At that time, the Hamilton-Standard duralumin blades were clamped into the sockets of steel hubs in such a way that when an airplane stood on the ground, the blades might be adjusted to whatever setting was desired. However, once set, the blades were not adjustable in the air. This gave the airplane a handicap such as a motor car would have if deprived of its gearshift. The propeller shown in Frank’s drawing, however, had a mechanism for adjusting the propeller blade setting in the air. The pilot might use one setting, corresponding to low gear, when taking off, and another corresponding to high, for cruising. Frank visualized his “controllable pitch propeller” as the “gearshift of the air.”
The idea of such a propeller was not new. Many people had tried the device and found it sound in conception; the problem was that no one had been able to build one of the things strong enough to stand up under the extremely high centrifugal and vibratory stresses found in propeller blades. The novelty of Frank’s design lay in its simple hydraulic control mechanism, in which oil pressure on a piston rotated the blades and locked them in either of two positions, the best setting for cruising or for take-off. Judged by the old engineering adage, “to be good it must look good,” Frank’s propeller looked to me like the answer to a maiden’s prayer.
Now Frank Caldwell was no overenthusiastic salesman. The best he would say for his brain child was to express the quiet hope that it might amount to something some day—provided we could make it hang together. But to me there was no use fooling around; here was just the kind of gadget we needed to pull us out of the hole. I gave orders to shoot the works and rush the development of the “gearshift of the air.”
Fifteen years later, after we had become more conscious of the need for corporate social security and after we had got ourselves all bound up in our own red tape, I doubt if United Aircraft would ever have undertaken such a project.
For the problem was not so simple as I have so far stated it. The new propeller must of necessity prove more costly than the old type, and there was no proof that the increase in performance would justify the increased costs. This question did not lend itself to precise calculation, nor could we solve it by trying the propeller on an existing airplane. In order to realize the advantages of the new type we must build a new airplane designed to exploit it, and in those days people just didn’t haul off and build airplanes to sell other people’s propellers.
The point is that at the moment the controllable-pitch propeller, one day to be recognized as the most revolutionary device in aeronautics, was not then something that men demanded. In fact, current opinion was bearish on the idea just as it had been on the air-cooled engine and still was on reduction gears. In the judgment of the wise men, such devices were bound to be so heavy or so costly that their advantages might at best balance out their disadvantages, so why bother with the complication? Frank Caldwell had thought it through, but, being modest and conservative, he did not try to sell the device to me. My own reaction was intuitive rather than rational.
Though I reported my decision to Fred Rentschler at the New York office, he naturally took little notice of it until our financial statement began showing red ink. Lacking profitable production to support an expensive development, we had begun to show serious losses. Since there was no flight experience available to support my venture, Fred was all for canceling the project to avoid further losses. The sole argument I could bring to bear was the fact that I had installed an experimental prop equipped with magnesium blades in one of the small Sikorsky amphibians, an S-39, which had astonished me with its quick take-off and improved cruising characteristics. Behind my decision, however, had lain the whole background of aviation development. One device after another had been proposed and rejected on the basis of engineering judgment, only to be later perfected by some zealot who refused to recognize handicaps. I expressed confidence in the outcome and offered to gamble my job on it. Fred shook his head in doubt.
“Well,” he said sourly, “it had better pan out or it will be just too bad for you.”
Now there remained one process by which I might recover some of our investment. The propeller had been developed to the point where we might offer a few of them to the Army and Navy at experimental prices on experimental contracts, a practice long used to foster new and expensive developments. But when I went down to BUAERO I ran into a cold front that iced me up like nothing I had ever before seen. The Plans Division of BUAERO seemed now to have usurped the functions of the Engine Section in developments of this kind, and the head of that division was now Comdr. Richmond Kelly Turner, USN, a Naval Academy classmate of mine and a friend of long standing. “Spuds” Turner was a tough egg, something the Japs were to learn at Tarawa and other South Pacific actions some fifteen years later; I didn’t have to wait that long.
Kelly Turner seemed to think that controllable-pitch propellers were no good in general, and to suspect that the one I was trying to sell was probably the least useful of them all. If I had wasted my company’s money chasing a will-o’-the-wisp, he had no intention of sending any of Uncle Sam’s hard earned cash on a wild-goose chase to try to bail me out of my business mistakes. “Spuds” did not confine his opinions to me in a confidential chat, but took pains to broadcast them all through the corridors of BUAERO in a loud stentorian voice.