Slipstream: the autobiography of an air craftsman

by Eugene E. Wilson

With the Clippers behind us, we now had the choice of two courses: first, we could shut down Sikorsky and save further losses; or second, we could reorganize it and try to exploit the genius of Igor Sikorsky without prohibitive losses. There seemed no way to anticipate earning a profit in the near future; whatever we tried must be for the long pull. But one thing we had definitely determined: it was too much to expect our friends, the Russian refugees, to implement the American techniques of production. Not that they could not understand them, for they did understand and admire the extraordinary manifestation of applied science that went under that banner. The problem was rather one of temperament or national character.

It was not until the middle of World War II that I heard this thought advanced by Charles A. Lindbergh, one of Mr. Sikorsky’s most devoted friends and an ardent admirer. The conversation took place much later, but before the war had involved this country. By that time I had become president of United Aircraft, and had persuaded Lindbergh to join our organization in the capacity of a personal advisor to me. The conversation took place in our home in Hartford, on one of the many stimulating evenings my wife and I were to enjoy with Lindbergh. He had been outlining those views on the European situation which had involved him in so much misunderstanding. Having been in Russia and Germany and, like his father before him, having ardently hoped for peace for his own country, he had feared that, in joining with Russia to defeat Hitler, we would bring about those very things which have since justified his concern.

He thought that nations, like people, displayed traits of fundamental character that were distinct and unchanging. These had had hereditary origins and had been influenced by environment. They influenced the attitudes of nations toward specific circumstances and conditions and especially tended to determine the attitude of a nation toward war as an instrument of policy and to dictate the methods by which it prosecuted a war. The character of the Russians and that of the American people, he thought, differs as night differs from day. Theirs had been a tradition of compulsion, ours of cooperation. If in competition with them we tried to use their methods, we must prove quite as inept as would they in trying to use ours. But if we had the wit to exploit our own ideology to the limit, we must surely overcome the inferior authoritarian process. He saw the problem in its spiritual rather than material light.

Now if consideration of matters like this appears somewhat academic, the fact remains that they were fundamental to our decision as to what to do with Sikorsky. On the one hand, it was clear that in trying to operate the plant we would assume heavy management burdens with little hope of financial reward; on the other, it was certain that there was a pearl in the Sikorsky oyster which, unless we dived for it, would remain quite undiscovered. Our willingness to accept the risk of further operations there must depend upon our confidence in the collateral benefits. This, in turn, must be based entirely upon the quality of leadership we ourselves could display. And so, after much soul searching, we decided to gamble on our own abilities to direct the genius of Igor Sikorsky so as to benefit the art, if not to swell the treasury.

With this decision taken, we cut the organization back sharply to the double handful of men Mr. Sikorsky himself deemed vital to his success. These included, among others, the brothers Gluhareff, Michael and Serge, Bob Lebensky, of the experimental shop, and Buivid of the laboratory. With the organization set, I stated the problem as that involving the creation of a large flying boat so designed that, when operated on the Pan American system, it could earn its board and keep. In other words, we must move the upper limit of the Richardson formula as high as necessary to gain our objectives. As one contribution to this project, we had the new Hamilton-Standard controllable-pitch propeller, then under development; as another we had a complementary development of Mr. Sikorsky’s, a new wing-flapped airfoil. The propeller could pull more weight into the air and fly it; the flaps could help it into the air and get it back on the water at a reasonable stalling speed. This made the flying-boat hull the controlling factor; its characteristics limited the load we could drag into the air with our new wing and new propellers. To refine the lines of the boat hull, our engineers now devised an inexpensive but effective test rig; they towed a model hull alongside a speed boat and photographed its action in rough or smooth water with slow-motion cameras.

And while we pushed on with our concept of a wholly new design in which we would accept no compromise that impaired the economy of operation, we all sweated out the days and nights of tests and experiments. But there was one critical item on which I did no sweating. Had Mr. Sikorsky revealed to me the fact that the wing loading he had selected would be too high to conform to the current Department of Commerce requirements, and that he would have to sell the Department a new concept of landing in a power stall before he could get his ship accepted, I am sure I should not have had the courage to risk all that money on his persuasive qualities. As it was, he kept me in ignorance of the risk, assumed it wholly to himself, and let me know about it only after he had made his sale. The principle of high wing loadings, involving a new type of approach and landing, is now so thoroughly accepted that few pilots know how it came about. The principle is inherent in current air economics and the limits have gone steadily upward. In 1927 I had solemnly announced for the Design Section of BUAERO that we would not consider wing loadings in excess of 10.5 pounds per square foot. Today, the new Boeing Stratocruiser utilizes loadings eight times that high.

And so Igor Sikorsky built the famous S-42’s, forty-passenger flying boats, designed to hop from New York to Bermuda to the Azores and to Portugal on what was called the “stepping-stones” route to Europe. So well did he design the planes that, when the British refused to give Pan American landing rights at Bermuda because they had no similar boat with which to match the service, Pan American turned westward to the Pacific and used the new Clippers to pioneer the run to Australia, the Philippines, and China. On this run the controlling factor was the great distance to Honolulu, 2,400 miles against 1,900 miles from Bermuda to the Azores, but the Sikorsky boat hulls, derived from model-towing tests, could take off nearly 20 per cent more load than that originally contemplated. Thus they removed the last barrier to overseas air commerce.

From the United point of view, while we made no money on the transaction, and, accounting-wise, lost a hundred thousand dollars on the ten ships, cash-wise we bore no out-of-pocket loss. And while the project took a lot of nervous and physical energy out of management, it paid dividends to the aviation art as a whole. Meanwhile we kept our eyes open for a chance to work into some Army or Navy business, though a number of important changes had taken place.

First of all, shortly after President Roosevelt had been inaugurated, Postmaster James Farley had canceled the air-mail contracts and Senators Black and Nye had broken out in a rash of Congressional investigations. These had upset the five-year procurement programs of both Army and Navy and reacted adversely upon many manufacturers. For a while, Admiral Moffett had held the fort, but then a great tragedy had deprived aviation of one of its foremost figures at its time of greatest need.

The admiral, continuing his absorption with the development of lighter-than-air craft, had succeeded in building and operating the Macon and the Akron and had established a new field near San Jose, California, one that now carries his name. Here the Macon carried out operations with the fleet until an unfortunate accident resulted in her complete loss. The Old Man, still faithful to the rigid airship, continued to fly in them himself until the night the Akron sailed out over the Atlantic and was destroyed. The admiral was lost at sea along with other gallant airmen, close friends and classmates of mine. The loss was disastrous enough from the personal angle, for Admiral Moffett was loved and admired by all his aeronautic organization to a degree seldom attained by any man. Coming as it did at the time of greatest trial on the political front, it deprived us of the one person who might have guided us through our worst rocks and shoals. The admiral was buried at Arlington along with so many of the young lads he had inspired. With his passing, gloom settled over us all.