CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Off the Beam

The German attack on Russia immediately converted a lot of former pacifists into bloodthirsty warmongers. With that everybody began trying to get into the act. We, who had once been crucified for warmongering, now found ourselves charged with “too little and too late.” The war cry now became “unconditional surrender,” a phrase that had a hollow ring to men who had watched Woodrow Wilson end World War I with his “Fourteen Points” by dividing the German people and the German Kaiser.

In this country everybody became overnight an expert on war production and a critic of the professionals. The professionals, unfortunately, must always bear the responsibility for their

## actions, while their critics can and do speak with the advantage of

irresponsibility. The newspapers now began to ballyhoo the “Reuther plan” as the answer to everything and news commentators belabored the ether with a cacophony of approval. From his office in the War Production Board, Bill Knudsen called us on the telephone.

“You know this fellow Reuther?” he inquired, pronouncing the name as if it spelled Rooter.

Yes, we knew about Reuther from the headlines. With his usual flair for publicity, he had crashed the front pages with the bright idea of putting all the machine tools of the automotive industry, now laying off men to convert to war production, into construction of airplanes under the mass-production principle. To an expert like Reuther, the idea of buying new machinery just to build airplane engines smacked of another grab by the bosses. Its reaction on Bill Knudsen had prompted this call for help.

“Well,” he said, with that delightful Danish accent, “what are we going to do about him?”

Fred Rentschler thought a moment. “Send him up here,” he replied. “We’ll take care of him.”

And when Walter Reuther arrived at “The Aircraft” in East Hartford, he was mustered into the board room and received by all the principal officers of the company. After he had stated his case bluntly, sparing no wallops at the “carriage trade,” we assured him that if he knew where we could get the kind of tools we needed, he was just the man we were looking for. Maybe he had better quit the union and go to work for us. We had combed the countryside for suitable tools but had not been able to find any. As a mechanic, Reuther would know machine tools, and we would like to have his help.

Reuther descended into the shop with our supervisors, who walked him for miles over the entire layout. On his return he pronounced the verdict. The stored machines he’d had in mind were no good for our job, after all. He’d had no idea we were doing a watchmaker’s job. What he didn’t know was that watchmakers’ tolerances were far too crude for the exacting demands of aircraft engines.

After Reuther had gone back to Washington, one of our old-timers lingered a moment in the board room.

“You’ve got to hand it to that cocky little redhead,” he said slowly. “He sure knows publicity.”

But aptitude for show business was not wholly monopolized by either labor leaders or politicians; some industrialists got around, too. Notable among these was Mr. Henry J. Kaiser. After the private shipbuilders had developed their new technique of constructing components for assembly in the finished vessel, it was Mr. Kaiser, the dam builder, who caught the public eye as the boss shipbuilder of them all. And his activities were not limited to shipbuilding; he was into everything. After Igor Sikorsky had finally performed the impossible by creating the helicopter, his fame was almost overshadowed by headlines hailing Mr. Kaiser as the great producer of this new contraption. Again, when the German submarine blockade had attained the peak of its effectiveness, it was Mr. Kaiser who crashed the headlines with that hair-raising proposal of his, calling for the construction of 5,000 huge flying boats weighing 500,000 pounds each, with which to leapfrog the German submersibles.

A recognized aircraft constructor with the temerity to point out that no such craft had even been projected, let alone designed or tested experimentally, or that the industrial capacity of the nation had already been stretched to the elastic limit, would put himself in the position of lacking imagination. And when, finally, the tide of public opinion forced the President to place an order for such a craft, the contract was awarded to Howard Hughes, and Mr. Kaiser, having promoted the idea, stepped gracefully aside. The President afterward testified to the power of such propaganda when he told Don Douglas he had felt compelled to award the contract to get Henry Kaiser off his neck.

