“You know, if the railroads had invested in engineering all the money they have spent seeking to gain legislative advantage over motor and air transport, we’d be in a far better competitive position today.”
This whole matter of “reasonable regulation,” so critical with respect to a healthy air-transport industry, the key to air power, was one we had hoped to have studied by our air policy board, but in that hope we were disappointed. The National Planning Association issued a fine report on air-power policy, but certain government agencies blocked its support of our recommendation for the appointment of a presidential aviation commission. Under the circumstances we were not surprised when the President withheld action.
Now since one of the most important questions to come before a new board must be that of the long-term programs of procurement for air-force naval and commercial needs, we suggested that a study of this should be inaugurated. Meanwhile, in order to bring the many government agencies now concerned with aviation into some semblance of accord, the President had appointed an informal group called the “Air Coordinating Committee,” an organization which included the Assistant Secretaries for Air of the War, Navy, and Commerce Departments. This committee now initiated a study by the Harvard School of Business Administration, to determine the absolute minimum of aircraft production of all types under which an aircraft industry might exist. Such an industry must, of course, keep in the forefront of world technological progress and be capable of rapid expansion in times of emergency. As the keystone of air commerce and air forces, the public interest seemed to require at least a minimum industry. The report, when finally issued, clearly indicated the vital need for a long-term, continuing program that would correlate all needs, public and private, and it specified the size of a minimum program in pounds of air frames to be built each year.
In order to remove any misunderstanding as to the character of our association we had earlier changed our name to the Aircraft Industries Association of America, and to help direct our public-opinion work, we employed skilled public relations counsel. From them we learned that one of the first steps in creating public opinion is to bring your case before writers and speakers everywhere whose comments and opinions command public respect. One method of accomplishing this is for industry speakers to address public gatherings, where writers and speakers are in attendance, and to bring a message that will command sufficient attention to warrant comment by the public press. Our air-policy program contained such a message and it now devolved upon me to carry the message to Garcia.
Time was, in this land of ours, when public speakers were few and far between; today they are many and underfoot. When any organization decides to hold an annual dinner, it must first recruit a speaker whose name may attract enough customers to help the dinner committee break even. And since the audience are themselves all public speakers, they will be less interested in what the speaker has to say, and more in how he says it; a new technique or a new story is of unusual interest. Having had no other training in public speaking than that which goes along with standing in front of a squad of bluejackets and selling them on hitting the target, my technique was informal, conversational, and flowing. I might have memorized and carefully prepared my extemporaneous address, but I tried not to reveal the fact. And when, after giving my air-power theme the particular twist that belonged with the particular audience, some of them came up to congratulate me, I soon discovered that few ever remembered the words, though some recalled the music. With this in mind, it is often more effective to slant the speech at the newsmen or the newsreaders; the listening audience is only waiting to get it over with anyway—even as you and I.
Meanwhile our several companies used their own resources to carry our story to their own localities where workers and businessmen were interested in the survival of the enterprise. Some of this, as Speaker Rayburn had foreseen, percolated back to Washington whether in the form of resolutions by various farm, labor, or business organizations, or just by letter or word of mouth. And so, with the hand of some government aviation agencies against us, we were encouraged by the reception given us by a group of senators and representatives who had come to dinner.
At an informal affair arranged to introduce our company presidents to some of the leaders in Congress on aeronautical matters, men who had previously known each other by name only, we divided our guests among small tables at each of which one of our presidents acted as host. Afterward, we called on our guests to speak to us and to our surprise found the burden of their discourse to be something like this: “You fellows have sold the public on air power, what do you think we ought to do about it?” In reply we pointed out that the whole problem was too complex for us; neither we nor anyone else could have the answers. We thought the matter deserved an airing before a public commission like the presidential advisory committee of twenty years ago.
Concrete action along these lines was forthcoming at the instigation of an able senator, Mr. Hugh B. Mitchell, from my native state of Washington. As chairman of a subcommittee of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, one that contained a number of outstanding men, the senator began conducting hearings on the subject. Our company presidents who appeared before this committee to present our case were much impressed by the fact that committee members attended the hearings and took an active interest in the problem. Before going back home to stand for reelection, Senator Mitchell introduced a bill calling for the appointment of a board to be constituted along the lines of the old Morrow Board. When the senator failed of reelection in the Republican year of 1947, a Democratic colleague, able Senator Brian MacMahon of my own state of Connecticut, reintroduced the Mitchell bill. Not to be outdone in courtesy, Republican Senator Brewster of Maine introduced the Brewster bill, one that differed from the MacMahon bill in that it provided for a purely Congressional committee.
From this point forward, matters dragged interminably. Most of us manufacturers, sold on our own doctrine, had now moved into the design and production of new transport aircraft intended to replace the war-weary war surplus. In United Aircraft, for instance, we had undertaken to expand the power output and increase the dependability of our current commercial engines and had at the same time inaugurated a wholly new engine, a twenty-eight-cylinder Wasp Major with a capacity of 4,360 cubic inches and an initial rating of 3,000 horsepower. This was over three times the cylinder displacement of the original Wasp but over seven times the power output, with possibilities of reaching ten times that output. It was expected to cost ten million dollars for development alone, or some ten times the original investment in Pratt and Whitney at the inception of the Wasp production.
Around these new models and the competitive engines under development by our rivals, Wright Aeronautical, the airplane manufacturers had gone overboard on new transports designed to carry increased loads at greatly reduced costs, and at much higher speed. All these companies appreciated the risks involved, but faith in the future of air transport justified to them the investment of their war earnings in the expansion of American air power. And this faith might have been justified had we been able to bring about the formulation of a dynamic national air policy, for the designs were sound in conception and well executed.