_see_ Aircraft carriers)
Champion, Lt. C. C., 38, 73, 96
Chance Vought Corporation, 17, 43, 47, 153, 170, 182, 185, 187, 190,
193, 196, 205, 230, 241, 265
(_See also_ Vought-Sikorsky; United Aircraft Corporation)
Chatfield, Hugh, 73
Chevrolet, 232, 237, 241, 252
Cheyenne, Wyoming, 168-170
Chicago-San Francisco contract air mail route, 76
Chilton, Roland, 32, 40-41
Chourré, Emile, 117
Christianity, 7, 88, 209-210, 212, 309-310
Churchill, Winston, 171
C.I.O., 273-275
Civil Aeronautics Act, 70, 298, 303-306
Civil Aeronautics Authority, 302
Civil Aeronautics Board, 298-299, 301-305, 307-308
Clerget engine, 17
Clippers, 176-177, 180, 200, 255
(_See also_ Transports)
Coco Solo, 151
Coffin, Howard, 61
Colbert, M., 205
Cole, Francis W., 264
Collective bargaining, 249-250
College Point, Long Island, 173
Collins, Capt. Harry, 218-219, 224
_Colorado_, cruiser, 143
COMAIRONS, 124, 127, 134-135, 138, 140
Combustion, principle of, 3
_Command of the Air_, 10
Competition, 24, 95, 97, 111, 161, 191, 230, 262, 276, 278, 297,
303-305
and foreign markets, 188
international, 205-208, 294
subsidized, 301
in transport planes, 202, 295, 297
unfair, 164-165
Conant, Hersey, 28
Congress, 71-72
appropriation committees of, 302
aviation appropriations from, 20, 53, 55, 95, 216-217, 229, 293-294
Congressional Aviation Policy Board, 289
report of, 294-295
Congressional committees, public hearings before, 271
Congressional investigations, 181-182, 187, 263
Connecticut State War Finance Committee, 246
Consolidated Aircraft, 43, 183, 202
army trainers, 43-46
Catalinas, 195
NY’s, 44, 84, 91
Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft Corporation, 273
Cook, Capt. Arthur B., 127
Coolidge, Calvin, 8, 61, 69, 79, 94-95
Cowl-flaps, 188
Coyle, Mr., 241
Coyne, Bob, 246
Crane, Henry, 238
Curtice, Harlow, 241, 254
Curtiss, Glenn, 113
Curtiss Airplane and Motor Company, 16, 34-37, 51-52, 73-74, 97, 153
Hawks, 73-74, 99
TS’s, 43
(_See also_ Curtiss-Wright)
Curtiss engines, D-12’s, 35-36, 73, 75
R-1454’s, 35-36, 52, 56, 74
Curtiss-Wright, 153-156, 191, 230
(_See also_ Wright Aeronautical Corporation; Wright Martin)
Curtiss-Wright Flying Service, 172
D
Davis, Art, 141
Davis, Bill, 150
Davison, F. Trubee, 104, 168
Dayton, Ohio, 23, 34
(_See also_ Wright Field)
de Chevalier, Godfrey de Courcelles, 5, 21, 268
Defense Plant Corporation, 253
de Havilland Aircraft Company, Ltd., 171
DH’s, 15, 17, 110
de la Verne Machine Shop, 17
Delco Company, 39
Demobilization, 277
Dennison, Arthur C., 62
Depression, 163, 220
DESRONS (_see_ Destroyer squadrons)
de Steiguer, Adm. Louis R., 121
Destroyer Squadrons (DESRONS), 130, 140
_Detroit_, cruiser, 145-146
Detroit, Michigan, 134
Dexter, Mrs., 229-230
Diamond, Jimmy, 42
Dickinson, Arnold, 173, 175
Diesel engines, 197
Dive bombers, 147, 193
Corsairs as, 258
monoplane, 190, 198
two-seat, 188-190
Dive bombing, 121, 123, 193
Donaldson, John W., 267
Donaldson, Postmaster General, 299-300
Doolittle, Jimmy, 98, 214
Douglas, Don, 47, 97-98, 194, 198, 201-202, 251, 255, 265, 267-268
Douglas, Lt. Robert, 106-107
Douglas transports, DC-3’s, 194, 207
DC-4’s, 194, 256
Douhet, General Jiulio, 10, 206, 212
Douhet doctrine, 206, 293
DuBose, Lieutenant Commander, 62, 68, 71
Duralumin, 78, 155, 165
Durant, William F., 61
Durham, J. A., 307
E
East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, 126
East Coast Aircraft War Production Council, 269
East Haddam Fish and Game Club, 198
East Hartford, Connecticut, 192, 234
Eastern Airlines, 298, 301-302
