of hostilities which, like that following the Armistice, would
lead to disorderly reconversion, and the extinction of the private
aircraft-manufacturing industry. For by now we were blown up so
far beyond any size warranted by our own resources or possible for
postwar production that we could not possibly survive the deflation.
As a hedge against this debacle, we decided our only recourse was to
build new engines as the basis for new and more economical commercial
aircraft which would replace the war-surplus DC-4’s and put the
airlines in position to make money under peacetime conditions. In
face of the feeling of certainty among our engineers that they just
could not undertake any further developments with their current war
load, management took responsibility for the decision and we set up
the project.
With a view to strengthening our research division we made a number
of changes. Frank Caldwell moved over from Hamilton-Standard. My old
friend Dr. Lucke, now retired from active teaching but very much
alive to new developments, joined John Lee on a consulting basis. To
utilize the experience and facilities of scientific institutions, we
farmed out numerous research projects pertaining to jet propulsion.
As a final accomplishment, we enlisted the help of Charles A.
Lindbergh.
After President Roosevelt had refused Lindbergh’s offer to serve
in the Army, rugged old Henry Ford had taken him on as research
assistant in Detroit. Here Lindbergh, now fortyish, carried out some
very high altitude research under conditions that would have tried
the skill of the ablest young pilot. I wanted him in United as a
personal aide to help resolve some of the conflicts in the latest
revolution in aviation, jet propulsion. Aside from his unexcelled
knowledge of aviation and his proved pilot’s skill, Lindbergh had the
clear incisive mind which we needed so badly in appraising some of
the implications of jet power.
For jet propulsion was not quite so simple as the art of building
piston engines; such problems as air-cooled versus liquid-cooled or
in-line engines versus radials belonged in the kindergarten compared
with the complexities of turbo-jet versus turbo-prop. And whereas
our air-cooled radials had promised improvement in every factor
pertaining to aircraft propulsion, these jets suffered the serious
handicap of profligate fuel consumption at the moment when maximum
range was a fundamental requirement for air tactics and commercial
air transport.
While Lindbergh’s sound judgment proved valuable in this role, it
was back in his natural character as the Lone Eagle that he went
to town for me. On a trip to the Pacific, made at my suggestion
with a view to helping the Vought Corsair play its lawful part in
carrier operations, Lindbergh flew with a squadron of Army Lightnings
on a long-range over-water mission. During this period of island
hopping, advances were restricted to the operating radii of escorting
fighters. Charles Lindbergh, utilizing some of the savvy that had
shown the way from New York to Paris, was able to stretch his own
range some five hundred miles. Following his quiet example, the
remaining squadrons were soon able to go and do likewise.
He dropped in unobtrusively one day on some marine fighter squadrons
left behind to harass by-passed Jap installations on adjacent
islands. The marines were accustomed to strafing Jap positions
with the guns and light bombs of their Corsairs. Lindbergh quietly
constructed a bomb rack for heavy bombs and progressively increased
his load from 1000 to 2000 pounds and finally to 3000-pound bombs.
When the marines discovered that the Corsair was truly a heavy
dive bomber, they demanded a chance to participate in carrier-based
close-support operations for amphibious forces. On receipt of this
news, the Navy “discovered” the Corsair—so much so in fact that Adm.
J. S. McCain, who had earlier confirmed current opinion that Corsairs
were too big for carriers, now charged me with losing the war because
Vought deliveries were inadequate to his needs over the Japanese
island of Honshu.
At home a new threat appeared. A rumor ran like wildfire through the
shop that Senator Truman’s War Investigating Committee had discovered
evidence of fraud in the inspection department of the Wright
Aeronautical plant at Cincinnati, and was on the way to investigate.
Almost immediately, the news headlines confirmed the story and the
fat was in the fire. The reaction on Wright was practically to halt
production; at Pratt and Whitney it threatened serious reductions in
output, just at the time when demand was at its highest.
The matter of the inspection on a production line is one of its most
delicate factors. No specifications or instructions can be written
without leaving an element of judgment to an inspection department.
