CHAPTER THREE

Its Vital Spark

Next morning we resumed my indoctrination, as we did on subsequent mornings. Leighton began by expounding the advantages of air-cooled over liquid-cooled engines, especially from the viewpoint of naval aviation. The Army could, of course, spread out all over the prairies, but the Navy must ride on the “backs of the fleet.”

“If,” I interposed, “it is as clear-cut as that, what has been retarding the development?” Leighton heaved a sigh.

“Inertia and politics,” he replied. “If you have gained an impression that engine development is all engineering, you are in for a shock. All the engineers in the industry insist that, theoretically, it is impossible to build an air-cooled engine to compete with liquid-cooled, and their politicians keep busy making the prediction come true.”

“Politicians?” I inquired.

“Some of them,” Leighton replied, “are right here in the Bureau, but they are influenced by the liquid-cooled engine builders, and it is easy to understand the position of these fellows. They’ve already got a big stake in liquid-cooling: production facilities, engineering, and know-how—especially know-how. Naturally they aren’t scrambling to obsolete their own designs.” Leighton paused.

“Before you finish your shore cruise,” he added, “you’ll get a bellyful of engineering politics.”

It developed that when Admiral Moffett had first created the Bureau, he expected to bring under his wing all aviation functions such as personnel, matériel, and operations, but vested interests had thwarted him. The Bureau of Navigation (“BUNAV,” it was called) charged with responsibility for personnel had hung on for grim death to its prerogatives with respect to naval aviators. While conceding to BUAERO the privilege of recommending assignments, it reserved to itself the authority to turn BUAERO down whenever Admiral Moffett seemed to be getting a little too big for his britches. Again, Naval Operations (OPNAV) had held strict control of all aviation operations. As a concession, they had detailed naval aviators to liaison jobs in BUNAV, OPNAV, and on flag duty in the fleet—where they had carefully preserved the functions of these young specialists in the formaldehyde of an “advisory” capacity.

But Admiral Moffett had proved a match for most of them. The only high-ranking officer in the Navy Department with a flair for public relations, and the one man trained from boyhood in a school of practical politics, Admiral Moffett had shown a knack for getting aviation appropriations from Congress. Not too long on logic, the admiral had demonstrated a native intelligence and a knack with phrases that had netted him dividends. “Of course the country needs an air force,” he had said before a naval affairs committee, “but let’s make it a naval air force, one that isn’t anchored to a land base but can go to sea—on the backs of the fleet.” And that expression “on the backs of the fleet” had become a byword in BUAERO.

From Leighton’s thumbnail sketch of BUAERO I noted that there was little system or organization to it. Leighton conceded as much.

“We have no organization chart, let alone a bureau manual. Somebody is supposed to be working on one but somehow it never gets beyond the admiral’s desk. His organization is personal rather than functional—based on loyalties. Every man or woman in this Bureau,” he asserted with emphasis, “would go to hell and back for good old Billy Moffett. And loyalty works both ways; the admiral’s most striking quality is his loyalty to his subordinates. Sometimes I’m not so sure about it to his seniors; he loves to needle the old whales on topside.” Leighton smiled as if in recollection of specific instances.

“No,” he went on, “there is never a dull moment in BUAERO. It reminds me of that old adage handed down from the days of iron men and wooden ships, ‘When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, yell, and shout.’ And that, my dear successor,” he concluded, “is BUAERO in a nutshell—or should I say bombshell?”

The Bureau had set up as its number-one project, the job of “selling aviation to the fleet,” and a fleet full of sales resistance at that. The Bureau had designed catapults—big compressed-air guns, for launching airplanes from the decks of battle wagons at sea. It had designed or procured new seaplanes to be launched by these catapults. It had trained aviators to man these planes, and incidentally, to try to sell them to the ships.

In this they had met hard sledding because those unwieldy catapults had cluttered up the decks, destroyed the symmetry of the ships’ silhouettes, and shed grease all over the precious teak decks. However, the aviators had penetrated the cold front by learning how to spot the fall of shot in long-range battle practice, and how to signal the ship the correction that would put a salvo on a target. Ships with planes had thus gained an advantage in the gunnery competition over those that had none, and besides, their pilots had been trained for deck duty and could share watches at sea or in port.

