CHAPTER TWENTY
Igor Sikorsky Spans Two Gaps
On the ninth floor of the New York Central Building, at 230 Park Avenue in the city of New York, Frederick B. Rentschler, president of the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, sat behind his desk in a corner office that looked out on the Biltmore Hotel, and welcomed me with a grin. It was a May day in 1930.
“We’ve got a problem in Bridgeport,” he began. “It’s Sikorsky Aviation Corporation. They need management, and I thought you might like to take it on in addition to Hamilton-Standard.”
United Aircraft and Transport, it seemed, had been originally conceived as a consolidation of outstanding manufacturers for military and air transport. However, back in 1928 when it was being set up, Fred had encountered considerable pressure from certain ones “downtown” to include some outstanding private commercial manufacturers as well. Some in Wall Street had become convinced that the day of private flying had already dawned, and they had drawn the analogy with the automobile somewhat closer, it had seemed to Fred, than was warranted by the facts. While he resisted their pressure, he did agree to take over a few outstanding commercial manufacturers like Stearman in Wichita and Sikorsky in Bridgeport.
And when the bottom had dropped out of the stock market, and the fool’s paradise that characterized the late ’twenties had faded into the deep depression now steeping the country in gloom and fear, Fred’s judgment had been vindicated. At Sikorsky, a flock of “firm orders,” with down payments from Curtiss-Wright Flying Service, had been transformed into a big inventory surplus. Somebody must now liquidate that to get enough cash to continue, and somebody must create something to sell to the Army and Navy, the only remaining users of aircraft. That somebody could be me.
“When you get up to Stratford,” Fred told me, “you’ll find an organization that is unique to say the least.”
Practically every one in the company was a Russian—a White Russian refugee who, “come the revolution,” had made his precarious way to the United States. They were all talented, artistic, intellectual, and by our standards at least, wholly impractical.
Igor Sikorsky was their guiding genius, a man around whom all had rallied when the going was tough. Over on College Point, Long Island, at an abandoned chicken farm, they had pooled their resources for the common good and built their first twin-engined bomber. And so successful had this ship been that Arnold Dickinson, an enterprising fellow from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who had been greatly attracted to the fascinating Russians and much impressed by their cleverness, had advanced them large sums of money. Then came the Sikorsky twin-engined amphibian, one of the first American aircraft to control and maneuver well on either of its two engines, and with its success, United Aircraft became interested in taking the company into the fold. By that time, Sikorsky’s backers had built a modern plant for him at Stratford on the Housatonic River, and things had looked promising indeed up until that Black Friday of October, 1929, when the bottom dropped out of the stock market.
It happened that I had flown the Sikorsky amphibian and had met Mr. Sikorsky. He had called on me in BUAERO and left with us a vivid impression of his charm of manner, his intellectual honesty, his resourceful mind, and—unique in our experience—a most becoming modesty. For at a time when fast-talking promoters had beaten paths to our doorway, in the hope of high pressuring us into buying their mousetraps, the Russian designer alone had shown humility with respect to his art and respect for the judgment of others. And with it all, being himself without guile, Mr. Igor Sikorsky had proved himself the most convincing salesman in our rather wide experience. For sitting as we had at the crossroads, we had had the advantage of a good view along all highways.
Now I learned from Fred Rentschler that there was another complication of the kind Mr. Sikorsky later sometimes referred to, in his delightful accent and his literal-English translation of an old American saying—“Somewhere there is a Negro sawing wood.” Pan American Airways, during the boom, had advertised a competition calling for large flying boats or amphibians, to be flown on its Caribbean and South American air routes, where practically no airports were available. Sikorsky Aviation, it appeared, had won the award and had agreed to build three of the giant craft at an average price of $125,000 each. After having spent at least that much on engineering alone, they had decided to throw the drawings away and start anew with a clean sheet of paper. Fred Rentschler had been a member of the Pan American Airways board of directors during the competition, and now felt that United was committed to go on with the project. He had reconciled himself to the fact that it would cost United upwards of a million dollars, and had even concluded that the money could be looked upon as an investment. If the planes proved successful, we might get back our money and more too, by selling airplanes, propellers, and engines to the new commercial airline. In a way, one might persuade himself that it was United’s duty to make such a contribution to the art.