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.

Mac had broken the Sikorsky expenses down into the usual three categories, general and sales expense, engineering expense, and manufacturing expense. Now it appeared, the ratios of these expenses to one another and to shipments, sales, and so on, were far out of line with good practice. There were certain items in each that were more or less fixed, but manufacturing expense now looked like the best point of attack; it was a large part of the whole; it had large reducible items and it could be cut without serious harm. In other words my job was to go down to Stratford and fire enough of these attractive Russians to bring the expense into line. Fred summed it up this way:

“There is a limit to the contribution United Aircraft can make to Russian relief.”

And so, next day I took a morning train from Grand Central. The new Sikorsky factory lay just below the town of Stratford and just above the point where the Housatonic River empties into Long Island Sound. It was a sheltered spot and had been selected as possessing good seaplane facilities with space for a landing field nearby. From the outside, the high factory buildings looked new and shiny, but as I entered the door I thought that someone had cut corners on the details of construction.

After Arnold Dickinson had arrived, we went to work. Arnold appreciated the problems, but hesitated to move in on them. That remained for me, and now I began the unpleasant task that would burden me for many years. For the good of the organization and the salvation of jobs for the many, I must separate from our companies many delightful people, men who, though warm personal friends, just did not seem to have what it took to keep the wheels turning. The task was heartbreaking but the penalties for shirking it were inexorable. All one could do was try to perform his duty to the company with utmost fairness and kindness, and without impairing the morale of the individual or organization beyond the absolute minimum. This was a job that needed doing all at once; it must not be dragged. And so my first act at Sikorsky was to issue orders that the manufacturing expense be reduced by 20 per cent, and forthwith. The method of accomplishing this would be left to the local management.

That, however, did not work too well at Stratford. The cut in manufacturing expense seemed to create not a single ripple; I soon discovered why: engineering expense had suddenly skyrocketed. And when I ordered it restored to its original level—I did not deem it wise to cut back further for fear it might impair the engineering on the Pan American project—the Sikorsky management “agreed with me 100 per cent” as they were wont to express it in their Russian slang. But I soon found out why; the direct labor skyrocketed. Evidently these Russian intellectuals, refugees from their own land, were so versatile that they could play any position on the team—infield, outfield, or umpire. The organization was like a balloon; you could press your finger on one side and make a dent, but the other side bulged out—and less obviously. And when I took my new organization to task, they always “agreed with me 100 per cent,” and then proceeded to do precisely as they jolly well pleased.

Meanwhile, we got on with the Pan American S-40’s, as they came to be called, though this project proved to have more angles than the Kohinoor diamond, and threatened to cost about as much. While the specifications for the first Pan American Clippers had been reviewed by Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, Pan American advisor, and incorporated into the contract, they didn’t mean a thing. Before Pan American would take delivery on the plane it must be passed by the Department of Commerce and given an Approved Type Certificate as to its airworthiness. Without this ATC, Sikorsky might be left with a million dollars’ worth of airplanes and no market. Now Pan American, our sole customer, used this advantage to insist on our incorporating in the ships everything its own engineers or our prolific innovators could dream up, from swivel-handled toilets to back-lighted card tables. Thus our designs were kept in a state of continuous flux—at company expense. Save for the redeeming qualities of Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky himself, it is hard to imagine what might have become of us.

A man of strong convictions, for all his humbleness, he was a brilliant engineer though never a “clever” one. Thoroughly grounded in science and mathematics and accustomed to reason from fundamental principles to valid conclusions, he possessed to an astonishing degree those powers with which to divine a true course even when the signposts were not clearly marked. This capacity he once called “intuitive engineering” without for the moment ascribing that quality of genius to himself.

