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.”