Meanwhile, BUAERO had pushed on with its plans to match the British in carrier aircraft. Under the leadership of Kenneth Whiting, who as Commander of the Northern Bombing Group at Killingholm, Scotland, during the war had sent Godfrey de Chevalier down to the Grand Fleet to observe carrier operations, the old electric-drive collier _Jupiter_ had been converted to the experimental carrier _Langley_, and pilots had been trained in deck landings, to gain experience from which to design new carrier aircraft. Here, too, the air-cooled engine offered important advantages, provided it could be made dependable. That job was to become the first order of business for the new chief of the Engine Section.

As a further extension of this carrier development, Admiral Moffett had put over a master stroke at the Washington Limitation of Arms Conference. At a time when the United States was making the fatal gesture of scrapping all its latest vessels, to bring “peace through disarmament,” the admiral had salvaged from the scrap heap the giant battle cruisers _Saratoga_ and _Lexington_, and was now supervising their conversion into the largest aircraft carriers in the world. In this he had been greatly aided by Capt. Henry C. Mustin, who had since died. Mustin, a wise man with a clear understanding of the principles of war as they might be affected by aviation, had drawn up a complete plan for the complements of the carriers. They would have single-seat fighters to gain command of the air, long-range scouts to obtain information of the enemy, torpedo bombers for attacking enemy vessels, and rescue craft for recovering pilots that might be forced down at sea. The larger craft would demand high-powered engines and since, as yet, we had no air-cooled engines above 200 horsepower, we must needs speed our high-powered liquid-cooled development to the limit.

Leighton gave me his own quick estimate of the personalities in the Bureau other than the admiral. The Assistant Chief was Capt. Alfred W. Johnson, an old Queenstown destroyer skipper. Brought up in the old school, he had been my skipper on the notorious Caribbean cruise of the seaplane tender and kite-balloon ship _Wright_, and I loved and admired him. We had both fought a losing battle against aviation extravagance. The skipper, hoping to cut down useless paper work by refusing to have a yeoman, had answered all his own correspondence in longhand, expecting thus to shame his correspondents into doing likewise, but only he had been shamed.

The Chief of the Matériel Division was Capt. Emory S. Land, of the Corps of Constructors. Unlike so many constructors, Jerry was no theorist but a thoroughly practical and competent leader. He had played football at the Academy and still refereed college games. Able to see both sides of an argument, forthright, and honest, he was an ideal head for a division like Matériel that contained both naval constructors and line officers. The old line-staff controversy was likely to burst out at any moment, and it took a sense of humor to break it up.

The Design Section of the Matériel Division, under which the Engine Section was set up, was headed by a grand old man of aviation, Capt. H. C. Richardson. “Captain Dick,” one of the early pilots, a member of the crew of one of the NC boats of 1919 transatlantic fame, and a skilled engineer, had inherited Design from “Jerry” Hunsaker, a classmate of mine, when Jerry resigned from the Construction Corps to go to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a professor. Jerry had founded the Design Group, and had built up a large drafting room and staff with which to carry on naval aviation design. His designs were to be built experimentally at the Naval Aircraft Factory at Philadelphia and then farmed out to the factory, or perhaps to some willing private manufacturer.

It was right at this point that Leighton stressed a difference between the Engine Section and the Design Section. There were but a handful of people all told in the Engine Section: Leighton himself; his assistant, Lt. Frank Maile, who had once served with me on the _Old Ark_; Lt. Ricco Botta, a former Reserve officer and a skilled engineer; Lt. (jg) Ralph M. Parsons, a former student under Dr. Lucke and my assistant at the Aviation Mechanics Schools at Great Lakes; and two secretaries. The senior secretary was Miss Alma Quisenberry, a quiet, soft-spoken young woman from Nashville, Tennessee. And this handful of people not only had no desire to design or build its own engines but had a clear conviction that the hope for the future lay in the Bureau’s placing its dependence for design, development, and production entirely upon private industry.

