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.