The appointment of Sidney Hillman as co-chairman with Bill Knudsen on the War Production Board was consistent with the philosophies of a period that held management responsible for production over which labor exercised authority. The idea that labor should earn the right through production rather than the blackjack was too, too old-fashioned. When, therefore, the big unions moved in on the West Coast aircraft companies in an attempt to dictate industry-wide wage rates, Sidney Hillman, after beating the drums to arouse the tribes to the necessary frenzy, summoned leaders of the aircraft industry to Washington for a little “collective” bargaining. The idea, it was said, was “to put the ‘C’ in ‘D.C.’”

At the moment, this looked like but one of the fantasies of that mad era. In retrospect it takes on definite form. We who had created a vital industry were put on the defensive as profiteers by leaders of a publicly supported labor monopoly, itself bent on profiteering. Whatever profit we might be allowed was a matter of law. As suppliers to the government, we were responsible to the people for keeping costs down. The workers, largely unskilled, were being urged by their leaders to slow down, while the same leaders blackjacked the public for higher wages for less work. All this, in the task of making the tools for the public’s defense.

The situation, largely chargeable to the Nye investigation and similar episodes, could have been avoided under leadership of a different character. A clear statement of the fundamentals, accompanied by an appeal to industry, labor, and the public, could have resolved the internal conflict into an all-out cooperative effort, but none was forthcoming. The political atmosphere of the time resembled that described by C. W. C. Oman in his book, _The Seven Roman Statesmen_, first published by Edward Arnold & Co., London, 1902. In Rome, the politicians from Tiberius Gracchus to Pompey, who paved the way for the Emperor Julius Caesar, bought the votes of the proletariat with money created by enterprising men and, while they gained fame for themselves, deprived the people of freedom.

The formal meeting took place in an ornate conference room on the fifth floor of the new Social Security Building. We manufacturers, after proving our identities, were shown the entrance to an escalator which we discovered went only as far as the fourth floor. That word “escalator” had been borrowed in war contracts as a means of partial protection against unforeseen wage hikes.

To a large gathering round the council table, Sidney Hillman pointed out that, since collective bargaining in Southern California had broken down, Washington had been forced to settle wages, working conditions, and similar matters—for the entire industry. The decision, it appeared, had already been taken at a high level and we might just as well relax and enjoy it.

Our position was stated by a spokesman who pointed out that if labor would step up its output and reduce costs, the employer could meet the demands out of savings in cost. If, however, government increased labor rates without correspondingly modifying sales-prices, it would bankrupt manufacturers.

Sidney Hillman listened to our point of view with amused tolerance and then played his ace.

“Of course,” he remarked, “you are protected by the escalator clause.”

Reuben Fleet, of Consolidated, twisted in his chair and swallowed an aspirin tablet.

“When we came up to this fifth floor this morning,” he said, “they showed us the escalator. But,” he added, wagging a finger in Sidney Hillman’s face, “the escalator stopped at the fourth floor.”

At this pat retort the contractors gave vent to a whoop that broke up the meeting.

Shortly after President Roosevelt’s announcement of his 50,000-airplane program, or the “numbers racket,” newspaper headlines flared the story that government had called industry leaders to Washington to tell them off for their crime, “too little and too late.” The call brought Phil Johnson from far-off Seattle, Donald Douglas, Bob Gross, and Dutch Kindleberger from Los Angeles, and others from farther or nearer. Phil Johnson, once driven out of air transport, had now been called back to Boeing to build heavy bombers.

But when we manufacturers foregathered together and proceeded to the assigned meeting places, we found the rooms so jammed with sound cameras, klieg lights, and heavy cable, there was room for but a few of the better-publicized culprits. The others watched through doors and windows while big politicos mugged cameras that would flicker their message to the hinterlands. Most of us had to see the newsreels to find out what message it was we had traveled so far to receive.

The problem of how to expand production, train licensees, and meet all Selective Service demands was always with us. For all United Aircraft divisions had accepted the responsibility for servicing in the field all equipment of our design whether manufactured by us or anyone else. This kept hundreds of trained service men in the field, including many in the front lines.