Thanks to Igor Sikorsky’s personal leadership, we finally completed delivery of the first three Pan American Clippers. While United absorbed a heavy loss on them, none of this resulted from changes made necessary by official ATC tests. Unlike other companies that later suffered severe losses from this cause, Sikorsky always managed to pass the tests in a remarkably short time, even though radical design features were involved. As for Pan American, that company used the airplanes to lug tons of mail, cargo, and passengers over the high seas for many years. The ships paved the way for a later model that disproved “Dick” Richardson’s formula, hurdled the last long barrier, San Francisco to Hawaii, and pointed the way to overseas air transport by land planes. It is not unlikely that Fred Rentschler’s investment paid off in the long run, if not on the books of Sikorsky, on those of Pratt and Whitney and Hamilton-Standard.

With the Clippers behind us, we now had the choice of two courses: first, we could shut down Sikorsky and save further losses; or second, we could reorganize it and try to exploit the genius of Igor Sikorsky without prohibitive losses. There seemed no way to anticipate earning a profit in the near future; whatever we tried must be for the long pull. But one thing we had definitely determined: it was too much to expect our friends, the Russian refugees, to implement the American techniques of production. Not that they could not understand them, for they did understand and admire the extraordinary manifestation of applied science that went under that banner. The problem was rather one of temperament or national character.

It was not until the middle of World War II that I heard this thought advanced by Charles A. Lindbergh, one of Mr. Sikorsky’s most devoted friends and an ardent admirer. The conversation took place much later, but before the war had involved this country. By that time I had become president of United Aircraft, and had persuaded Lindbergh to join our organization in the capacity of a personal advisor to me. The conversation took place in our home in Hartford, on one of the many stimulating evenings my wife and I were to enjoy with Lindbergh. He had been outlining those views on the European situation which had involved him in so much misunderstanding. Having been in Russia and Germany and, like his father before him, having ardently hoped for peace for his own country, he had feared that, in joining with Russia to defeat Hitler, we would bring about those very things which have since justified his concern.

He thought that nations, like people, displayed traits of fundamental character that were distinct and unchanging. These had had hereditary origins and had been influenced by environment. They influenced the attitudes of nations toward specific circumstances and conditions and especially tended to determine the attitude of a nation toward war as an instrument of policy and to dictate the methods by which it prosecuted a war. The character of the Russians and that of the American people, he thought, differs as night differs from day. Theirs had been a tradition of compulsion, ours of cooperation. If in competition with them we tried to use their methods, we must prove quite as inept as would they in trying to use ours. But if we had the wit to exploit our own ideology to the limit, we must surely overcome the inferior authoritarian process. He saw the problem in its spiritual rather than material light.

Now if consideration of matters like this appears somewhat academic, the fact remains that they were fundamental to our decision as to what to do with Sikorsky. On the one hand, it was clear that in trying to operate the plant we would assume heavy management burdens with little hope of financial reward; on the other, it was certain that there was a pearl in the Sikorsky oyster which, unless we dived for it, would remain quite undiscovered. Our willingness to accept the risk of further operations there must depend upon our confidence in the collateral benefits. This, in turn, must be based entirely upon the quality of leadership we ourselves could display. And so, after much soul searching, we decided to gamble on our own abilities to direct the genius of Igor Sikorsky so as to benefit the art, if not to swell the treasury.

With this decision taken, we cut the organization back sharply to the double handful of men Mr. Sikorsky himself deemed vital to his success. These included, among others, the brothers Gluhareff, Michael and Serge, Bob Lebensky, of the experimental shop, and Buivid of the laboratory. With the organization set, I stated the problem as that involving the creation of a large flying boat so designed that, when operated on the Pan American system, it could earn its board and keep. In other words, we must move the upper limit of the Richardson formula as high as necessary to gain our objectives. As one contribution to this project, we had the new Hamilton-Standard controllable-pitch propeller, then under development; as another we had a complementary development of Mr. Sikorsky’s, a new wing-flapped airfoil. The propeller could pull more weight into the air and fly it; the flaps could help it into the air and get it back on the water at a reasonable stalling speed. This made the flying-boat hull the controlling factor; its characteristics limited the load we could drag into the air with our new wing and new propellers. To refine the lines of the boat hull, our engineers now devised an inexpensive but effective test rig; they towed a model hull alongside a speed boat and photographed its action in rough or smooth water with slow-motion cameras.

