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.