In this respect, the Engine Section now stood quite alone. After the Armistice, the Army Air Service had devised a plan for setting up a great government production center at McCook Field, near Dayton, Ohio. Army aircraft were to be designed by brain trusters in government employ. The institution would be surrounded by a complex of interested private manufacturers who would produce aircraft to Army design and specification. The plan had fallen through, largely because ambitious young men had preferred to risk their futures in chancey private industry rather than rest secure in the dead end of a government establishment. But the idea still persisted, and many in both Army and Navy were still sold on nationalization for the aircraft industry.

I could tell from Leighton’s development of this knotty problem that he was still uncertain as to where I stood. Conceivably I might be one who would want to build up a great engine-design group in BUAERO and another big production group at the Philadelphia Aircraft Factory and thus establish for myself quite a respectable empire. However, I had developed a few positive ideas of my own on the subject, and, curiously enough they had come out of the old rifle shooting competitions. I now relieved Leighton on this subject, obviously so close to his heart.

Under the rules for the national rifle matches, it was mandatory for military competitors to use government-issue cartridges, which, at the time, were produced solely by the government at Frankfort Arsenal. In quality this ammunition was reminiscent of Chinese firecrackers—many were complete duds, and of those that finally went off, many more were just “fizzlers.” As to accuracy, there were so many “droppers” in each bandoleer that the element of skill was largely neutralized by the element of chance, thus undermining the foundation of competition. And worse still, there seemed to be nothing we could do about it. Army Ordnance, entrenched in its monopoly, turned a deaf ear to all complaints.

Meanwhile the quality of the ammunition provided by competing commercial companies for civilian matches had improved to the point where Frankfort Arsenal had become a public scandal among the shooting fraternity. At this point the National Rifle Association had raised such a furor that the Ordnance Department was forced down off its lofty perch and obliged to bring Frankfort into direct competition with the private trade. Improvement at Frankfort was immediate, but more important still, seeds were planted for a new government-industry cooperation in ordnance that has since paid off in two wars.

And so, having acquired my convictions at an early age and out of the hard school of experience, I now set Leighton right on my position as to the place of government in production. His relief was immediate, though he felt that the situation in aviation was less critical.

“We have the saving grace,” he said, “of having strong competition within the government. As long as the rivalry between BUAERO and the Army Air Service continues keen, both of us will keep on our toes to press development.”

My thoughts drifted back to the interview with Admiral Moffett earlier in the day.

“But,” I countered, “suppose your friend Billy Mitchell should sell his independent-air-force idea to the Congress and take over the whole shebang, then what would become of your interservice rivalry?”

Leighton tossed both hands in the air in a gesture of helplessness. “Do you know the gentleman?” he asked.

I had met the general at Great Lakes back in 1920 when he had come up on a flying tour of inspection of the Aviation Mechanics’ Schools. He arrived at the wheel of a roaring Stutz Bearcat touring car, with the top down, the cutouts open, and a white-faced sergeant hanging onto the seat beside him. He’d broken all records on the run up from Chicago. Later the sergeant informed one of our CPOs that he had long ago exceeded his life expectancy and was now on borrowed time.

At that time, our schools, organized as they had been by Dr. Lucke, were going like a house afire, while the nearby Army schools, at Rantoul, Illinois, were dragging bottom. At the close of the inspection, the general had remarked, without the quiver of an eyelid, “Keep working, Commander, and some day you may catch up with the Army.”

As I opened my mouth to retort, he blimped the throttle and jammed the words down my throat, with the roar of his exhaust. The last I saw of him was a cloud of dust as he whirled away in the direction of the main gate, his sergeant hanging on with both hands.

