“The only way to get progress,” he added, “is to put a good engineer in a tight place where he will have to fight to survive. When it’s ‘root, hog, or die,’” he concluded, “they always do the impossible.”
A run over to Detroit brought us to the Packard Motor Car Company, and another kind of setup. Here was one of the few remaining automotive companies with a continuing interest in aviation. This had probably resulted from the fact that Col. Jesse G. Vincent, a Packard vice-president, had been one of the designers of the original Liberty, and Capt. Lionel Woolson, Packard experimental engineer, still retained his interest in aircraft. The company felt that much of the aviation experimental work could be used in the automotive engines and was willing to continue to participate as a public service. In another emergency, in which the automotive industry must again convert to aircraft production, they could do a better job at it, against a background of continuing experience with aviation. The one drawback to this picture was the air-cooled engine; Packard could hardly be expected to show much enthusiasm for this.
Meanwhile, there was another consideration involved in continuing the automotive industry on a stand-by basis with respect to aircraft.
“Automobile prices,” Leighton explained, “demand low-cost volume production, a requirement that is just incompatible with the high-quality, high-precision production required in aircraft. When your automobile breaks down,” he added, quoting the old darky of the ancient wheeze, “why there yo’ is. But when yo’ airplane engine quits, where is yo’?”
And now as we moved on to Buffalo, Leighton gave me a quick preview of the Curtiss Airplane and Motor Company. Here was one of the “old-line” aircraft organizations. Though it had bid in the Army air-cooled radial project, now called the “Curtiss Radial 1454,” its heart lay in the liquid-cooled development. The Curtiss D-12 was now one of the best in the world; both the Army and the Navy were using it in fair quantities. Curtiss, he thought, was one of the smartest engine builders in the country—sometimes he had wondered if they weren’t a little too smart for their own good.
When we saw the R-1454, we were impressed. Herron’s cylinder was an advance over anything we had seen at Wright. The valve-gear rocker boxes enclosed the valves and provided forced lubrication for them in place of the old Alemite fittings of our P-1. And the Curtiss had a single carburetor in place of the triple type on the Wright, an improvement made possible partly by the use of a gear-driven blower that sucked the mixture from the carburetor and pushed it up to the cylinders. This was geared low for rotary induction, and gave fine distribution; someday it could be geared high for supercharging.
That evening we were dinner guests of the company at a hotel overlooking Niagara Falls. Afterward, Arthur Nutt, chief engineer, gave us a sales talk on the D-12. Roy Keyes, president of the company, expressed no fear of competition from the air-cooled radials. Curtiss, he confided in us, had bid in the Army 1454 just to keep it under their control. He considered it unlikely that any radial rock crusher could replace the D-12; in fact, he had no intention of letting it.
That night, Leighton and I sat on the edges of our twin beds in the hotel room and, smoking a last cigarette together, sized up the situation. Curtiss, a good manufacturer, had a fine engine but was keeping it under wraps. Wright, also a competent producer, had an inferior engine and no enthusiasm for air-cooling as such. The problem was to get the best features of the Herron-designed 1454 into the second engine of our P-series at Wright. If we could sell them on that and build up their enthusiasm, we might put a new set of valves in the heart of the airplane and even build up its muscles. That called for another visit to Paterson.
But when we returned to Wright Aero we found that a change had taken place. Fred Rentschler had resigned from the presidency, leaving Charles Lanier Lawrance, the daddy of the American air-cooled radial, in his place. There was nothing left to worry about on the score of air-cooled enthusiasm, though the company had lost an able executive. Guy Vaughan, a dynamic and personable fellow, had moved up from quality manager to factory manager. A former automobile racing driver, Guy had plenty of zing. With George Mead to do a finished engineering job, we could release the P-2 engine with all the latest wrinkles in it.
Back at BUAERO, Bruce Leighton wound up his affairs in the Engine Section. For three and a half years he had fought and bled there, stacking up brief moments of triumph against hours of grief. As a matter of fact, aircraft engines were one big pain in the neck. Reports of poor performance in service streamed in under the heading “Trouble Report.” If by some chance they performed well, that was only as it should be and certainly not a subject for comment. The art was still young, and even the best equipment could hardly be classified as safe to fly. In the face of disheartening problems, Bruce Leighton had never let his enthusiasm slacken; his heart and soul were all wrapped up in what he himself characterized as “these funny damned airplanes.” He had pioneered air-cooled engines in the face of universal resistance; he had stood by private industry when everyone else had plumped for government ownership. Now he was “off to sea.”