And while we pushed on with our concept of a wholly new design in which we would accept no compromise that impaired the economy of operation, we all sweated out the days and nights of tests and experiments. But there was one critical item on which I did no sweating. Had Mr. Sikorsky revealed to me the fact that the wing loading he had selected would be too high to conform to the current Department of Commerce requirements, and that he would have to sell the Department a new concept of landing in a power stall before he could get his ship accepted, I am sure I should not have had the courage to risk all that money on his persuasive qualities. As it was, he kept me in ignorance of the risk, assumed it wholly to himself, and let me know about it only after he had made his sale. The principle of high wing loadings, involving a new type of approach and landing, is now so thoroughly accepted that few pilots know how it came about. The principle is inherent in current air economics and the limits have gone steadily upward. In 1927 I had solemnly announced for the Design Section of BUAERO that we would not consider wing loadings in excess of 10.5 pounds per square foot. Today, the new Boeing Stratocruiser utilizes loadings eight times that high.

And so Igor Sikorsky built the famous S-42’s, forty-passenger flying boats, designed to hop from New York to Bermuda to the Azores and to Portugal on what was called the “stepping-stones” route to Europe. So well did he design the planes that, when the British refused to give Pan American landing rights at Bermuda because they had no similar boat with which to match the service, Pan American turned westward to the Pacific and used the new Clippers to pioneer the run to Australia, the Philippines, and China. On this run the controlling factor was the great distance to Honolulu, 2,400 miles against 1,900 miles from Bermuda to the Azores, but the Sikorsky boat hulls, derived from model-towing tests, could take off nearly 20 per cent more load than that originally contemplated. Thus they removed the last barrier to overseas air commerce.

From the United point of view, while we made no money on the transaction, and, accounting-wise, lost a hundred thousand dollars on the ten ships, cash-wise we bore no out-of-pocket loss. And while the project took a lot of nervous and physical energy out of management, it paid dividends to the aviation art as a whole. Meanwhile we kept our eyes open for a chance to work into some Army or Navy business, though a number of important changes had taken place.

First of all, shortly after President Roosevelt had been inaugurated, Postmaster James Farley had canceled the air-mail contracts and Senators Black and Nye had broken out in a rash of Congressional investigations. These had upset the five-year procurement programs of both Army and Navy and reacted adversely upon many manufacturers. For a while, Admiral Moffett had held the fort, but then a great tragedy had deprived aviation of one of its foremost figures at its time of greatest need.

The admiral, continuing his absorption with the development of lighter-than-air craft, had succeeded in building and operating the _Macon_ and the _Akron_ and had established a new field near San Jose, California, one that now carries his name. Here the _Macon_ carried out operations with the fleet until an unfortunate accident resulted in her complete loss. The Old Man, still faithful to the rigid airship, continued to fly in them himself until the night the _Akron_ sailed out over the Atlantic and was destroyed. The admiral was lost at sea along with other gallant airmen, close friends and classmates of mine. The loss was disastrous enough from the personal angle, for Admiral Moffett was loved and admired by all his aeronautic organization to a degree seldom attained by any man. Coming as it did at the time of greatest trial on the political front, it deprived us of the one person who might have guided us through our worst rocks and shoals. The admiral was buried at Arlington along with so many of the young lads he had inspired. With his passing, gloom settled over us all.

When Adm. E. J. King succeeded to command of BUAERO, he brought to it a type of leadership quite different from that which had characterized its thirteen years under Admiral Moffett. Admiral King, who was one day to become Commander in Chief during World War II, was a man of strong convictions who made his own decisions. With his brilliant intellect and decisive manner, he dominated the Bureau completely.

The cancellation of air-mail contracts set off a chain reaction that disrupted the whole United Aircraft and Transport structure. To comply with the law requiring separation of manufacturing companies from transport organizations, United Airlines was split off into a separate company known as United Airlines Transport Corporation. With the transport link between the eastern and western manufacturing groups thus disrupted, we divided them into two separate companies. The four Connecticut companies, Pratt and Whitney, Hamilton-Standard, Chance Vought, and Sikorsky, comprised the new United Aircraft Corporation. The western group took the name of Boeing Airplane Company.