All that is needed to freeze up the whole process is the threat of
Congressional inquiry, especially when accompanied, as was this case,
by jail threats for the guilty parties.
The investigation ran its customary course in the newspapers. The
Committee had its innings. No crime was discovered that had warranted
such a complete shutdown on deliveries of vital war materials. And
after it was over, the manufacturers all over the country picked
themselves up out of the gutter and went on with their production.
In light of the production miracles performed by private industry in
spite of a militantly unfriendly administration, it is interesting,
even though futile, to speculate what might have been done under
an inspired leadership that had faith in the cooperative process,
understood the technique of the voluntary method, and was determined
to give it a friendly opportunity to perform. From the point of
view of costs alone, results would have been startling. The impact
on the human spirit would have been far-reaching. Too many of us
functioned under little more inspiration than that associated with
pride in craftsmanship. I had witnessed the magic that can be worked
by inspiring leadership while under Admiral Beatty’s command in
the Grand Fleet. As World War I dragged to a close, two facts had
become clear. Despite all the bloody trench warfare along the Western
Front, victory would again rest with the nation which held command of
the sea. In the existing stalemate, with the Hun unwilling to risk
action, ultimate victory would crown the head of the fleet commander
who displayed the best leadership; it was all a matter of morale.
It is now part of history that Beatty, himself a hard-riding fox
hunter, succeeded in bringing his command to the peak of its fighting
efficiency at the precise moment German sailors selected to mutiny.
I had got an insight into Beatty’s mind one day just prior to the
Armistice when he had called me aboard the _Queen Elizabeth_ to
compliment me on some verses I had published in _The Arklight_, our
ship’s paper, under the title, “When the Grand Fleet Goes to Sea.”
On the settle before the open coal fire in his cabin, Admiral Beatty
summed up a discourse on leadership.
“I appreciate the tribute in your verses,” he had said, “because
morale is the first responsibility of the leader and my every
conscious and subconscious act has been directed toward maintaining
high morale here in the fleet.”
As United Aircraft spilled over into every vacant loft in the
Hartford area and then expanded into huge satellite plants in
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, morale became my first
responsibility. In order to indoctrinate our many new supervisors
in our underlying philosophies, we organized seminars and conducted
classes in leadership. In these I personally made it clear that
United management had no faith in “shovership”; we would stand or
fall on leadership.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
For Survival
In the anteroom to the office of the Secretary of the Navy, Fred
Rentschler and I waited our turn. A stream of visitors, mostly naval
officers of high rank, swept in and out of the sanctum. The men who
were furnishing the leadership for this war were contemporaries
of mine back in those brave days at the turn of the century when
Pax Britannica still reigned and when the chances for professional
advancement or even a career looked slim indeed. Now as they moved in
and out, many paused to greet us and say a word of congratulation on
our industry’s production miracle. Meanwhile, we wondered what the
secretary might have in store for us.
Jim Forrestal sat behind his desk, taking a telephone call. As we
took chairs in front of him, I glanced around at the flag-draped
room and its collection of trophies. Jim had made a bid to refurnish
the long room, decorating the walls with blow-up photos and seagoing
mementos but even a powerhouse like Jim could not dispel the musty
odor of the temporary structure or paint out its shabbiness. By 1945
that collection of shacks had served twenty-five years and seen two
world wars, and it bid fair to go on indefinitely. Jim hung up the
telephone, flicked a switch to his “intercom-squawker,” barked a
sharp order at the answering voice, and then turned to us.
James Forrestal, like Fred Rentschler, was a Princeton man. Curious
how you can spot the stamps of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth,
and other Ivy League colleges. Schools like this leave as much of an
imprint upon their alumni as do West Point and Annapolis. Jim was a
close-knit, clean-cut, youngish fellow, dark-complexioned, with the
muscles of an intercollegiate boxer bulging around his shoulders and
upper arms. A man of few words, he packed almost as much meaning in
them as did Fred Rentschler.
