“Wait a minute. Change that!” came the staccato bark. “Tell Du Bose to bring the plan. You call up Marvin MacIntyre; tell him to come to the Bureau. Then you write up a news release for him—one like this: ‘The greatest forward step in the history of aviation was taken today when Congressman Butler, Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, announced approval of the Moffett five-year Naval Aviation building program.’”
“Did he really approve it, Admiral?” I interposed.
“Of course not,” came the reply. “He hasn’t even seen it. But when he reads his name in the afternoon Star and looks at the editorial Mac will get for us, he’ll think he invented it himself. Shake a leg now, and send Du Bose on the run.”
“How did you work it, sir?” I insisted.
“At the hearing this morning,” the admiral explained, “Butler was fit to be tied—said the public was clamoring for action on aviation and wanted to know what to do. I told him he ought to approve my five-year program. He wanted to know what it was. I told him the program I’d been trying to sell him for five years. When I’d ask Congress for money, they’d say ‘where are your men to man these planes?’ When I’d ask BUNAV for the men, they’d want to know where the planes were. Butler got all excited and sent me out of the hearing to get the plan.”
The Moffett five-year building program went through Congress with a whoop and a holler, and within a week the Army had one of its own. With this final consummation of the recommendations of most of the twenty-two inquiries that had investigated aviation, the throttle was opened at last. This was true in spite of the fact that in writing the Air Corps Act of 1926, Congress had crossed up the aircraft industry. The manufacturers, having been promised relaxation of the competitive-bidding requirement which had served to hamper research and development, had in turn agreed to a provision in the Act under which the Armed Forces could audit their accounts and thus control profits. This was a privilege heretofore never conceded by private industry, but Congress, lacking the nerve to go through with the agreement in committee, had so garbled the language of the Act and so complicated the procedure that no procurement officer could buy anything without violating some law. However, public support of the policy had been so evident that the more courageous procurement people, like our own Sidney Kraus, were willing to accept the risk.
And so it seemed that almost overnight, aviation, released of its tie-downs and wheel blocks, became airborne again. In BUAERO a significant event was the completion of the first Pratt and Whitney Wasp on December 24, 1926, just six months after its inception. George had sent me a photograph of the new engine as a Christmas card and it was a thing of beauty that was to become literally a joy forever. It came out at exactly the 650 pounds Chance Vought had specified but on block test turned up a nice 415 horsepower instead of the 350 he had asked for.
Meanwhile the Wright Simoon also passed its tests at 350 horsepower though it was already outmoded by the Wasp. In order to give the Simoon the full benefits of an airplane designed to utilize the engine’s qualities, Wright had put Hugh Chatfield to work on the design and construction of their own single-seat fighter called the “Apache.” On flight test the little craft had shown a performance far superior to the current liquid-cooled pursuit, even in the controversial characteristic of high speed at sea level where, according to the critics, the air-cooled would always be at a serious disadvantage because of its “large frontal area.”
Since that airplane would show to even greater advantage with the higher power of the Wasp, we now wangled a deal with Wright. We actually persuaded good-natured Charlie Lawrance to turn his pet airplane over to Chance Vought for the installation of a Pratt and Whitney Wasp with which Lt. C. C. Champion, who had now joined the Engine Section, was to take a shot at the world’s record for altitude. With the completion of Chance Vought’s own Corsair, we now had a brilliant two-seater that compared favorably in performance with the hottest fighters, and thus gave us a stable with which to make an assault on all the world’s records in their classes. The admiral, a highly competitive spirit with a keen appreciation of the value of world’s records and racing competition, now made participation in these events a major Bureau project.
The names “Wasp” and “Corsair” had been selected by the Engine Section, in response to requests from Pratt and Whitney and Chance Vought. Little did we know at the time what distinction they would one day attain. The Wright Apache focused attention of other manufacturers on the characteristics of the Wasp; and Boeing, after testing an engine in a converted FB-1 fighter, immediately put a new one in the works to be called the “F2B.” Curtiss made a conversion of one of its single-seater Hawks, replacing the D-12 with a Wasp. The first Wasp engine to be flight tested was flown in a Curtiss Hawk and thus became a sort of monument to the reluctance Curtiss had shown by their failure to develop their own R-1454 engine. It also nearly became a monument to the failure of the Pratt and Whitney Wasp.