Better still, Chance Vought’s new engine seemed to lie within the realm of possibility. The 200-hp Whirlwind had a cylinder volume of some 800 cubic inches; the bigger Cyclone, at 450 hp, had about 1,650 cubic inches. A Wright engine just between these two might displace about 1,200 cubic inches, and conceivably be made to develop 350 horsepower. Chance had put the job up to us and we would put it up to Wright.
“All right, Chance,” I said soberly enough, “you go on back to Long Island and start work; we’ll get your engine for you.” Chance Vought relaxed and grinned back at me.
“Meanwhile,” he inquired, “what will I do to keep the shop open?”
“Go call on Commander Kraus, over in Procurement,” I replied. “Tell him about this discussion. Maybe he can scrape up an order for enough UO’s to keep you ticking.”
As soon as Chance had left the room, I telephoned Charlie Lawrance and Guy Vaughan, of Wright Aero, and asked them to take the midnight train down for a conference the next day. They were not too enthusiastic at first, fearing that a completely new engine on top of their already heavy load might break them down. But we compromised on a proposal to scale the P-2 model down to about 1,200 inches displacement, without undertaking a completely new design. This was not so crazy as it might sound, for while you couldn’t scale an engine up with any hope of success, you could scale it down if you were willing to accept a few compromises on weight. We were willing and Wright was agreeable. Thus was born the Wright R-1200, or Simoon, an engine that, though it never went into production, still had its impact on naval aviation.
The reason why it never got into production appeared nearly a year later in the person of Mr. Frederick B. Rentschler, former president of Wright Aeronautical Corporation, who walked in on us one morning carrying a dilapidated cowhide brief case and looking even thinner than when I had first met him on that visit with Bruce Leighton, a year earlier. I recalled that in his argument with Leighton over air-cooled versus liquid-cooled he had shown dogged singleness of purpose and ability to reason logically. He had resigned from the presidency of Wright Aero shortly afterward, and for reasons which I had not learned. Now he began to tell me.
It seemed there had been some disagreement on financial policy between him and Dick Hoyt, chairman of the board. Hoyt had wanted to declare a dividend out of earnings from the Army contract for Hispano H engines; Rentschler had insisted on retaining earnings for investment in engineering development. Finally Rentschler had resigned. It had been rumored that he and Hoyt had disagreed over the acquisition by Wright of the Lawrance engine, but Rentschler now made no reference to this. After his resignation from Wright he had intended going back to Hamilton, Ohio, to his father’s foundry business, the firm of Hooven, Owens, Rentschler. His father had been certain that the aviation business held no future, but aviation had got into his blood. During a spell in the hospital, he had made up his mind to stay in the game and had given consideration to what he might do to help out.
It was his considered opinion that we needed more competition than we could possibly get under present circumstances. The Curtiss company had no serious interest in air-cooled engines; on the contrary, they were committed to liquid-cooled. Wright, he thought, was unlikely to progress as rapidly as we required, especially under its present management. He knew the inside thinking of both Curtiss and Wright, and was certain that an ultimate merger of the two companies was not an impossibility; as a matter of fact, if the Wright air-cooled engine got threatening, Curtiss might move toward merger and control. The import of his remark was not lost on the Engine Section.
For in taking the decision to support the air-cooled program in competition with the more advanced liquid-cooled development, we had counted heavily on competition in private industry as the vital spark. This merger idea, somewhat new in that era of private initiative, was of course wholly unexpected by such business amateurs as then comprised the Engine Section. The threat to our whole air-cooled program was so immediate, however, that we listened with rapt attention to our visitor.
He now proposed to organize a company to design and construct air-cooled aircraft engines for the Bureau. He had interested the Niles Tool Company in his project, and had their approval to his taking over certain vacant loft areas in the huge plant of the Pratt and Whitney Tool Company, of Hartford, Connecticut. That company, having expanded its facilities to meet excess demands in World War I, now rented the extra space for use as a tobacco warehouse. He had received assurances as to the necessary capital; Pratt and Whitney had idle funds it could advance to a new enterprise willing to rent its excess facilities. The company had extra machine tools and trained supervision and Hartford was a fine labor market for the machinists and craftsmen so necessary for precise aircraft-engine production. He proposed to select a small group of the most experienced engineers and production men in the business and to build around this nucleus the best organization in aviation. Competition from such a group would give the Navy the superior engines it so badly needed.