Eberstadt, Ferdinand, 292
Echols, Gen. Oliver P., 286-287
Eclipse Machine Company, 41
Edgar, Graham, 42
Egtvedt, Claire, 48, 76, 134, 185, 200
Engineering, 2, 8
intuitive, 177
and politics, 19
_Engineering Thermodynamics_, 3
Engineers, professional, 3, 177
Engines (_see_ Airplane engines)
England (_see_ Great Britain)
_English Voyages, The_, 288
Ethyl Corporation, 42
Ethylene glycol, 197
Export permits, 189-190
F
Fagan, Tom, 39, 42
Fairchild Aviation Corporation, 273
Farley, James, 181
Farmington, Long Island, 195, 199
Fechet, Jim, 134
Feldstein, M. J., 307
Fighter bombers, 134, 147, 193-194
long-range, 195
Fighter planes, 22, 73, 75-76, 99, 121-124, 127, 134, 140, 147,
191-192, 194, 195
single seat, 199
two-seated, 123, 187-188
Finland, 208
Finletter, Thomas K., 289-290
Finletter Board, 290, 293-294
Finletter Board, report of, 293-294
Fireside chat, on airplane production program, 229,233
Fisher, Paul, 296
Five freedoms, 294
Fleet, Reuben, 43, 195, 202, 250
FLEET AIR (_see_ Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet)
Fletcher, Adm. Frank J., 61
_Flight Manual_, 87, 98
Flying boats, 248-249
Flynn, “Tiny,” 252
Fokker, Anthony, 43, 47, 95
Fokker Universal, 96
Ford, Edsel, 239
Ford, Henry, 96, 256
Ford Motor Company, 232, 239-241, 252
Ford Trimotor, 153, 155, 204
Foreign policy, and aviation, 195, 288
Forrestal, James V., 260-263, 290, 292-293
Foster, Cedric, 242
France, 205-208, 210-212, 218-219
declares war on Germany, 221
Fraser, Peter M., 264
French Purchasing Commission, 218-219, 224-225
Fuel, aviation, 42
Fuel pumps, 42
G
Gamble, Ted, 246
Gates, Artemus L., 277
General Electric Company, 39-40
General Motors, 67, 197, 217, 237, 241
George-Murray Bill, 273
German High Seas Fleet, 4
German Lufthansa, 208
Germany, 196, 204, 208, 210-212, 293
attack on Russia by, 247
invasion of Poland by, 221
war production in, 235
Geuting, Joseph T., Jr., 273, 277
Gibson, Professor, 34
Gilman, “Pop,” 197
Gluhareff, Michael, 179
Gluhareff, Serge, 179
Gnome-Rhone engine, 17, 193
Goering, Hermann, 195, 210
Goldsmith, Mr., 42
Goodyear Rubber, 241
Gordon Wyman, 240
Grand Fleet, British, 4-5, 21, 207, 259, 266
Great Britain, and American aircraft, 222, 224-225
before World War II, 206-208, 211
Great Lakes Naval Training Station, 5-6, 25, 151
Great Seal of the Navy Department, 39
Green, Fitzhugh, 108
Green, Joseph, 189
Grey, C. J., 94, 188
Griffen, “Squash,” 141, 147
Gross, Bob, 194, 201-202, 251
Grumman, Roy, 199
Grumman Wildcats, 193
Guam, 151
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 6
Guggenheim, Harry, 108
Guided missiles, 296-297
Gunnery, 1, 4, 8, 21
H
Hakluyt, Richard, 288
Hall, Charles Ward, 80
Halligan, Capt. John, 127
Halsey, Bill, 127
Hamilton, Thomas, 96, 154-157, 160, 192, 204-207, 209-212, 218
Hamilton, Ohio, 51
Hamilton Aero Manufacturing Company, 154-156, 160, 204
Hamilton Metalplane Company, 154, 204
Hamilton-Standard, 165-166, 168-172, 177, 179, 182, 196, 204, 229,
241
Harbord, Maj. Gen. James G., 61
Harding, Warren G., 8, 94
Hartford, Connecticut, 51-52, 203, 206, 242
_Hartford Times, The_, 242
Harvard School of Business, 282
Hawaiian cruise, 1928, 122, 125-128
Hawthorne, California, 201
Heacock, Amos E., 303
Helicopters, 184, 241, 248
Herbster, “Spig,” 113
Herron, Sam, 34
Hillman, Sidney, 249-251
Himalayan Hump, air-transport service over, 256, 287, 303
Hirohito, 209
Hispano Suiza engines, 12, 16-17, 30, 43, 50, 53
Hitler, Adolf, 204, 209-212, 221
Hobbs, Leonard S., 42
Hobbs, Luke, 42
Holland, 207
Hoover, Herbert, 69, 104, 246
