However, there were other considerations. The control of export permits had been lodged in the State Department, which would not grant such permit without the approval of the military department concerned. In the case of the SBU-1 two-seat dive bomber we had first to obtain permission from BUAERO and then run the gantlet of the State Department and the office of a Mr. Joseph Green. This problem came to the fore when the Argentine Navy sought to acquire some of our planes. Admiral King ruled that since the airplane had the characteristics of a dive bomber it was too secret to permit foreign sale. Of course the only secret about it was that the wings had been made strong enough to take the pull-out loads—something any designer could build in—but that proved enough.
Chance Vought Aircraft now found itself in a tight spot. I camped on the doorstep of the State Department, of BUAERO, and even went to see Adm. William H. Standley, then Chief of Naval Operations, to urge that the matter be viewed from the point of view of the long-term public interest, keeping a vital industry alive and 800 men and women employed. We already had millions on relief without swelling the throng on a technicality, but I was too poor a salesman to make the idea stick. In desperation, I tried another approach.
With my wife as company, I caught a Pan American Airways flight for Buenos Aires, determined to close the contract and then see what Uncle Sam had to say. If he wanted to accept the responsibility for an overt act that would take the food from the mouths of our men, he could do so, but I refused to hold the bag while they gave me the run-around.
We were fortunate in our representation in Argentina. The firm of Jorge Luro y Cia. brought us the experience of Jorge Luro, a distinguished pioneer aviator, and the mature wisdom of Señor Guillermo Leloir, member of an aristocratic Argentine family.
“We Latins,” Guillermo counseled me, in anticipation of direct negotiations with Capt. Marco Zar, the director of Argentine naval aviation, “admire your North American enterprise but resent your high-pressure salesmanship.”
Marco Zar, a graduate of the Pensacola Naval Air Station, had come to me one day in BUAERO, asking for advice on his procurement problems. His current interest in Vought airplanes was due to his knowledge that I managed the company. An earnest, conscientious officer, he believed that a good deal for his service must needs be a fair deal all around. My tactics during the negotiations were predicated on this fact plus the advice from Guillermo.
Details of our contract were argued out before a large conference of Captain Zar’s subordinate officers. The captain won every skirmish pertaining to prices or specification, yet the final conclusions were satisfactory to all concerned. When I returned to Hartford, I passed the word around the shop that the kids could eat for another year, provided Uncle Sam did not refuse us an export permit.
With work for the shop we could direct our attention to a new development. It was already clear that biplanes were being outclassed by monoplanes, but they had persisted longer on carriers because of the space limitations imposed there. As a replacement for our two-seat dive bomber, which could carry a 500-pound bomb, we drew up a proposal to construct a folding-wing 500-pound monoplane dive bomber so designed that a carrier could manage its full complement of the new, faster type. The Bureau considered the proposal for a while, and then, instead of giving us the advantage we deserved for having conceived the idea, got out its own specification and published it to the trade. Then they further complicated the problem by advertising for two types, a 500- and a 1,000-pounder. We submitted proposals for both, and were awarded the 500-pound model. Now in order not to get left at the post in case BUAERO finally decided to buy only 1,000-pounders, we decided to build our ship to meet all the tight specifications for the smaller size but still capable of carrying a 1,000-pound bomb.
The competition from other manufacturers was tough. Every airplane was stressed to the ultimate and no margins were left for error. After winning a design competition, a manufacturer had to submit an article for test by the trial board at Anacostia. If he beat out his competitors there and won a production award, then followed the trials and tribulations of trying to build his brain child without losing his shirt. Then, after the airplane got into service and developed the unforeseen bugs that always show up regardless of previous care, he had the added responsibility for correcting faults on aircraft he might have donated to the government at a substantial loss to himself. After that, all that remained was to dream up a new model to replace the old, and in the meantime, keep service men in the field to show untrained mechanics how to operate a complicated contraption that was fully as high strung as the president of the company that had built it.
After our new SB2U went into service, we shifted our attention back to building a monoplane observation replacement for the battleship and carrier-catapult planes, represented by our original Corsairs. For so well had Chance Vought wrought that his little two-seaters, conceived back there in 1926, remained in service until after Pearl Harbor, some fifteen years later. Our replacement was called the “Kingfisher” and it saw service in World War II. One of them saved Eddy Rickenbacker from a watery grave on the vast Pacific, something that alone compensated us for the painstaking design efforts we had put into a complicated project.