As my job in the struggle, the admiral had assigned me the task of creating a new line of engines. This I would do through fair competition and in private industry. The problem was tough because the industry was flat on its back. On the other hand, it was exciting because the admiral’s convictions were my convictions, and well worth fighting for. Maybe that was the reason he had reached down into the Caribbean for me.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Backward Art
By the time the Japanese cherry blossoms had come and gone around the Tidal Basin, my wife and I had settled in our apartment at 2301 Connecticut Avenue, and joined the social whirl—cocktail parties on bathtub gin, formal dinners at home or abroad, evenings of bridge, or just plain conversation. And wherever friends gathered, their one and only topic of conversation was “shop.” While this was true of all Navy parties, it was especially so in aviation circles. The burning zeal these young pilots displayed for their profession was a constant source of wonderment to us. In what they affectionately characterized as their “old crates”—a description often all too accurate—they found the beginning and end of everything. And if the airplane itself was the object of their veneration, the “Aviation Game,” as they fondly called it, was their religion. This seemed the more remarkable, for the airplane was ever a jealous mistress, one that brooked no liberties, a fact well known to the aviators who had solemnly escorted all too many friends off to their last resting place, across the river in Arlington.
Take young Hersey Conant, for one example out of many. Hersey, a delightfully gay young bachelor, had gained the distinction of coining a popular phrase, so to speak. At an afternoon cocktail party, where the gin had just been lifted almost steaming off the kitchen stove, Hersey had mixed it solemnly with orange juice and ice and then held his glass aloft for a toast. Pausing before tossing it off, he had said quite simply, “Let it age a second!” Here, it seemed, was a suggestion the whole Aviation Game might take to heart; but it didn’t.
For the very next day, Hersey had blithely taken off in one of the fast Schneider-Cup seaplane racers for a short practice spin, and had hedgehopped his way toward Norfolk, flying right down on the water. Somewhere along the way, he stubbed his toe on one of the many fish traps and pitched headlong into shallow water. When a crane salvaged the wreck it was all wrapped up in a ball.
Old Navy families looked with jaundiced eyes upon the heedless carryings on of the aviators. At a dinner party one night my wife sat next to Capt. Claude C. Bloch, then Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, and one of the most promising of the younger captains. The day would come when, as Commandant of the Naval District at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he would receive a visit from the little yellow men, but back there in the middle ’twenties, his promising career still lay before him. Then, addressing my wife earnestly, he gave her the benefit of his advice.
“Tell that husband of yours,” he said, “to keep out of the side shows and get back under the main tent.” Well, I’d tried to become a gunnery officer but fate had made a Kiwi of me.
And down in BUAERO, Leighton continued day by day to unfold to me the fantastic story of naval aviation.
“Now that you are well fouled up in the slipstream of BUAERO,” he remarked one June morning, “it is about time you looked over the trade. If,” he went on, “you are going to risk your future on the creative capacity of competition, then you ought to look over your new tools. Frankly,” he added, “they aren’t too hot.” So Leighton asked Captain Johnson, Assistant Chief, for permission to make the trip in a cross-country DH, but the captain turned him down. Later on he advised me in confidence that engineers were too scarce to be risked unnecessarily in those flying coffins. And so we took off by train.
At Paterson, New Jersey, we sought out the multistoried loft building that housed Wright Aeronautical Corporation. President Frederick B. Rentschler received us in his office, sitting solemnly behind his desk. He looked to be a cool customer, a man of great singleness of purpose. Facing him across the table, Bruce Leighton exuded buoyant enthusiasm against a background of equal determination. Not having previously learned from Leighton the sharp differences in opinion between these two, I was unprepared for the sparring match that followed.