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.