“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.