CHAPTER SIX

What the Doctor Ordered

The “Affair Fleet,” as the celebrated episode of the Consolidated training plane came to be called in BUAERO, not only marked the advancement of the Engine Section from the limited environment of trouble-shooting into the more intricate realms of Bureau politics, but it also forecast our early graduation into the more creative field of aircraft engine development. And this important transition dated from a visit to the Engine Section by an aircraft manufacturer, Chance Milton Vought, president of the Chance Vought Corporation, of Long Island City, New York, a man with a waxed moustache and a fertile brain from which sprang the idea that touched off a chain reaction destined to alter the whole course of aviation.

Chance Vought was perhaps the most colorful of the unique personalities who made up the “airplane trade” as differentiated from the “engine trade.” Unlike Glenn L. Martin, whose tastes then inclined to rather dressy suits, Chance favored the tweedy look. With dark hair and eyebrows and his blond moustache, he was our example of sartorial perfection—except upon certain occasions.

After he had about completed one contract and had begun to feel the pressing need for another, he would make his appearance in the Bureau in a dilapidated tweed suit, under a moth-eaten coonskin coat, wearing a lean and hungry look, and talking very poor. At least he tried to make his look lean and hungry, but behind the façade still shone the dapper first-nighter of Keith’s Palace Theatre. Of course everyone was wise to the act, and since Chance himself was one of the wisest, he knew they were, and the recurrence of the cycle of poverty had become a source of amusement tending to soften up whatever sales resistance might develop.

This was a period of one-man organizations, when a Don Douglas, a Dutch Kindleberger, a Tony Fokker, or an Igor Sikorsky carried under the crown of his hat all there was to know about aircraft engineering. Most of these men dealt with the Design Section, located in larger quarters up the corridor from the Engine Section, but as time passed, and especially after the “Affair Fleet,” others like Claire Egtvedt, of the Boeing Company, out in Seattle, and Chance Vought began filtering into the Engine Section. And now as Chance slid through our door, rigged out in his tramp regalia, the Section gathered around my desk for a little plain and fancy kidding. Although the room was warm, Chance was too much the showman to offer to take off the coat. Instead, he posed his question.

“What’s cooking?” he inquired, biting his waxed moustache.

“Nothing’s cooking,” I countered. “In fact, I can report ‘eight o’clock lights and galley fires out’ like any other good sailor.”

Chance grinned. “I’m running out of work,” he said, “and if I can’t get a new contract soon I’ll have to close up shop.”

Henry Mullinix shook his head as he put in his oar. “Mr. Vought,” he said, “you must know that your little UO, once the sweetest little job in the air, has now become so overloaded it can hardly stagger off a catapult. Surely you don’t expect the Bureau to buy any more trucks like that?”

Chance bristled with indignation. “It’s the Bureau’s own fault,” he snorted. “They’ve added everything to it from automatic toilets to hot and cold running radios.”

Ricco Botta added his salt to the wound. “It’s still a kluck,” he said, “no matter how you alibi it.”

As Chance opened his mouth to retort, I gave him the _coup de grâce_. “Fact is, you’ve come to the end of your rope. If you want to do more business with this Bureau,” I concluded, “you may as well make up your mind to create something new.”

Chance sat silent, fingering his moustache. “Do you really mean that?” he inquired.

“We’re your friends,” I replied. Chance sat quietly as if debating his next course, and then, having made up his mind, he sprang a bombshell.

“All right, my friends,” he said with a smile, “I’ve got a new airplane on the boards—one that will set the world on fire. But the new airplane calls for a new engine; I want three hundred and fifty real horsepower but on an engine weight of not over 650 pounds. If the Engine Section will give me that, I’ll give the Bureau the world’s best airplane.”

The room became very still; all kidding had fled right out the window. Chance had passed the buck right back to the Engine Section; he’d written the prescription for a new power plant. And furthermore we realized he was absolutely right in his choice of size; the Wright 200 air-cooled, which by now was being called the “Whirlwind,” was only a zephyr. The Wright 400-hp P-2, later named the “Cyclone,” was overweight for Chance. Something about halfway between seemed to be the answer, and Chance had called the turn. The catapults on the battleships and cruisers, together with their hoisting gear and other equipment, had been designed to handle a limited weight, and this, in turn, controlled the size of our new airplane. The weight of the engine determined the final all-up weight of the aircraft, and the power output was dictated by the necessity for getting the plane up to flying speed before it reached the end of the catapult. And while there was no such limitation on aircraft carriers, like the new _Lexington_ and _Saratoga_, then building in the shipyards, the over-all size of the airplanes would determine the number each carrier might line up on her flight deck. The Vought prescription would also lead to a new type of fighter, smaller than anything around the P-2 but with higher performance.