“I am going to tell you fellows something, now,” he began, “and if
you repeat it, I’ll deny I ever said it.” He paused to pull open the
upper left-hand drawer of the desk and remove a packet of gum. After
offering us some, he wadded the wrapper of his own piece, flicked it
into the wastebasket, and went on.
“You fellows are swamping us with your production,” he said.
“Engines, propellers, and airplanes are running out of our ears. The
time has come to slow down.”
I couldn’t resist a crack. “So it’s now ‘too much and too soon.’”
Fred Rentschler looked serious.
“Jim,” he began, “that remark of yours gives us the opening we have
been waiting for. We have been worried about the same thing for some
time, but with the criticism that has been leveled at us, we just
didn’t think it was time to bring the matter to you.” He lighted a
cigarette.
“Of course you know,” he said, “that the aircraft industry has been
blown up like a balloon. Our present output is all out of proportion
to our own meager resources. If there should be a sudden cessation
of hostilities, as in World War I, and that seems highly probable,
and if no more preparation has been made for such an event than now
exists, the whole aircraft industry will be wiped out in a matter of
days. If any company could survive such a catastrophe, it would be
United Aircraft, for we have been ultraconservative and taken every
possible precaution against just this contingency, but I promise you
even United would go out like a light.” Jim Forrestal sat silent,
watching Fred as he went on.
“We have made a quick study of our own situation,” he said, “and
concluded that, upon the sudden termination of existing war
contracts, which under the law occurs immediately upon the cessation
of hostilities, we could not complete the mechanics of paying off our
employees in time to prevent liquidating our resources. The pay roll
is so big,” he added, “and the job of paying off is so complex, that
the outgo would break us before we could finish the task.” He paused.
“To sum up our position,” he concluded, “the disorderly reconversion
that seems sure to follow this war will wipe us out even more
completely than it did after the Armistice. In our opinion,” he
added, “it’s up to you military fellows to do something about it.”
Jim Forrestal nodded. “I go along with you,” he said, “up to the last
statement. There is nothing the Army and Navy can do about this. We
are public servants and, even under Franklin D. Roosevelt, subject to
the people’s will. The only people that can do anything about it,”
he added, “are you men. Your industry has got to carry its story to
the public.” Again his telephone rang; again Jim handled the call. He
turned back to us.
“Your industry,” he went on, dead-pan, “is the choicest collection
of cutthroat competitors in the country. Maybe it’s because pioneers
still manage it. But if you pioneers expect to survive,” Jim went on,
“the industry must unite and do battle for its existence. Frankly, I
doubt if anyone can unite the aircraft industry, but someone has got
to try it.” He glanced my way.
“If anyone can do it,” he added, putting a finger on my knee, “you
can.”
He might as well have landed a fist on my chin. What he meant was
that having come out of the Navy, and escaped the early personal
rivalries, I was freed of a handicap.
Even as Jim had talked, orderlies had entered the room and begun
shifting chairs, lining them up in an arc around the secretary’s
desk. Through the open door I caught glimpses of the uniforms and
gray thatches of ranking department heads, standing by for a council
meeting. As Fred and I stood up to leave, Jim walked us to the door.
“Why not stay for the council meeting?” he asked me, as we shook
hands. “You’ll see a lot of old shipmates.”
“Thanks,” I replied, “I guess we’d better go home and digest what
you’ve just told us.”
Back in Hartford, the four members of United’s war council gathered
around the long table in the board room where Fred Rentschler had his
office. On the walls hung the portraits of men who had helped make
the company—men like Chance Vought, George Wheat, George Mead, and
Don Brown.
After discussing the problem Jim Forrestal had put up to us, we
agreed that this new responsibility would require rearrangement of
our own topside organization. An effort to organize the aircraft
industry for a public relations effort just didn’t fit in with the
detailed administration of any single company. I would have to
relinquish my job as chief executive.
And so I came face to face with the decision that I had known to
be inevitable the moment Jim Forrestal put the finger on me. I had
been in at the inception of Pratt and Whitney and United Aircraft.
I had managed three of its four divisions and participated in vital
decisions as to the other. I had helped hold it together in the
trying days following the Black and Nye investigations, and had been
its chief executive through the critical phases of the war expansion.