Hoover, Mrs., 106
Hopkins, Harry, 216
Horner, Jack, 192, 229, 243, 253, 263
Hoyt, Dick, 50
Hoyt, Palmer, 290
Hubbard, Eddie, 76
Huff-Daland training planes, 98
Hughes, Admiral, 64
Hughes, Howard, 249
_Hull_, destroyer, 2
Hunsaker, “Jerry,” 22-23
Hurley, Pat, 168
Hurley, Roy, 42
I
I.A.M.-A.F. of L., 277
Ickes, Harold, 216
Indianapolis, Indiana, 197
Inglewood, California, 201
Inspection, in war production, 258
Institute of Electrical Engineers, 93
International Civil Aviation Conference, Chicago, 294
International free rifle matches, Milan, Italy, 7
_Invisible Encounter, The_, 209
_Iris_, destroyer tender, 219
Isthmian Airways, 204
Italy, 207-208
J
Jacquin, Col. Paul, 219, 224-225
Jap Zeros, 192
Japanese pilots, 192
Jet propulsion, 257
Jeter, Tom, 134
Johnson, Capt. Alfred W., 22, 29
Johnson, Edwin C., 296
Johnson, Louis, 213, 217, 220, 233
Johnson, Phillip G., 76, 182, 185, 201, 230, 251
Johnson Committee, 296-297
Joliet, Illinois, 2, 6
Jones, Ed, 34
Jones, Harold A., 298-299
Jorge Luro y Cia, Argentina, 189
Joyce, Temple, 74
Jugoslavia, 208
K
Kahn, Albert, 222
Kaiser, Henry J., 248-249
Kansas City, Missouri, 253
Kartveli, Mr., 195, 200
Kauffman, Freddie, 89
Kennedy-Purvis, Vice Adm. Sir Charles E., 266-268
Ketcham, “Dixie,” 91
Kettering, “Boss,” 110
Keyes, C. M., 65-66
Keyes, Roy, 36
Keyport, New Jersey, 18, 32
Kimball, Dr., 104
Kindleberger, Dutch, 47, 97, 194, 201-202, 214-215, 251, 254
King, Adm. E. J., 128, 136, 141-142, 181-182, 189
Kinney Manufacturing Company, 18, 33
KLM, 207
Knerr, Hugh, 214
KNILM, 207
Knudsen, Bill, 233, 237-241, 247, 252
Kraeling, Harry, 156, 160, 165
Kraus, Comdr. Sidney M., 17, 50, 54, 66, 72, 75
Krug, Julius, 286
L
Labor, 207
Labor unions, 249-251, 273
Lakehurst Naval Air Station, 56, 82
Lampert, Congressman, 60
Land, Capt. Emory S., 22
Land, Adm. Jerry, 65, 104-105, 294
Lang, Antone, 7
Lang, Frau, 7
_Langley_, carrier, 21, 111-128, 135, 265
Langley, Professor, 74
Lansing, Raymond P., 40-42
Lawrance, Charles Lanier, 17, 36, 39, 50, 286-287
Lawrance engines, 12-13, 17, 30, 38-39, 41
Lawrence, David, 277
Lebensky, Bob, 179
Lee, John G., 198-199, 256, 265, 267, 269
Leighton, Lt. Comdr. B. G., 9, 12-14, 17-20, 22-27, 29-38, 98, 123,
194
Leloir, Guillermo, 190
Lenin, 209
Lewis, Fulton, Jr., 242
_Lexington_, carrier, 21
new, 49, 77, 119, 121, 127-129, 135-136, 143-145, 152
Liberty, 310
Liberty engines, 12, 15, 17-18, 30, 35, 53, 95, 98
Licenses, to build aircraft engines, 231-232, 239
Limitation of Arms Conference, 9, 21, 64, 67
Lindbergh, Charles A., 40, 103-108, 134, 149-150, 176, 178, 256-257
address to Nazis, 210-211
Pacific mission of, 257
quoted, 309
Lindbergh Field, 133
Lobbying, 271
Lockheed, 194, 202
Lockheed fighters, Lightning, 194
Loening, Grover, 66
Loening amphibians, 138
Long Beach, California, 117, 129-130
Long Island City, New York, 17, 47
Los Angeles, 133-134, 153, 201, 265
_Los Angeles_, dirigible, 10, 56, 67
LOT, 208
Lowry, Jimmy, 84-85
Lucke, Charles Edward, 3, 5-6, 8, 92, 142, 158, 256
Luro, Jorge, 189
Lyman, Deac, 270
M
MacArthur, Gen. Douglas, 59
McCain, Adm. J. S., 258
McCarthy, Charles J., 77, 185-186, 229
McCarthy, Joseph F., 161, 164, 175, 229, 243
McCone, John A., 290
McCook Field, 23, 33-34, 42
McCracken, Bill, 104
MacIntyre, Marvin, 65, 71
MacMahon, Brian, 285
_Macon_, dirigible, 181
Magnesium, 167
Magnetos, 39-40
Mahan, 149, 287
on sea power, 129-130, 288
Mail planes, 76, 154, 169
Maile, Lt. Frank, 23
Maintenance crews, 132
Manly, Charles M., 74, 93
Manly engine, 74
