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.”

Tom went on to muse about the curious way thoughts took wing. Here was a former corporal of the Landswehr who had dreamed up a screwy idea and by force of his own conviction had sold it to the German people. Similarly, Lenin had generated an idea and, through sheer fanaticism, had come up from the dregs to impose a new tyranny on a people who had never known much else. Worse still, the cockeyed idea had spread into other lands in the short two decades since the Armistice from a war to make the world safe from such things. In Italy, it was Mussolini; in Japan, Hirohito. Here were four men on horseback, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and no one was doing anything about a counterattack with a better idea. One was ready at hand in the Christian faith, but subversive influences had persuaded Christians that it was unsophisticated even to talk about it. Protestants were so busy attacking Catholics that they were unwittingly led into an attitude toward communism which, if not sympathy, is at least not outspoken opposition.

Meanwhile at home we buried our heads in the sand. Unable to conceive such an idea as attacking others, we persuaded ourselves that some miracle would protect us. Our only means of counterattack was to pass a law against war and the current nostrum went under the title of “Arms Embargo Act.” It had its origin in the ancient myth of the war profiteer, an old wives’ tale founded on the idea that greedy munition racketeers in search of profits had fomented World War I. Its approach to keeping the peace was to prohibit the sale of arms to all belligerents. But, as Tom pointed out, it wouldn’t work out that way.

To date it had served as a good excuse for French bureaucrats to oppose the purchase of arms in the United States, on the grounds that delivery could be cut off by Hitler; all that was necessary was to declare war on France and convert her into a belligerent. The Act thus became an invitation to Hitler to make war whenever it suited his convenience. The Germans and Italians needed no American help; they had made themselves self-sufficient. From the moment the air-mail cancellations had thrown a rough lock on our own aviation program, they had seized upon the opportunity to expand their own air power as a new weapon with which the have nots could take what they wanted from the haves. Hitler had made no bones about it; such Nazis as Goering, Milch, and Udet bragged about their prowess to every American who visited Germany.

Among these, Charles A. Lindbergh had sought to sound a note of warning when he said to a Nazi assembly in Flyers-House in Berlin in July, 1936,

Unlike the builder of the dugout canoe, we have lived to see our harmless wings of fabric turned into carriers of destruction even more dangerous than battleships and guns. We have lived to carry on our shoulders the responsibility for the results of our experiments which, in other fields, have passed to future generations.

We in aviation carry a heavy responsibility on our shoulders, for while we have been drawing the world closer together in peace, we have stripped the armor of every nation in war. It is no longer possible to defend the heart of a country with its army. Armies can no more stop an air attack than a suit of mail can stop a rifle bullet. Aviation has, I believe, created the most fundamental changes ever made in war. It has turned defense into attack. We can no longer protect our families with an army. Our libraries, our museums—every institution which we value most, is laid bare to bombardment.

Aviation has brought a revolutionary change to a world already staggering from changes. It is our responsibility to make sure that doing so, we do not destroy the very things we wish to protect.

Reports as to German preparations by Lindbergh and numerous other competent observers had been discounted at home. A naval air attaché at Berlin had been threatened with orders home and accused of being pro-Nazi because he had made a factual report of German preparations. And at the very moment when Tom could arouse no interest in France or England looking to utilization of American products, the Italians, the Germans, the Japanese, and the Russians had come knocking at his door. At the time it was difficult to be selective. As the Four Horsemen jockeyed for advantage in the race for world dominion, no one knew who would be on our side. As it ultimately turned out, all four were against us at one time, what with the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis supported by the Russian nonaggression pact. But United Aircraft did draw the line in one situation; we quoted such high prices for our technical assistance that the Russians refused to buy from us. We knew, of course, that this did not prevent their getting whatever they wanted but at least we kept them out of our plants.

Tom, having long resided in France, had a strong attachment to the country and its people. Now with Hitler arming, he redoubled his efforts to interest the French Air Ministry in an arrangement which would place our facilities at their command in the emergency. After much delay he had finally succeeded in persuading them to test our engines in their laboratories with a view to “homologuing” them and clearing the way for later purchase, if desired. The engines had met all demands and had even got by in spite of some sand and glass which somehow always tended to get into the test engines.

Moving as Tom did in military and diplomatic circles, he had acquired an unusual outlook on the European situation. Yet he had not, as yet, been able to forecast the final line-up. Nazism and communism, though similar under the skin, were natural enemies. If British diplomacy, bent on maintaining the old balance of power on the Continent, could involve Russia and Germany, she might win a respite for western Europe. But if Russian diplomacy could bring Moscow into the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis, at least temporarily, Hitler would have a free hand with western Europe—where fifth columns had already penetrated—and might dominate British sea power with an air force based on shore and operating from interior lines. Meanwhile our natural friends abroad scorned our products even as our enemies scrambled to buy our technology.

And so the Yankee Peddler who had set out to advance the new art of air transport, and in so doing expand world trade and promote prosperity, suddenly found himself in the cloak-and-dagger business. The war, he knew, would set air transport back at least ten years to say nothing of incalculable damage in every other aspect of life. We were caught in a net spun out of the idea first suggested by General Jiulio Douhet and later endorsed by other fanatics. And all the while the biggest idea in human existence, the doctrine according to Jesus Christ, lay fallow for lack of ardent advocates.