Now that we were over the hump, I would have to give up my cherished
title of president in order to try to help the company to survive.
As a matter of fact, we had long discussed the possibilities of a
reorganization following the war. We well knew that the reconversion
job would try the nervous and physical capacity of a man younger than
any of us four seniors, and that our duty to the company demanded
that we start bringing juniors along. We four would graduate into
the category of elder statesman while my successor took over the
reins. The logical man was Jack Horner, of Pratt and Whitney. Ray
Walsh and I would fleet up to vice-chairmen and Jack in due course
would become president. Meanwhile I would assume responsibility for
“general-industry” matters and retain supervision of research. Jack
would take over operations, and Fred would continue to exercise
authority over the business affairs of the company. Ray Walsh, who
had a unique capacity for handling policy, personnel, and legal
matters, would continue on his course.
With these decisions reached, we began a discussion of the course
to be followed in getting our story before the public. Had there
been some independent aviation organization capable of doing the
job, we should have looked to them, but under the circumstances, it
seemed clear that we must depend upon our trade association, the
Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, in Washington. The war production
councils, then functioning effectively, would automatically disband
upon cessation of hostilities; the Aeronautical Chamber must be
rejuvenated.
Discussion of the course to be followed brought out a key suggestion
by Raycroft Walsh. Ray had been in the Air Corps in Washington during
the Moffett-Mitchell dogfight and had participated in the hearings
before the Morrow Board. Having in mind the constructive influence
of the Board, he now suggested that we campaign for a new public air
policy commission.
Fred Rentschler rather pooh-poohed the suggestion but, when I
supported it, finally agreed wholeheartedly. Here was a little
indicator of how difficult it might prove to sell the idea to the
company presidents; if Fred Rentschler needed selling, how about
the others less profound in their mental processes than he? We now
decided that I should make a swing around the circuit to appraise
the states of mind and try to plant the idea before we committed
ourselves irrevocably to changes in our own organization that our
directors might not approve. On our board, aside from the principal
officers of the company, we had enlisted the help of several
distinguished “outside directors.” Joseph P. Ripley, president of
the New York investment house of Harriman Ripley, had been active
in the original incorporation of United Aircraft and Transport.
Harry G. Stoddard, president of Wyman Gordon, had long served on our
executive committee. Morgan B. Brainard, president of Aetna Life and
Affiliated Companies, was a man of broad wisdom and wide business
experience. Francis W. Cole, a prominent Hartford lawyer and later
board chairman of the great Traveller’s Insurance Company, brought
us mature counsel. Mr. Peter M. Fraser, later president of the
Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, completed our coterie of
able men. And if at times the technicalities of our business confused
them somewhat, nonetheless, their unexcelled fundamental business
knowledge was a priceless asset to the company. We outlined the plan
to them but decided to defer final decision until I could check
industry sentiment and determine if the Forrestal suggestion could
command its support.
This check took me westward to Los Angeles, the center of the
air-frame section of aircraft production. As our representative
in that territory, Russell R. Vought, younger brother of Chance
Vought, had long maintained an office in Beverly Hills. Russ had
gone west while still a young man, and founded his own business in
San Francisco. Then back in 1928, when we had equipped the _Langley_
with the new Corsairs, and especially the single-float amphibians, he
had agreed to represent Chance Vought Aircraft on the West Coast on
a part-time basis. Now he made his home in Beverly Hills and had a
bungalow in Palm Springs. Arrived in Beverly Hills, I called up John
G. Lee, the manager of the West Coast War Production Council, and
asked him over to the office with a view to getting his appraisal of
the problem.
John Lee, through his close association with the presidents of the
West Coast companies, was able to give me an authoritative estimate
of the sentiment out there. The presidents, he thought, were too much
engrossed with their own immediate problems to become interested
in the long-term difficulties. They were aware of the threat to
survival but not as yet concerned with it. Like many other business
chief executives, they were groggy and punch-drunk, and you couldn’t
blame them. As a reward for their pains they had found themselves
characterized as munitions racketeers, war profiteers, and merchants
of death. Now, through production miracles, they had given the lie to
their detractors. The profit motive no longer provided an incentive
to creative endeavor.
