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.”