Better still, Chance Vought’s new engine seemed to lie within the realm of possibility. The 200-hp Whirlwind had a cylinder volume of some 800 cubic inches; the bigger Cyclone, at 450 hp, had about 1,650 cubic inches. A Wright engine just between these two might displace about 1,200 cubic inches, and conceivably be made to develop 350 horsepower. Chance had put the job up to us and we would put it up to Wright.

“All right, Chance,” I said soberly enough, “you go on back to Long Island and start work; we’ll get your engine for you.” Chance Vought relaxed and grinned back at me.

“Meanwhile,” he inquired, “what will I do to keep the shop open?”

“Go call on Commander Kraus, over in Procurement,” I replied. “Tell him about this discussion. Maybe he can scrape up an order for enough UO’s to keep you ticking.”

As soon as Chance had left the room, I telephoned Charlie Lawrance and Guy Vaughan, of Wright Aero, and asked them to take the midnight train down for a conference the next day. They were not too enthusiastic at first, fearing that a completely new engine on top of their already heavy load might break them down. But we compromised on a proposal to scale the P-2 model down to about 1,200 inches displacement, without undertaking a completely new design. This was not so crazy as it might sound, for while you couldn’t scale an engine up with any hope of success, you could scale it down if you were willing to accept a few compromises on weight. We were willing and Wright was agreeable. Thus was born the Wright R-1200, or Simoon, an engine that, though it never went into production, still had its impact on naval aviation.

The reason why it never got into production appeared nearly a year later in the person of Mr. Frederick B. Rentschler, former president of Wright Aeronautical Corporation, who walked in on us one morning carrying a dilapidated cowhide brief case and looking even thinner than when I had first met him on that visit with Bruce Leighton, a year earlier. I recalled that in his argument with Leighton over air-cooled versus liquid-cooled he had shown dogged singleness of purpose and ability to reason logically. He had resigned from the presidency of Wright Aero shortly afterward, and for reasons which I had not learned. Now he began to tell me.

It seemed there had been some disagreement on financial policy between him and Dick Hoyt, chairman of the board. Hoyt had wanted to declare a dividend out of earnings from the Army contract for Hispano H engines; Rentschler had insisted on retaining earnings for investment in engineering development. Finally Rentschler had resigned. It had been rumored that he and Hoyt had disagreed over the acquisition by Wright of the Lawrance engine, but Rentschler now made no reference to this. After his resignation from Wright he had intended going back to Hamilton, Ohio, to his father’s foundry business, the firm of Hooven, Owens, Rentschler. His father had been certain that the aviation business held no future, but aviation had got into his blood. During a spell in the hospital, he had made up his mind to stay in the game and had given consideration to what he might do to help out.

It was his considered opinion that we needed more competition than we could possibly get under present circumstances. The Curtiss company had no serious interest in air-cooled engines; on the contrary, they were committed to liquid-cooled. Wright, he thought, was unlikely to progress as rapidly as we required, especially under its present management. He knew the inside thinking of both Curtiss and Wright, and was certain that an ultimate merger of the two companies was not an impossibility; as a matter of fact, if the Wright air-cooled engine got threatening, Curtiss might move toward merger and control. The import of his remark was not lost on the Engine Section.

For in taking the decision to support the air-cooled program in competition with the more advanced liquid-cooled development, we had counted heavily on competition in private industry as the vital spark. This merger idea, somewhat new in that era of private initiative, was of course wholly unexpected by such business amateurs as then comprised the Engine Section. The threat to our whole air-cooled program was so immediate, however, that we listened with rapt attention to our visitor.

He now proposed to organize a company to design and construct air-cooled aircraft engines for the Bureau. He had interested the Niles Tool Company in his project, and had their approval to his taking over certain vacant loft areas in the huge plant of the Pratt and Whitney Tool Company, of Hartford, Connecticut. That company, having expanded its facilities to meet excess demands in World War I, now rented the extra space for use as a tobacco warehouse. He had received assurances as to the necessary capital; Pratt and Whitney had idle funds it could advance to a new enterprise willing to rent its excess facilities. The company had extra machine tools and trained supervision and Hartford was a fine labor market for the machinists and craftsmen so necessary for precise aircraft-engine production. He proposed to select a small group of the most experienced engineers and production men in the business and to build around this nucleus the best organization in aviation. Competition from such a group would give the Navy the superior engines it so badly needed.

As Rentschler completed his airtight proposal, I was struck by the sheer logic of his presentation. He’d apparently thought it all through and made himself letter perfect. But there was one big drawback which I now pointed out to him.