“Take Mr. Douglas, for instance,” John summed up. “He is the key to
the West Coast situation. If you could enlist his support, you could
also get the help of the others; without it you’d be licked before
you started. _Time_ magazine recently quoted him as saying he had
the perfect postwar plan: ‘lock the door and throw away the key.’ Of
course Mr. Douglas didn’t say that, even though he may have thought
it, but the quote is significant.”
Ever since that day in Jim Forrestal’s office, I had been mulling
over an idea evolved one evening at Admiralty House, Bermuda, where
my wife and I had been the dinner guests of Vice Adm. Sir Charles E.
Kennedy-Purvis, RN, K.C.B., Commander in Chief of British Forces in
the Western Atlantic. As Comdr. Charles E. Kennedy-Purvis, Executive
Officer of the light cruiser _Southampton_, I had known him well in
the old Grand Fleet days. “K-P,” as we called him, had recently been
advised of his pending assignment as First Deputy Sea Lord, at the
Admiralty, London, where he would be charged with responsibility for
recreating the British carrier force after the decline suffered under
the Air Ministry. He had asked us down for a visit in order to get my
slants on the principles involved.
My idea had first come to me the evening following the German
surrender in World War I when several of us wardroom officers had
gone ashore to pay a social call on K-P and his wife in their tiny
apartment over a cottage in the village of Limekilns. Upon my
referring to Beatty’s congratulatory signal to the Grand Fleet, K-P
had taken pains to remind me that the message had been addressed to
the British Empire.
“Beatty,” he had said, “was not talking to the fleet but reminding
the people that it had been the nine-knot tramps, the rusty colliers,
the huge transports, the drifters and trawlers, all the ‘Merchant
Men’ which had kept the Empire lifeline open. These,” he had added,
“are the backbone of our sea power.”
K-P, who like most English officers was much better schooled in
public affairs than were we, had gone on to give us a discourse on
transportation. From the days of the aborigines’ pursuit of game
herds, the progress of civilization was marked by the milestones of
the development of transport. In America, the railroads had sparked
reconstruction after the Civil War by opening up the resources of the
West. Following the World War, the automobile would likely perform
the same function. Improved transportation had always increased the
number of persons who could subsist on a given area and had always
increased the wealth and living standards of lands in which it had
been exploited.
When I had inquired what future K-P foresaw for the airplane he had
shaken his head.
“The economics of the thing are all against it,” he had replied. “The
cost and complication of the airplane are out of all proportion to
its limited useful load.”
Subsequently, with the coming of age of air transport, I had
begun to visualize an analogy between sea power and air power, a
line of thinking that had led naturally to Pax Britannica and Pax
Aeronautica. About this same time John W. Donaldson published a paper
on the same subject. This would become the keynote of the aircraft
manufacturing industry’s struggle for survival, but first we must
establish a wholly new definition of air power. Instead of its being
synonymous with air force, the term must incorporate such other
elements as aircraft production, airline transport, private flying,
finance, public support, in fact everything that helps make a nation
strong in the air. While advocating the preservation of our industry,
we must predicate the need upon the public interest.
When I outlined this idea to John Lee, his eyes lighted up.
“It will take an idea like that to interest Don Douglas,” he said.
“Remember,” he advised, “Mr. Douglas responds to the eye rather than
to the ear.”
In order that we might concentrate on this job, the Voughts now
suggested that my wife and I join them at their cottage on the
desert. Here at Palm Springs, the task was to do a sort of Mahan
analysis of air power in history, and boil it all down to the
simplest terms. After a lot of head-scratching, pencil-pushing, and
earnest discussion, I finally got it in form.
Feeling now the need for the best possible counsel on this important
matter, I wangled an invitation from Rear Adm. John H. Towers, then
on duty at Pearl Harbor, and hopped out to Honolulu in a Pan American
Boeing Clipper that left San Francisco before supper and arrived at
Pearl before breakfast next morning.