“Not at all,” I answered. “May I ask who you have in mind?”
“Vaughan,” came the reply. “Guy Vaughan, of Curtiss-Wright.” Something impelled me to try to inject a little humor into the colorless colloquy.
“An honest competitor,” I laughed, “but with an inferior line.” The phone clicked and I sat back to try to dope out what was going on. A 50,000-plane program and the two big suppliers of aircraft engines dining at the secretary’s home on a Sunday night! Shades of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Senator Black, and Postmaster General Brown! Phil Johnson, of United Airlines, had chanced to drop in on an informal conference called in the daytime to take away from him air-mail contracts he had won under competitive bidding and Congress had crucified him for it! It all seemed to depend upon whose political ox was to be gored.
I met Guy Vaughan in the Carlton Hotel on Sunday afternoon. Guy had already scouted the terrain and discovered from “Tommy the Cork,” so he said, that the bright boys intended to give us the works at supper and force us to agree to license the government to build aircraft engines under our patents. Why they should resort to the cloak-and-dagger technique remained a mystery; they already had such rights under numberless Army-Navy contracts. But there seemed no mystery about why they wanted the licenses; the big idea was to set up a string of big government-owned-and-operated aircraft factories in the several distressed areas of the country to give relief to the unemployed, and votes to their new employers.
Our quiet little supper party with Secretary Morgenthau did seem to bear out Guy’s dope. For afterward, the secretary informed us that since we were already overloaded with the foreign business, our government would have to look elsewhere. He served notice on us that we would be expected to license the government under our patents. Guy Vaughan, on being questioned, advised the secretary that in his opinion Curtiss-Wright could build all the engines the government might require, and stated further that his company would not license the government voluntarily on a program that would put competitors into his business—and at government expense—who would, after the war, put his company out of business. In reply to the same question, I stated that we would license others to build our engines.
The secretary indicated some surprise and inquired what our price would be. When I replied that we would license them without fee, the secretary appeared to disbelieve the statement and remarked that he had never seen anything yet that was worth more than it cost. To this I replied that there was a catch to it, and now the secretary seemed ready to believe me.
From here I went on to point out that the manufacture of an aircraft engine was an art that required skill, experience, and know-how; few organizations anywhere had been successful in this field. If we licensed someone to build our product, we must still accept responsibility for its performance—a responsibility that we had always accepted. And since we accepted the responsibility, then we must insist upon retaining authority over the choice of our licensees. We had thought this through long ago as a part of our war plan; a major war would stop production of many articles and throw men out of employment. It would break up organizations and teams that had the know-how of production and had demonstrated their competence in their own lines. We would train such organizations in the specialized technique of our business and thus get a good job. As examples we suggested such organizations as the Ford Motor Company, of Detroit, the Buick, Chevrolet, or Cadillac Divisions of General Motors, the Nash-Kelvinator Company, the Packard Company, Studebaker—in fact, you could go down the whole list and find a great untapped source of skilled production experts.
I went on to contrast this with the possibility of government undertaking the job. Without mentioning the difficulties peculiar to government business, I stressed the responsibility that goes along with aircraft production. When the engines fail, the airplane cracks up and young men get killed. We had got many gray hairs carrying this responsibility. If the government wanted to take it off our shoulders, that was their privilege, but they should go into it with their eyes open.
It was apparent by now that their eyes were fully open and we said good night with mutual expressions of esteem. Soon George J. Mead, once chief engineer of United Aircraft, then serving as vice-chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, had been appointed to supervise the Treasury Department’s functions in the 50,000 program. This was good news indeed. For aside from the fact that George Mead knew his airplanes, there was the further and more important consideration that George knew the Army and Navy each had skilled organizations, schooled in the procurement of aeronautical materials, and was likely, after the details of the still nebulous program had been determined, to give the highly technical procurement job back to the Armed Forces. For had fate left this problem in the hands of one of the political agencies then springing up all over the place, we might today be slaves of Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and Joe Stalin.
The government had either forgotten that the Army Reorganization Act of 1920 placed responsibility for industrial mobilization upon the Assistant Secretary of War, Louis Johnson, or, noting the controversy between him and his chief, Secretary Woodring, had changed its mind. In any event, Bill Knudsen was appointed Chairman of the National Defense Advisory Committee and George Mead took over the aircraft job. At the time, no one was able to enlighten us on the real meaning of the 50,000-plane program; it might be a yearly output, a war total, or anything else the fancy might suggest. Nor could anyone advise us what types of aircraft were contemplated. Scuttlebutt rumor had it that the President had first asked the Army and Navy to submit estimates of the maximum number of aircraft they could use but upon receipt of the figures had been disappointed at their lack of imagination. They couldn’t seem to add up to more than a few thousand.