We would welcome competition, but current appropriations would hardly support Wright Aeronautical, let alone a new company. We had tried to make such progress through good leadership as might approximate the benefits of strong competition, and had so far succeeded fairly well. Wright Aeronautical had spared no efforts to make dependable air-cooled engines, but Curtiss had not been pushing their R-1454. This had left us with but one source of supply and made us vulnerable to criticism by Congressional investigation, which might charge us with supporting a monopoly. This took us into the field of policy, which was the province of the chief of Bureau, so we decided that perhaps we had best put the proposal before him.

When we were ushered into the admiral’s sunny corner office, I noticed a newspaperman, George S. Wheat, sitting in one of the easy chairs. Quite a crony of the admiral’s, he had worked for Wright Aeronautical back in the period when Rentschler had been its president. I now associated him, therefore, with Wright, and was somewhat surprised when he made no move to leave the room. It didn’t occur to me at the time that he might be a part of Rentschler’s approach to the subject of the new company, and I didn’t learn the facts until years later. Then George confessed that Rentschler, prior to invading my office, had inquired about the new chief of the Engine Section, and that George had described me as an opinionated somebody who apparently knew where he was going. But in Admiral Moffett’s office that morning, suspecting no connection between the two men, I plunged into my statement.

The admiral listened attentively until I had finished and then made a quick decision.

“This Bureau,” he began, “is wide open to criticism for supporting an engine monopoly. We know it isn’t so, but that won’t prevent our being smeared by headlines. I realize we haven’t the necessary appropriations, but you leave that to me; I’ll wangle them out of Congress. If you can work out anything reasonable with these men, go ahead; I’ll approve whatever you recommend.”

As I turned to go, the admiral called me back. Some time earlier he had instructed me to prepare a statement for his presentation to a Congressional committee in support of his proposal to junk the war-surplus Liberties and Hispanos and buy new engines. I had given him a rather technical treatise, pointing out the superior aerodynamic performance to be had with the new engines. This he had promptly tossed back in my lap with a remark that Congress had no interest in performance; they wanted to save cash. Now that incident came to his mind and he inquired if I had made any progress.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, “I’ve looked up the records and found that it costs about a thousand dollars to convert an old Liberty into one incorporating all the new changes. After that we can get seventy-five-hours flying time out of it before we have to put in another converted one. For three hundred hours flying time, we spend four thousand dollars on conversions. Meanwhile we can get a new Wright Whirlwind for about the same money and run it for three hundred hours without overhaul.” The admiral smiled.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “Even I can understand that kind of engineering, and so can a Congressman. It’s cheaper to scrap junk than try to save it!”

“Exactly,” I replied.

“Well,” the admiral smiled, as he waved us out the door, “see if you can dream up something like that on this new engine.”

When our party returned to the Engine Section, we gathered once more around my desk. Rentschler asked what size engine we thought he should build and I gave him the background of the Wright R-1200 Simoon, especially the basis on which Chance Vought had written the prescription. However, I intimated, Wright had been working on that nearly a year and might have a prohibitive head start.

Rentschler wasn’t so sure; Wright had a heavy load with two new engines and the task of developing the third, the Whirlwind. A good engineering outfit, with no production problems and only one project, ought go places; starting off with a clean sheet of paper and no commitments as to old tools or techniques, they might even have the advantage. But they must be sure of their basic design principles. The Wright R-1200, a scaled-down P-2, would suffer certain handicaps inherent in the process; the new engine might generate the 350 horsepower on less weight.

It looked to me as though they should try the other way around. Keeping the 650-pound weight Chance had specified, they might put their advantage into greater power. Any airplane man would snap at this advantage and thus become an ally. Furthermore, it seemed to me, if by clever design the new company could build more cylinder capacity into the engine and still keep the specified weight, and if by cylinder refinement they could take out more power for each cubic inch of displacement, they might gain an outstanding advantage. This, in turn, might compensate for some of the time advantage Wright had already gained.

This idea seemed to enlist just a tinge of enthusiasm from Rentschler, who was most serious and calculating. Doing a job seemed a fetish with him and he lacked humor where business was concerned. He moved now to the question of an experimental contract. Since we had given one to Wright Aero for the R-1200 Simoon, he presumed, of course, we would do as much for him.

This was a matter on which I had to throw cold water. Wright, I informed Rentschler, was a going concern complete with management, production facilities, engineering, and experience. His new company was still but a figment of his own imagination and I could not recommend to Kraus that he risk public funds in support of anything so ephemeral. Admiral Moffett had earlier obtained an appropriation of $90,000 from Congress for an experimental engine. The best I could do for Rentschler was to earmark the fund and hold it in reserve for his project. If he built an engine that fulfilled our requirements, the fund would be available to help compensate him; after that the engine would stand on the same basis as the Wright—the best job would take the business.

