As Rentschler completed his airtight proposal, I was struck by the sheer logic of his presentation. He’d apparently thought it all through and made himself letter perfect. But there was one big drawback which I now pointed out to him.
We would welcome competition, but current appropriations would hardly support Wright Aeronautical, let alone a new company. We had tried to make such progress through good leadership as might approximate the benefits of strong competition, and had so far succeeded fairly well. Wright Aeronautical had spared no efforts to make dependable air-cooled engines, but Curtiss had not been pushing their R-1454. This had left us with but one source of supply and made us vulnerable to criticism by Congressional investigation, which might charge us with supporting a monopoly. This took us into the field of policy, which was the province of the chief of Bureau, so we decided that perhaps we had best put the proposal before him.
When we were ushered into the admiral’s sunny corner office, I noticed a newspaperman, George S. Wheat, sitting in one of the easy chairs. Quite a crony of the admiral’s, he had worked for Wright Aeronautical back in the period when Rentschler had been its president. I now associated him, therefore, with Wright, and was somewhat surprised when he made no move to leave the room. It didn’t occur to me at the time that he might be a part of Rentschler’s approach to the subject of the new company, and I didn’t learn the facts until years later. Then George confessed that Rentschler, prior to invading my office, had inquired about the new chief of the Engine Section, and that George had described me as an opinionated somebody who apparently knew where he was going. But in Admiral Moffett’s office that morning, suspecting no connection between the two men, I plunged into my statement.
The admiral listened attentively until I had finished and then made a quick decision.
“This Bureau,” he began, “is wide open to criticism for supporting an engine monopoly. We know it isn’t so, but that won’t prevent our being smeared by headlines. I realize we haven’t the necessary appropriations, but you leave that to me; I’ll wangle them out of Congress. If you can work out anything reasonable with these men, go ahead; I’ll approve whatever you recommend.”
As I turned to go, the admiral called me back. Some time earlier he had instructed me to prepare a statement for his presentation to a Congressional committee in support of his proposal to junk the war-surplus Liberties and Hispanos and buy new engines. I had given him a rather technical treatise, pointing out the superior aerodynamic performance to be had with the new engines. This he had promptly tossed back in my lap with a remark that Congress had no interest in performance; they wanted to save cash. Now that incident came to his mind and he inquired if I had made any progress.
“Yes, sir,” I replied, “I’ve looked up the records and found that it costs about a thousand dollars to convert an old Liberty into one incorporating all the new changes. After that we can get seventy-five-hours flying time out of it before we have to put in another converted one. For three hundred hours flying time, we spend four thousand dollars on conversions. Meanwhile we can get a new Wright Whirlwind for about the same money and run it for three hundred hours without overhaul.” The admiral smiled.
“That’s more like it,” he said. “Even I can understand that kind of engineering, and so can a Congressman. It’s cheaper to scrap junk than try to save it!”
“Exactly,” I replied.
“Well,” the admiral smiled, as he waved us out the door, “see if you can dream up something like that on this new engine.”