Marcus, Charles, 40-41
Mare Island Navy Yard, 114, 121, 151
Marines, 67, 121, 257
Marks, Charles, 55
Martin, Glenn L., 47, 79-80, 97, 104, 195, 200, 214-216
Martin Company, 183, 200
Thunderbolt, 195
torpedo bombers, SC’s, 77-79
torpedo bomber scouts, T4M’s, 104-106, 134, 140
Mason, Mr., 241
_Mayflower_, yacht, 78-79
Mayo, William, 96
Mead, George J., 30-32, 37, 42, 55-56, 74, 93, 140, 185, 232-233,
238, 241
Mellon, Andrew, 95
“Memoranda for file,” 39
_Memphis_, cruiser, 103, 106-108
Menasco Company, 154
Merchant Marine Act of 1936, 306
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 156, 160
Mines Field, 133
_Mississippi_, battleship, 5-6
Mitchell, Billy, 9-10, 25-27, 46, 56-59, 109, 213, 278-279
court-martial of, 70
and independent air force, 60-69, 291
Mitchell, Hugh B., 284
Mitchell, Gen. J. B., 148
Mitchell, Bill, 285
Mitscher, Pete, 98-99, 115, 146
Mobilization, 216, 235
for drill purposes, 214-215
Moffett, Rear Adm. William Adger, 1, 4-6, 8-11, 17, 19-20, 24-27,
45-46, 52-53, 55-57, 60, 62-68, 70-71, 80-81, 89, 93-95, 98,
101, 104, 109, 111, 119, 123, 128, 137, 142, 149, 151, 181, 278,
291-292
_Mongolia_, liner, 112
Monoplanes, 96, 169-170, 190, 204
metal, 154
Monopoly, 164, 207, 303
Montgomery, Monty, 115
Morale, 259
Morgan, John E. P., 286
Morgenthau, Henry, 218, 223-228, 230
Morrow, Dwight, 61
Morrow Board, 61-71, 95, 186, 188, 276-277, 285
Moulton, Bobby, 115-117
Mullinix, Henry, 38, 48, 96
Murphy, Francis S., 242
Murray, James E., 271, 273-274, 277-278
Murray, Roger F., 302
Mussolini, 209
Mustin, Capt. Henry C., 21, 68
Mustin plan for naval aviation, 68, 71
N
Nash-Kelvinator Company, 232, 241, 252
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 232-233
National Air Races, Los Angeles, 133-134
Philadelphia, 96
National Aircraft War Council, 269
National Association of Manufacturers, 242
“National Aviation Policy,” 294
National City Bank, New York, _Bulletin_, 274-275
National Defense Advisory Committee, 216
National Independent Carriers, 303
National Planning Association, 279, 282
National Rifle Association of America, 7, 24
National rifle matches, 1909, 2
NATS (_see_ Naval Air Transport Service)
Naval Air Stations (_see_ names of stations, as Pensacola)
Naval Air Transport Service (NATS), 255
Naval Aircraft Factory, Philadelphia, 23, 80, 124, 200
Aero Engine Laboratory, 38
Naval Operation (OPNAV), 20
Naval War College, Newport, 129
Navy, 19, 76, 202, 290, 292-293, 295
and air-cooled engines, 18, 31
and aircraft industry, 23, 52, 65-68, 172, 243, 260-262, 274-278
feuds in, 63
General Mitchell’s attack on, 58-61
growth of, 142
Hawaiian cruise of, 121-125
leadership in, 131-132
Panama maneuvers of, 135-148
procurement for, 66, 187
proposed reduction of, 25-26
public relations for, 291
Navy, and sea power, 129-130
war schedule of, 241
(_See also_ U.S. Navy Department)
Navy lend-lease, 252
Navy planes, Boeing fighters, 73, 75, 76, 134, 147
Catalinas, 195
Corsairs, 124, 140, 156, 187, 193, 257-258, 265
C-54’s, 256
F-5-L’s, 84
N-9’s, 43-44, 84, 91
P12’s, 134
SBU’s, 187-191
SC’s, 77-79
T4M’s, 104-106, 134, 140
UO’s, 43, 48, 50, 117
(_See also_ Kinds of aircraft, as Bombers)
Nazis, 210-212, 235
NC boats, 22
Nelson, Arvid, 160
Nelson, Donald, 286
Neutrality proclamation, 1939, 221
Neville, Leslie, 270
New Deal, 186
_New Knowledge, The_, 87
New York, New York, 3, 6, 60, 67, 93, 172
New York Central, 282
_New York Times, The_, 149, 270
Niles Tool Company, 51
Nimitz, Chester, 268
Noble, Warren, 33-34
Norden, Raymond A., 306-307