After this statement, Rentschler sat a long while in thought. I could see he was greatly disappointed.

“Well,” he said finally, “if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is, but I think you’re pretty tough with me.”

I didn’t agree with him. The moment a contractor accepted a contract with the government he was obliged to grant his customer some control over the project. Such a division of authority was bound to slow a development and might even compromise its integrity. But as long as the contractor risked only his own money, then he had full authority over how he spent it, and no one could interfere. Furthermore, in this case, time was of the essence even more than usual, and when a contractor is wasting his own money and time, he is less complacent about it than if it belongs to Uncle Sam. The medicine might look bitter to Rentschler, but in the long run it must prove more effective. And more important than all, the moment he began risking his own funds for our advantage we inherited a moral responsibility to give him every reasonable assistance—and this we did.

From that date forward, Rentschler made it a point to visit the Bureau from week to week to keep us advised of progress. His first surprise was the news that he had collected a small group of men, mostly drawn from Wright Aero, as the nucleus of his organization; and he had shown rare judgment in picking the ablest of them. There was Don Brown from the shop, Andy Willgoos and George Mead from engineering, Jack Borrup and Charles Marks on the tooling side, and so on, to include upwards of a dozen really competent men. The impact on Wright Aero would prove severe and replacements would be hard to find.

George Mead arrived in Washington early in June on a day when my wife and I had planned to run over to Annapolis for the June Week exercises—we had first met there and loved the little town. Going back and forth in the car, George and I first discussed the design principles for the new engine. Of course the enclosed valve gear and rotary induction of the R-1454 were musts, but we rejected that engine’s arrangement of accessories on the front end; we would tuck ours on the rear out of the salt spray. We would split the crankshaft in two pieces, as George had done on an earlier engine, and would divide the crankcase similarly. As we talked, George sketched the ideas on the back of an envelope and captioned them in his precise printed letters. Later, we found some of our principles had already been used in the British Bristol Jupiter, but for the moment we glowed with the enthusiasm of creators of a new art.

Later, as the summer wore on and our engine problems eased up, storm clouds appeared in another quarter. The Engine Section had as one of its problems the Packard installation in the rigid airship _Shenandoah_. Lighter-than-air had always been the admiral’s pet hobby and we had spent a lot of effort on two jobs: preventing the cooling water from freezing, and recovering water from the engine exhaust to compensate for the expenditure of fuel. This, in turn, avoided the need for valving precious helium gas—a critical factor in lighter-than-air.

The chief engineer of the _Shenandoah_, Edgar W. Sheppard, was an extremely able young lieutenant, who had served as my Number Two at Great Lakes, and who now spent considerable time with us. From him I learned disturbing things about the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, headquarters for the rigids _Shenandoah_ and _Los Angeles_.

In response to the criticism Billy Mitchell had leveled at the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations had scheduled a number of western flights in the _Shenandoah_ for public relations purposes. Prominent people and news writers had already been taken on junkets, but the expedition scheduled for late August and early September seemed correlated with the country fairs all over the West—and just at the peak of thunderstorm activity. If there was one thing a lighter-than-air pilot disliked, it was thunderstorms—and for good reason. But the pilots had not dared make public confession of their fear, lest they betray a weakness of lighter-than-air that might retard its development. And so they gritted their teeth and tried to suppress the jitters that kept them all on edge.

And now, as the _Shenandoah_ departed on her fateful cruise, all of us in BUAERO followed her with anxious hearts. Suddenly a telegram sent from a town in Ohio by one of her crew brought shocking news of one of the greatest disasters in history. Turbulent currents of a line squall had sheared the girders of the great silver ship and split her into three sections. Parts had been free-ballooned to safety, but many of the crew had lost their lives, among them Edgar Sheppard. The ship had broken under his feet; in falling he had seized a girder and held on, 6,000 feet in the air. One of his men, hanging on precariously nearby, had called to him. When Shep extended the helping hand, his own girder failed and he fell to his death. There had been no parachutes. The whole Bureau was stunned.

And then lightning struck in another place. From down in San Antonio, Texas, where Brig. Gen. William G. Mitchell, USA, had been exiled to keep him quiet, newspaper headlines trumpeted charges at both the Army and Navy—charges of “treasonable neglect.” The front-page news struck the public like a clap of thunder, and the battle for the separate air force was on in earnest. In BUAERO the whole staff rallied around Admiral Moffett, and embers that had so long smoldered now flamed.