One day I received a visit from my old friend Joe Beach, former mayor of Hartford, once a good citizen but then a major assigned to the Army Personnel Procurement Branch. Joe, who knew our problems, regretfully advised me that he had received orders to recruit, from Pratt and Whitney, several hundred men conforming to a specification that described our best-trained field-service men, specialists who could be replaced only with the greatest difficulty. Joe tried to soften the blow by saying the men would be immediately commissioned captains or colonels or something. The Army would not take “no” for an answer; it was come across or else.

In this tough spot, I phoned for “Tiny” Flynn, our service manager, and with Joe listening asked him how many of his staff had been inducted into the Army and what the Army had done with them. The answers were “plenty” and “K.P.” or “latrine duty.” I then asked Tiny if he had their present addresses, and when Tiny answered in the affirmative, Joe grinned and walked out. Later he confessed to having never sprung one of these men out of “K.P.”

After the Jap sneak attack on Pearl Harbor I called on my old friend Admiral Reeves in Washington to get his slant on what had happened. The admiral, now retired, had been recalled to active duty and assigned to the Navy Department in charge of Navy lend-lease. Always an Anglophobe, he there tried to keep our English cousins within reasonable bounds. Considerably older now, the admiral was said to require two traffic lights to get across the expanse of Constitution Avenue, but the old spirit flamed.

“The one thing the administration needed to bring the people into the war on the side of the British,” he explained, with that sweeping gesture of his, “was Pearl Harbor. Who could have expected them to be so dumb as to play right into our own hand? Our big surprise wasn’t Pearl Harbor; what defeated us was that the Japs could be so dumb.”

After the attack, the admiral was ordered to Pearl Harbor as a member of the Roberts Board to investigate the efficacy of the Japanese assault under a strategic concept which the admiral had conceived but his contemporaries had not understood.

Following Pearl Harbor, aircraft production shifted to full throttle. Under Bill Knudsen’s leadership, Ford, Buick, Chevrolet, and Nash created new facilities and shipped United products. Wright Aeronautical first built a huge plant near Cincinnati and then drew Studebaker and Chrysler into the complex. At United we stepped employment up to 75,000 and thought we had attained our peak production. Then we were called to Washington and told to build a new plant somewhere out west, one bigger than the Hartford establishment. This looked at first like the straw to break the camel’s back, yet Jack Horner discovered an ideal plant site in Kansas City, Missouri.

In undertaking this job for BUAERO, we pointed out that we had no funds of our own with which to finance either construction or operation. We therefore suggested that we take the job on without profit to ourselves. The plant could be constructed by the Defense Plant Corporation under our plans and, when it came to operations, the Navy could put a disbursing officer at Kansas City who would pay the vouchers and invoices certified to him by our manager and approved by the Navy inspector. This was a procedure we had tested in Canada where James Young, president of our Canadian Pratt and Whitney, had been called on to build a propeller plant in Montreal.

Under that program His Majesty’s Government had deposited funds in the local bank which were disbursed by His Majesty’s disbursing officer in payment for services and materials approved by His Majesty’s inspector. And if His Majesty’s inspector elected to reject work in process, or exercise any other authority commonly assumed by government inspectors everywhere, then it was His Majesty’s hard luck, not the manufacturer’s. In other words, our nonprofit proposal was not entirely altruistic; we were also concerned with avoiding losses.

But now it developed that we must be allowed to earn some profit, in order to be able to absorb items of cost which one inspector or another might not allow. Thus when we made a contribution to the local Community Chest drive, and a cost inspector ruled it out as illegal, there must be some place for us to recover the expense. And so we finally accepted a nominal “profit” with the provision that any amount left over after all “illegal” fees had been paid would revert to His Majesty—or rather to Uncle Sam.

But the important fact developed by this transaction was that it was entirely possible for a reputable constructor in wartime to perform a public service without “profit” in the usual sense, and do an outstanding job at it. As a matter of fundamental equity, United Aircraft Corporation risked none of its funds in this effort and was not, therefore, entitled to receive profit for it, especially when its own resources were being fully employed and were earning a fair return. The principle here is that each enterprise engaged temporarily in the war effort has a distinctive problem of its own and no over-all legislation can be written to cover individual cases in an equitable manner. The place to reach decisions on these matters was the Price Adjustment Board.