Norfolk Naval Air Station, 119, 121
North American, 194
North American Mustangs, 195
North Island Naval Air Station, 37, 128-129
Northrup, Jack, 169, 191-192, 201-202
Northrup Company, 154
Northrup-Vought fighter plane, 191-193
sold to Japan, 192
Norway, 207
NRA, 273
Nulton, Adm. Louis M., 151-153
Nutt, Arthur, 36, 42
Nye, Gerald P., 181, 187, 263, 271
O
Oberammergau, Passion Play at, 7
O’Connell, Joseph J., Jr., 299, 301-302
_Of Flight and Life_, 309
_Old Ark_ (see _Arkansas_)
_Omaha_, light cruiser, 136, 140, 143, 145
Oman, C. W. C., 250
OPNAV (_see_ Naval Operation)
_Oregon_, 112
P
Pacific air bases, 182
Pacific Northwest-Alaska carrier service, nonscheduled, 304
Pacific Overseas Airlines, 303-304
Pacific Torpedo Flotilla, 2, 112
Packard engines, 75, 78-79
Packard Motor Company, 16, 34-35
Palm Beach, Florida, 6
Palm Springs, California, 265, 267
Pan American Airways, 149, 174, 208, 294, 305-307
(_See also_ Clippers)
Panama Canal, 1929 maneuvers at, 135-150
Parker, James S., 61
Parkes, John, 171
Parsons, Lt. Ralph M., 23, 38
Passion Play, Oberammergau, 7
Patents, 41-42
Paterson, New Jersey, 29
Patrick, Maj. Gen. Mason M., 168
Patterson, Bill, 255
Patterson, Robert P., 277
Pearl Harbor, 29, 120-121, 125-127, 191, 219, 252, 267-268
Pensacola Naval Air Station, 38, 45, 81-96, 98, 112, 119, 130
Plant depreciation, 225, 227-228
Plevin, M. René, 222, 224
Ploesti oil fields, bombing of, 293
Poland, 208
invasion of, 221
Polish Airlines (LOT), 208
Pownall, “Baldy,” 89
Pratt, Admiral, 138-139, 148, 151-152
Pratt and Whitney engines, 216
1830’s, 193, 222, 241, 255
Hornet, 78, 80, 96, 104, 140, 187, 204, 208
2800’s, 194
two-row radial (R-1535), 188, 192
standardization of, 254-255
Wasp, 72-78, 98, 140, 154, 169, 187, 193, 196, 285
Wasp, Jr., 241
Wasp Major, 285
Pratt and Whitney Tool Company, 51, 66, 72-75, 154, 170, 177, 182,
196-198, 200, 202-203, 216-217, 219, 229, 251, 258, 263, 285
American addition for, 234, 238
British plant of, 224-228
as charge of Navy, 243
French plant of, 222, 226
War Plans Division, 218, 222, 226, 234
Press, the, 59-60, 67, 270, 274, 276, 290
Prestone, 197
Price Adjustment Act, 246, 274
Price Adjustment Board, 254
Profit control, 221, 246
Profiteering, 163, 210, 228, 245, 249, 265, 273, 275
Profits, 161-162, 274-277, 303
Propellers, 77-78, 154-157, 160, 204, 208, 241
controllable-pitch, 166-171, 174, 179
metal, 78, 164-165, 186
Public speakers, 283
Pursuit planes, 217-218
Putnam, Carleton, 297, 300
Putnam, George Palmer, 104
Q
_Queen Elizabeth_, flagship, 4, 259
Quisenberry, Alma, 23
R
Radford, Vice Adm. Arthur, 63, 292
Radio commentators, 242
Railroads, early expansion of, 280
government subsidizing of, 280-281
Ramsey, Vice Adm. de Witt C. (“Duke”), 63, 291
Ramspeck, Bob, 294
Rantoul, Illinois, 25
Rayburn, Sam, 271, 284, 302
Ream Field, 117
Reconversion, 256, 260-262, 272, 275-276
Reconversion Act, Section 102, 286
Reed, Sylvanus, 155-156
Reed Propeller Company, 155
Reeves, Rear Adm. Joseph M. (Bull), 111-112, 114-129, 131-133,
135-143, 145-146, 148, 151-152, 182-183, 193, 252
Reeves, Mrs., 118
Renegotiation, 246
Rentschler, Frederick B., 29-32, 36, 50-55, 66-67, 75, 77, 109-112,
153-157, 164, 167, 172-174, 182, 185, 205, 219, 229, 237-239,
247, 260-264, 278
Republic Aviation, 199
Rescue craft, 22
Reuther, Walter, 247-248
Richardson, “Captain Dick,” 174, 177
Richardson, Capt. H. C., 22
Richardson, Comdr. L. B., 243
Richthofen, Baron von, 58
Rickenbacker, Capt. Eddie, 191, 297-298, 301, 306
Ripley, Joseph P., 264
