Phil Johnson’s departure from Boeing had left a big vacuum. Having been banished from the American transport scene, he had undertaken to create his newest masterpiece, Trans-Canada Airlines. Phil had once told me a story about how he had got his first job with Boeing. While still a student in aeronautics at the University of Washington, he had chanced to be alone in the office of the head of the department at the moment when Bill Boeing had called on the telephone to inquire the name of a likely student to fill a job in his new factory. Phil, answering the ring, had promptly replied, “P. G. Johnson!”
Proud of his Scandinavian origin, he delighted in springing a pet question, “What is dumber than a dumb Swede?” His answer, “A smart Irishman.”
Down in Los Angeles, where a big segment of the airplane business, attracted by the physical and economic climate, had set up shop, I found Don Douglas at his old stand in Santa Monica, Dutch Kindleberger in a new shop at Inglewood, Jack Northrup in a new establishment at Hawthorne, and Bob Gross at our old flying field at Burbank. These men, though competitive and individualistic, and as different one from the other as night from day, were all animated by the same enthusiasm for aviation and zeal for its advancement.
Don Douglas, conservative as to design, skillful in production, long on timing, and alert as to customer service, had done one of aviation’s outstanding jobs. His company, like the others, remained pretty much a one-man show, managed by engineers with good judgment and a limitless capacity for work. Don’s was a well-balanced show, founded on sound character, far-sighted vision, and Scotch thrift.
“Dutch” Kindleberger, of North American, a journeyman engineer specializing in military aircraft, delighted in personally contriving ingenious labor-saving devices. A salty citizen, he once summed up the case for the airplane, “There never has been an airplane designed and built that wasn’t full of bugs. And you can’t delouse an airplane with insecticide. Instead you pick them out the hard way, like hunting fleas on a woolly dog, and when you finally get the one that is making his nose twitch, it is probably biting him under the tail!”
“Dutch,” to my shocked surprise, had shifted his allegiance to liquid-cooled engines and was even then mocking up a new power plant installation that threatened serious competition for Pratt and Whitney. However, I remembered that Dutch knew how to give a customer what he wanted, and the Army was his principal customer.
Bob Gross, who had bought Lockheed for a song, had succeeded in giving Don Douglas real competition in air transports. While tending to depreciate his own efforts, he managed an aggressive outfit that placed a high premium on speed. Jack Northrup, having launched a new company, was bubbling with enthusiasm for his newest project, a big bomber designed along the lines of his earlier flying-wing. Always unorthodox, yet extremely practical, he was most helpful to me with my problem.
Following my Los Angeles visit, I flew down to San Diego to look up Reuben Fleet of Consolidated Aircraft, an enterpriser who had lost none of his enthusiasm for, and skill at, making an honest dollar. By this time the Navy had become San Diego’s major industry and FLEET AIR filled the skies with formations of carrier aircraft.
Out of this tour around the country, I not only collected every man’s point of view as to power plants, but got an interesting cross-section of the industry as a whole. One-man shows for the most part, they were managed by engineer executives, a combination hard to beat when manufacturing was involved. In contrast with the rather studied approach we had in United, they were bold and forthright. Averaging then somewhat under forty-five years of age, they compressed into brief business careers the whole history of aviation.
In a brief span of two decades, they had created a whole new technology, and this had been accomplished in the face of many vicissitudes. Through doing business largely with a few customers like the government or the airlines, they had developed an outlook quite at variance with that of industries dealing with large numbers of individual customers. As an important segment of the national security, it was natural that they should look upon their profession more as a public service, and thus develop an appreciation of public relations. At a time when new enterprises had been almost interdicted by the unfavorable economic climate and they had been singled out for attack, they had still gone on, with youthful self-reliance, with rugged independence, and a competitive spirit, to exploit the freedom of their homeland and create a new art.