As between United Aircraft and its licensees, the relationship was one of mutual respect and close cooperation. We spoke the same language and subscribed to the same principles. One could not say as much for relations between the airplane builders and the automotive industry. One day Dutch Kindleberger trumpeted a blast, pooh-poohing the automobile manufacturers as significant producers of airplanes, an outburst that threatened to revive the ancient feud between the mass production industry and the “carriage trade.” This snort coincided with the mailing of a letter I had written to President Harlow Curtice of the Buick Division, complimenting him on the job Buick had turned in by constructing a new engine plant near Chicago, and getting it rolling. In reply to my letter Mr. Curtice later used a pat phrase which seemed appropriate to an address I was scheduled to deliver before the annual meeting of the Union League Club in Chicago.

I therefore suggested to the Union League dinner committee that they invite Mr. Curtice to sit at the speakers’ table so that I might make acknowledgment of the Buick performance. The address was being broadcast over a nationwide hookup and I had taken for my title “The Fundamentals of Freedom.” I reviewed the airplane story and took as my theme the idea that the magic of the aircraft performance lay in the creative power of individual freedom. And when the time came to quote the Curtice letter, I read it verbatim:

“I believe,” read the letter, “that the people of this country will be happy to know that we manufacturers can cooperate in a crisis, as effectively as we are accustomed to compete in normal times.”

In order to simplify the Pratt and Whitney problem, we had taken certain decisions with respect to standardizing our line of engines. First of all, we had definitely scrapped the abortive liquid-cooled program and had ceased to produce certain air-cooled models. With this behind us, we now faced a critical situation that threatened to negate some of our efforts along this line. Back in the late ’thirties, Bill Patterson, president of United Air Lines, had asked us to assist him by making a study of a completely new airplane, capable of coast-to-coast flight with two stops en route, and having such economic characteristics as would make it a great advance in air transportation.

We had studied the problem along the lines followed in developing the Pan American Clipper series, and had forced ourselves to conclude that we would need an engine somewhat larger than our popular 1830. The airplane would be a four-engined job carrying approximately forty passengers and would, at current rates for mail pay and passenger fares, be very attractive to all the airlines. We had recommended to “Pat” that he turn the study over to one of the established airplane companies with plenty of experience in producing transports. Pat had interested Don Douglas in the project, and Don had brought the other airlines into the picture with the idea of making the airplane a joint project. One ship had been built but when no production orders were forthcoming, and the armed forces had shown no interest, the project had lain idle.

Shortly after the outbreak of the war, the Army had issued orders to halt all production of transports, a mandate that was revoked only after a Congressional delegation had intervened. Later, in a quick turnabout, the Army tried to take over the airline transport system intact. Yet even after it had absorbed nearly half of the airplanes in service, along with a large number of key men, the commercial airlines stepped up their plane utilization to the point where they were carrying more passengers than ever before but with half the equipment. On January 19, 1942, the Navy organized the Naval Air Transport Service, or NATS, and on June 1, the Army followed with the Air Transport Command, or ATC. Out of the confusion as to the functions of air transport, these two military services emerged to become indispensable to the prosecution of the war.

After this, the Douglas four-engined transport project was revived and rushed into volume production. Almost overnight, Army and Navy C-54’s, and the commercial version, DC-4’s, began winging all over the world to carry important people and critical materials to meet desperate situations. Now as this service expanded, it hurdled the submarine blockade and became in fact the safest means of transport, as well as the most expeditious. Of all the various world services, that across the Himalayan Hump became the best known, but the over-all performance of the military air-transport services and the commercial operators was so outstanding as to lead to the conviction by many that economic air transport had arrived.

In United Aircraft, we lived in mortal terror of a sudden cessation 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.