Roberts Board, 252
Rolls Royce engines, Merlin, 194
racing-plane, 196
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis, 211-212
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 181-182, 186, 221, 229, 246, 249, 256
airplane program of, 229, 233, 237, 251
Roosevelt, Theodore, quoted, 1
’Round the world flight, first, 98
Rowe, Gordon, 118, 122
Royal Aeronautical Society, London, 94, 208
Russell, Frank, 80, 269
Russia, 211-212, 289
attacked by Germany, 247
blockade of Berlin by, 307
(_See also_ Soviet)
Ryan, Claude, 105
S
Sabena, 207
San Diego, California, 2, 112-113, 117-119, 128, 130, 133-134, 152,
156, 193, 202
_San Diego Union_, 113
San Francisco, 265
San Francisco Advertising Club, 299
San Pedro, California, 117-118, 126, 138, 153
Santa Monica, California, 198, 201, 268
_Saratoga_, carrier, 21
_Saratoga_, carrier, new, 49, 77, 119, 127, 129, 135-141, 145-149,
152
Savoia Marchettis, 207
Schneider Trophy race, 98
Schwoble, Jake, 199
Scouts, long-range, 22
_Sea Cow_, SC-6, 77-79
Sea power, 4-5, 129-130, 288
Seaboard and Western Airlines, Inc., 303, 306-307
Seaplanes, 21, 43-44, 77-79, 84, 91
Seattle, Washington, 48
Secretary of the Navy, 40, 59
Selection Board, 9
Selective Service, 251
Self, Sir Henry, 222, 224, 226
Seligman, Mort, 134
Senn, Adm. Thomas J., 122, 136, 140
Service rivalry (_see_ Army-Navy rivalry)
_Seven Roman Statesmen, The_, 250
Seversky, Alex P. de, 191, 199-200
_Shenandoah_, dirigible, 56-58
Sheppard, Edgar W., 56-57
Sherman, Vice Adm. Forrest, 63, 268, 292
Shipbuilders, 248
Sidney, New York, 40
Sikorsky, Igor, 47, 96, 173-174, 177-180, 183-184, 200, 208, 248
quoted, 309
Sikorsky Aviation Company, 164, 170, 172-175, 182-183, 196, 200,
204-205
reorganization of, 176-179
(_See also_ Vought-Sikorsky)
Sikorsky planes, amphibians, S-39’s, 167, 173
clippers, S-40’s, 176-177
S-42’s, 180, 208
Sims, Admiral, 115
Sixth Battle Squadron, British Royal Fleet, 4
Slater, John, 183
Smith, C. R., 304
Smith, Karl, 112
Snyder, John W., 278, 286
Social security, 166
corporate, 273
Society of Civil Engineers, 93
Soleure, Switzerland, 39
Sorenson, Charles, 239-240
Soviet, 296
(_See also_ Russia)
_Southampton_, light cruiser, 266
Southern California, wartime migration to, 272
Spaatz, Gen. Carl, 214, 292
Spark plugs, 42
Speer, Albert, 235
Speer, Genevieve, 2
(_See also_ Mrs. Wilson)
Sperry Gyro Compass School, 74
_Spirit of St. Louis_, 103-106
Squadron commanders, selection of, 131-132
Stalin, 295
Standard Steel Propeller Company, 155-156, 160
Standley, Adm. William H., 189
Stark, Capt. Harold R., 136, 140
Starters, 33, 40-42
Stearman, Mr., 96, 172
Stewart, Sidney, 229
Stinson, Mr., 96
Stock-market crash, 1929, 158, 160, 172-173, 186
Stock-market speculation, 97-98, 154
Stoddard, Harry G., 264
Storrs, Put, 150
Strategic Bombing Surveys, 287
Stratford, Connecticut, 170, 173, 175
Strohm, “Matchew,” 142
Stromberg, 42
Studebaker, 232
Studley, Lt. Barrett, 87, 90
Stunt flying, 103
Submarine divisions (SUBDIVS), 130
Submarines, 292
German, 248, 287
Subsidies, 187, 280-281, 298-301, 306
Sullivan, Tiny, 117
Sulzberger, Arthur, 270
“Survival in the Air Age,” 290, 294
Sweden, 207
_Sylph_, yacht, 104, 106
Symington, Stuart, 292-293
T
Taxes, 95
excess profits, 245, 274
income, 160, 221, 227-228
_Teal_, sweeper, 122
Thomas, “Woody,” 89
Three Musketeers, 134, 150
Three Sea Hawks, 134, 141, 150
Tillinghast, “Tilly,” 214
_Time_ magazine, 265
Tomlinson, Tommy (“Injun Joe”), 126, 133-134, 150
Torpedo bombers, 22, 77-79, 97-98, 104-106, 140