Subsequently, Mitchell had kept up a running fire against the Navy until he finally badgered the Department into anchoring some obsolete vessels in Chesapeake Bay, close to the Army air base at Langley Field, Virginia. In a masterly display of showmanship for the benefit of the newsmen, Mitchell had delivered a mast-high attack on the undefended targets at short range. One phosphorous bomb dropped on the fighting top of the old _Alabama_, where an alert photographer snapped a dramatic picture of pyrotechnics that made the front page with a convincing smash.

All this had come along with the drive for reduction in armaments that had already set the Navy back on its haunches. Navy top brass, fighting hard for survival, had recognized in Billy Mitchell another Brutus, and some had even suspected Billy Moffett of a lean and hungry look. An old walrus over in Naval Operations had been heard to remark that Moffett was probably jealous of Mitchell for having first thought of the separate air force. In any event, the Old Navy had come to hate its own aviation almost as much at it hated Mitchell and the Army.

“Mitchell,” I remarked, “is able, impetuous, and dynamic. He has an attractive personality and is long on the qualities that keep men willing to ride with him, hell for leather.”

Leighton shook his head. “He takes a lot for granted. The time may come when airplanes will do the things he foresees, but first some of us slaves will have to solve a lot of the impossible technical problems that he now brushes off as unimportant. And one thing is sure,” he added, “under the sort of department Mitchell advocates, they just won’t get solved. Give him his autocratic control, and he’ll set up an airtight government monopoly of research, development, and production that will lay the dead hand of bureaucracy on our new art and paralyze its glowing young spirit.” All the smile had gone out of Leighton’s voice and deadly earnestness replaced the half-banter with which he had discussed his job.

“Well,” he sighed, “there’s just one man standing between Mitchell and the attainment of his personal ambition for power.” He paused. “And that man,” he concluded, “is William Adger Moffett.”

“Do you think he’s got what it takes?” I asked. Leighton nodded. “He’s got a mind like a steel trap. And believe me, he’s no counter-puncher—he bores in like Old Battling Burroughs, the fleet champion, and keeps leading all the time, though never with his chin...”

“He’s our catalyst,” Leighton continued, “the mysterious reagent that keeps all our atoms and molecules in a state of constant, frenzied excitement. He’s the ignition system of BUAERO. We chiefs of section are the explosive mixtures and when the admiral sparks us, we give the pistons a wallop and they start the connecting rods oscillating. That rotates the cranks, of which I am one,” he added with a grin, “and the whole thing turns over like an aircraft engine—high-strung parts whipping back and forth, between clearances the width of a gnat’s eyebrow. And, to complete our power-plant picture,” he concluded, “the whole thing would burn out except for the admiral’s other function; he’s the lubricant, a high-grade product of some refinery that created him and then threw away the formula. It all looks a bit hectic and confused but, amazingly enough, it produces results.”

“But,” I asked, “what if the Congress is more impressed by the dynamic leader with all the right answers?”

“Then,” Leighton replied with finality, “the country will be lost. Lost,” he repeated, quoting the punch line of an old Navy yarn about the sailor man weaving his way back to the boat landing through a line of telephone poles, “lost in an impenetrable forest.”

After returning to our hotel that evening, I reviewed the day’s disclosures with my wife. We had both found that this was beneficial, on general principles, and besides, since a Navy wife is nearly as much subject to Navy Regulations as her husband, it seemed no more than fair.

Apparently this Army-Navy dogfight absorbed every waking hour of the combatants. Since the power plant is clearly the heart of the airplane, then it followed that the Engine Section was a decisive front in a major campaign. The technical issue of air-cooled versus liquid-cooled involved the ancient conflict of government monopoly versus private industry. And there was no question where Admiral Moffett might stand on that. Though armed with authority, he showed the wisdom to use it sparingly. With faith in the processes of nature, he had the guts to let nature take her course. In this respect he was the direct opposite of General Mitchell. Their conflict went right down to bedrock.

As my job in the struggle, the admiral had assigned me the task of creating a new line of engines. This I would do through fair competition and in private industry. The problem was tough because the industry was flat on its back. On the other hand, it was exciting because the admiral’s convictions were my convictions, and well worth fighting for. Maybe that was the reason he had reached down into the Caribbean for me.