In the reorganization, William E. Boeing severed all his aviation connections. Frederick B. Rentschler resigned the presidency of United. Phillip G. Johnson, deprived by law of his right to manage the airlines, later moved to Canada to create the great Trans-Canada Airlines. Donald L. Brown moved up from Pratt and Whitney to become president of United Aircraft Corporation, and I became its senior vice-president. Thus a Congressional investigation that proved no wrongdoing deprived the country of the services of three outstanding pioneers.

President Roosevelt had, meanwhile, appointed Admiral Reeves Commander in Chief, United States Fleet. Having in mind the progress of events in the Pacific, I had undertaken a study of a big boat designed to scout its vast areas, using available harbors as bases of operations. About the time the job was completed, the admiral invited me to join him on the _California_, at Hampton Roads, to watch the aircraft carriers in operation. Frank Wagner, his Operations officer, met me at Old Point Comfort and the admiral himself greeted me at the gangway. The bulkheads of his cabin had been papered with charts of the Pacific, evidence enough of the Old Man’s absorption with that problem. When, after lunch, he developed his estimate of the Pacific situation and asked if I thought it possible to build a flying boat capable of patrolling the area, I was able to produce from my brief case exactly what the doctor had ordered. The hearty laugh with which Bull Reeves greeted this legerdemain brought back memories of the happy days of FLEET AIR.

Under pressure from the fleet, BUAERO, which at this time was absorbed in carrier aircraft and about ready to wash up big boats, invited bids on which Sikorsky won the award. As the designs progressed, BUAERO developed increasing interest in the project and finally authorized a second development by Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego. In the competition for the production order, Sikorsky lost out to Consolidated on price, but the Sikorsky design was selected by the new transoceanic operator, American Export Airlines, for whom we built three passenger ships. The American line, organized and operated under the able leadership of John Slater, provided nonstop flying-boat service from New York to Foynes, Ireland, and during the war provided comfortable berths for many very important people while many others of the same character shivered in bucket seats in hastily improvised land-plane service via Newfoundland, Iceland, and the Azores. In other words, Sikorsky flying boats showed the way to transoceanic service and, at the moment, actually outperformed the land plane.

However, even under such fair terms as those granted us by American Export Airlines, we did not succeed in avoiding serious losses at Sikorsky. Meanwhile, Pan American had turned to Martin and then Boeing, and each of these able builders had suffered similarly. By that time, too, the aircraft industry had suffered from the political debacle in Washington. We had reached the end of our rope and could no longer afford to contribute either our management or engineering talents, let alone our slender capital, to the subsidization of airline operations. We decided to drop out of the big-boat business.

And when I broke this sad news to Mr. Sikorsky—by then I had become president of United Aircraft—he received it like the great gentleman he is. He understood our problem; he was grateful for all the consideration the company had given him. He wondered if perchance we would grant him one more favor; he would like to go back to his first love—experimenting with helicopters. He thought he might succeed now where he had failed before. A modest sum of money would meet his requirements and he hoped this was not asking too much.

Quite certain that no one could possibly build a successful helicopter but that Mr. Sikorsky at least deserved a try, I magnanimously agreed to back him. Igor Sikorsky did invent the helicopter, just as the Wrights before him had invented the airplane, by diligent study, by painstaking experiment, by teaching himself to fly and then teaching others. In so doing, the man who had given the world the means of vaulting the last barrier to air commerce went to the other extreme to create the only vehicle that can operate in three dimensions without a prepared surface from which to take off or land. Aviation owes much to his creative mind, one that not only finds no difficulty in reconciling science and religious faith, but on the contrary, exercises that intuitive quality that marks real genius.

The moral of this brief review of the history of a representative airplane company is that profit has a counterpart in loss, and both are essential to progress. Again, financial results are not the sole measure of excellence; there is also the intangible factor of stewardship. When the final account is cast up, Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky will rank among the immortals of American aviation.