All this had come along with the drive for reduction in armaments that had already set the Navy back on its haunches. Navy top brass, fighting hard for survival, had recognized in Billy Mitchell another Brutus, and some had even suspected Billy Moffett of a lean and hungry look. An old walrus over in Naval Operations had been heard to remark that Moffett was probably jealous of Mitchell for having first thought of the separate air force. In any event, the Old Navy had come to hate its own aviation almost as much at it hated Mitchell and the Army.
“Mitchell,” I remarked, “is able, impetuous, and dynamic. He has an attractive personality and is long on the qualities that keep men willing to ride with him, hell for leather.”
Leighton shook his head. “He takes a lot for granted. The time may come when airplanes will do the things he foresees, but first some of us slaves will have to solve a lot of the impossible technical problems that he now brushes off as unimportant. And one thing is sure,” he added, “under the sort of department Mitchell advocates, they just won’t get solved. Give him his autocratic control, and he’ll set up an airtight government monopoly of research, development, and production that will lay the dead hand of bureaucracy on our new art and paralyze its glowing young spirit.” All the smile had gone out of Leighton’s voice and deadly earnestness replaced the half-banter with which he had discussed his job.
“Well,” he sighed, “there’s just one man standing between Mitchell and the attainment of his personal ambition for power.” He paused. “And that man,” he concluded, “is William Adger Moffett.”
“Do you think he’s got what it takes?” I asked. Leighton nodded. “He’s got a mind like a steel trap. And believe me, he’s no counter-puncher—he bores in like Old Battling Burroughs, the fleet champion, and keeps leading all the time, though never with his chin...”
“He’s our catalyst,” Leighton continued, “the mysterious reagent that keeps all our atoms and molecules in a state of constant, frenzied excitement. He’s the ignition system of BUAERO. We chiefs of section are the explosive mixtures and when the admiral sparks us, we give the pistons a wallop and they start the connecting rods oscillating. That rotates the cranks, of which I am one,” he added with a grin, “and the whole thing turns over like an aircraft engine—high-strung parts whipping back and forth, between clearances the width of a gnat’s eyebrow. And, to complete our power-plant picture,” he concluded, “the whole thing would burn out except for the admiral’s other function; he’s the lubricant, a high-grade product of some refinery that created him and then threw away the formula. It all looks a bit hectic and confused but, amazingly enough, it produces results.”
“But,” I asked, “what if the Congress is more impressed by the dynamic leader with all the right answers?”
“Then,” Leighton replied with finality, “the country will be lost. Lost,” he repeated, quoting the punch line of an old Navy yarn about the sailor man weaving his way back to the boat landing through a line of telephone poles, “lost in an impenetrable forest.”
After returning to our hotel that evening, I reviewed the day’s disclosures with my wife. We had both found that this was beneficial, on general principles, and besides, since a Navy wife is nearly as much subject to Navy Regulations as her husband, it seemed no more than fair.
Apparently this Army-Navy dogfight absorbed every waking hour of the combatants. Since the power plant is clearly the heart of the airplane, then it followed that the Engine Section was a decisive front in a major campaign. The technical issue of air-cooled versus liquid-cooled involved the ancient conflict of government monopoly versus private industry. And there was no question where Admiral Moffett might stand on that. Though armed with authority, he showed the wisdom to use it sparingly. With faith in the processes of nature, he had the guts to let nature take her course. In this respect he was the direct opposite of General Mitchell. Their conflict went right down to bedrock.