Torpedoplanes, 104-106
Towers, Rear Adm. John H., 113-115, 119, 121, 124, 127, 267
Trade associations, 271, 273
Training planes, 98-99, 241
Trans-Canada Airlines, 182, 201
Transocean Airlines, 303
Transport planes, 95-96, 202
four-engined, 194, 255-256
(_See also_ Air transport; Clippers)
Trippe, Juan, 174, 294, 305
Truman, Harry S., 258, 278, 282, 286
_Truxtun_, four-piper, 219
Turbines, 4
Turner, Comdr. Richmond Kelly (“Spuds”), 168, 171
TWA, 306-307
U
Unemployment, postwar, 272, 274
Unemployment compensation, 272
Union League Club, Chicago, 254
_Unions_ (_see_ Labor unions)
United Aircraft Corporation, 182, 192, 204, 216, 229, 251-253,
256-257, 259, 260-264, 275, 285
board of directors of, 264
Kansas City plant of, 253
licencees of, 252-253
United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, 77, 153-154, 156, 161,
169-170, 172-175, 177-178, 180, 185-186
United Airlines Transport Corporation, 182, 255
U.A.W. of C.I.O., 277
U.S. Bureau of the Budget, 279
U.S. Department of Commerce, 69, 176, 180
U.S. Department of Defense, 290
U.S. House of Representatives, Naval Affairs Committee, 71
Report on War Department Appropriation Bill, 299
U.S. Naval Academy, 2, 112
(_See also_ Annapolis)
U.S. Navy Department, Bureau of Aeronautics (BUAERO), 1, 19-24, 29,
32, 38, 45, 47, 57, 59-60, 62, 70, 72, 94-95, 109, 122-123,
137, 139-140, 149, 157, 168, 181, 183, 187, 189-190, 194, 196,
216, 243-244, 253
Design Section, 22-23, 48, 180
Engine Section, 9, 12, 16-18, 22-23, 27, 32, 38, 44-45, 47-56,
77-78, 96, 186, 200
Matériel Division, 22, 65
need for, 6, 10
Plans Division, 123, 168
Stress Analysis Department, 185
U.S. Navy Department, Bureau of Engineering, 4
Bureau of Navigation (BUNAV), 19-20, 80-81, 131
(_See also_ Navy)
U.S. Post Office Department, and air mail, 281, 299-301
deficits in, 300
U.S. Senate, Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, 296
Military Affairs Committee, 284
War Contracts Subcommittee, 270, 272
U.S. State Department, 189, 294
U.S. Treasury, 218, 225-228
Internal Revenue Bureau, 221, 227
U.S. War Department, 61
(_See also_ Army)
Upham, Rear Adm. F. Brooks, 81-84, 86-89
Upham, Madame, 86-89
V
Vanadium, 165
Vandenburgh, Clyde, 269
Vaughan, Guy, 37, 39, 50, 103-105, 112, 230-231, 239
Vaughan, Helen (Mrs. Guy), 104
V.D.M. propeller, 208
Veterans, and air-carrier service, 303-304
Vincent, Col. Jesse G., 35
Vinson, Carl, 61, 64, 295
Vinson-Trammel Act, 1934, amendment to, 245
_Virginia Law Review_, 307
Vought, Chance Milton, 47-48, 54, 66, 72-73, 109-112, 124-125, 140,
164, 185-186
Vought, Russell R., 265, 267
Vought airplanes, Corsairs, 124, 140, 156, 187, 193, 257-258, 265
dive bomber, SBU, 187-191
UO, 43, 48, 50, 117
Vought-Sikorsky Division, United Aircraft, 229
(_See also_ Chance Vought Corporation)
W
Wagner, Frank D. (Honus), 118, 123-124, 131-133, 137-138, 141, 144,
150-152, 182
Walsh, Raycroft, 168, 170-171, 205, 214, 229, 263-264
War contracts, 273-274
canceling of, 15-16, 237, 275, 286
escalator clause in, 250
War debt, 95
War Investigating Committee, 258
War production, 237, 247
and private industry, 235-236
War Production Board, 249, 277, 286
Ward, J. C., 273, 277
Warner, Ed, 104
Warner, Seth, 118
_We_, 104-108
Webb, Lt. L. D., 78
West Coast Aircraft War Production Council, 265, 269
Westover, General, 213, 216
Wheat, George S., 52, 67, 168, 185
White, Capt. R. Drace, 8, 145-147
Whiteside, Arthur D., 290
Whiting, Kenneth, 21, 145-146, 151
Wick, Skinny, 140, 147
Wilbur, Curtis D., 64, 103-104
Wiley, Admiral, 150
Willgoos, Andy, 30, 55
Williamson, Fred, 282
Willis, Charles F., Jr., 307-308
Willis Air Service, Inc., 307
Wilner, Mort, 286
Wilson, Charles E., 277, 286
Wilson, Eugene E., address before Union League Club, Chicago, 254
on Admiral Nulton’s staff, 151-159
airplane crack-up of, 100-101, 186
assigned to _Langley_, 111
as author, 93, 287-289
automobile accident to, 198
education of, 2-4
elected president of United Aircraft Corporation, 229
at Great Lakes, 5-6
on Hawaiian cruise, 122-128
joins Pratt and Whitney, 198
joins United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, 160
made president, 178
made senior vice-president, 182
as Lindbergh’s technical adviser, 104-108
made chief, Airplane Design Section, 93
made chief, Engine Section, 9
made president, Chance Vought Corporation, 164
made president, Sikorsky, 164
marriage of, 2
before Murray Committee, 274
on Panama maneuvers, 135-148
at Pensacola, 82-92
poem by, 83
private office of, 226-227
resignation from business, 289
resignation from Navy, 158
Wilson, Mrs., 2, 7, 27, 81, 92, 101, 109, 125, 158-159, 266
Wilson, Woodrow, 247
Wind tunnels, 188
Wing flaps, 174
Wing loading, 180
Woodhead, Harry, 273, 277
Woodring, Harry, 233
Woolson, Capt. Lionel, 35, 42, 78
World War I, 4, 14-16, 58, 95, 101, 115, 123, 208, 210, 213, 222,
246-247, 259, 266
World War II, 168, 171, 178, 191-192, 194, 195, 209, 222, 246, 288,
295
_Wright_, seaplane tender, 6, 22, 82, 84, 135
Wright Aeronautical Corporation, 16-17, 29-32, 43, 50-52, 54-55, 73,
106, 153, 197-198, 238-239, 285
fraud accusation against, 258
wartime plant of, 252
(_See also_ Curtiss-Wright; Wright Martin)
Wright Apache, 73
Wright brothers, 13-14, 113, 184, 308
Wright engines, 77
Cyclone, 49, 80, 193
1510 two-row, 191
Hispano E-4’s, 17, 30, 33, 43
radial, 196
P-1’s, 30
P-2’s, 35, 49, 54
(_See also_ Wright Cyclone)
R-1200’s, 50, 54
(_See also_ Wright Simoon)
Simoon, 50, 54, 73
T-3’s, 77
Whirlwind, 49, 54, 78, 96, 99, 103, 107, 200, 286-287
Wright Field, 191-192, 197-198, 217
Wright Martin Aircraft Corporation, 16
Y
Yarnell, Capt. Harry E., 136
Young, James, 253
Z
Zar, Capt. Marco, 190
Zeppelins, 10
Zeros, 192
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 5 Changed: some thought, had helped pursuade
to: some thought, had helped persuade
pg 5 Changed: one of the few battleships with an airpline
to: one of the few battleships with an airplane
pg 58 Changed: wiley as the famous German Baron von Richtofen
to: wiley as the famous German Baron von Richthofen
pg 82 Changed: while the old seaplane tender and kite-ballon
to: while the old seaplane tender and kite-balloon
pg 82 Changed: this fault immediately they would loose
to: this fault immediately they would lose
pg 98 Changed: But aften Don had produced a masterpiece
to: But after Don had produced a masterpiece
pg 103 Changed: make capital of it by pursuading
to: make capital of it by persuading
pg 123 Changed: during tactical exercises, using Voughts to stimulate
to: during tactical exercises, using Voughts to simulate
pg 155 Changed: To match Tom Hamilton’s propellor-design
to: To match Tom Hamilton’s propeller-design
pg 159 Changed: professional slaves to every officier
to: professional slaves to every officer
pg 184 Changed: When the final account is cast up, Igor Ivanovitch
to: When the final account is cast up, Igor Ivanovich
pg 237 Changed: It would take some doing to pursuade
to: It would take some doing to persuade
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