Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

Braniff’s conclusion that deregulation would be only temporary, and that re-regulation was inevitable, was probably the biggest mistake of all. That conclusion prompted Braniff to believe that new routes should be established as quickly as possible, before the window of opportunity slammed shut, and that the equipment to serve these new routes should be immediately acquired before the aircraft manufacturers became back­logged with orders from all of the other airlines that were sure to come.

In 1978 Braniff International Airways was a successful, established carrier with a reliable business clientele responsible for about 70 per­cent of its traffic. When Postmaster General Far­ley ordered the re-bidding in 1934 for airmail routes after the so-called “Spoils Conference” affair of 1930, Braniff Airways, Inc, as it was known then, had acquired the coveted Dallas – Chicago route. As it grew, its route system cen­tered on the Midwest, primarily on a north-south axis. Braniff was profitable and had been for much of its proud history as one of the 16 trunk carriers grandfathered under the Civil Aeronau­tics Act of 1938.

After World War II, Braniff became the first international competitor to Pan American certificated by the United States government when it began service to South America along its east coast. In 1950, Braniff was granted landing rights in Buenos Aires by the Peron government in Argentina.

By the late 1950s, Braniff had expanded to airports across the country using the DC-7, the last of the large piston engine airplanes, and would soon convert its entire fleet to turbine powered aircraft, including Lockheed turbo “Electras” and Boeing 707s. At this time Braniff was still a conservatively run organization with a solid balance sheet, excellent routes both domes­tically and internationally, and new aircraft. The future looked bright, indeed.

In 1965, Braniff was bought by GreatAmer – ica Corporation, an insurance holding company whose expansion into transportation included the purchase of National Car Rental. With its history as a solid Midwestern company serv­ing conservative business and corporate clients, its livery, as well as its management style, was considered rather staid. Under new management Braniff began to take on a different image, one that defines how it is usually viewed today.

Harding Lawrence, as Braniff s new CEO, inaugurated a “makeover” that became the talk of the airline industry. Madison Avenue advertising agencies, folk artists, Italian fashion designers, and architects were called in to recreate the “Braniff look.” The airplanes were painted in solid colors, a different color for each airplane, and the colors ranged across the pastel spectrum. During the 1960s, Braniff airplanes sported a total of 15 different colors, including ochre, tur­quoise, and lemon yellow.

Harding Lawrence loved the abstract, mul­ticolored paintings of the modern artist Alex­ander Calder and hung some 50 of his original creations around Braniff’s executive offices in 1972. Soon, Calder was engaged to design a paint scheme for an entire jet airplane, the first of several, in original, swirling, multicolor designs unique to each aircraft. Calder oversaw the paint­ing as an original work of art and insisted on personally painting one engine nacelle on each airplane with a special design. He was paid a fee of $100,000 for each aircraft design. This fee did not include the paint.

In December 1965, Braniff expanded its international reach by buying the 50 percent interest of W. R. Grace in “Panagra,” an airline operated as a joint venture with Pan American World Airways to serve the Andean countries of South America from the United States. Four months later, Braniff bought out Pan Am and continued to fly these South American routes as far south as Santiago, Chile. Pan American con­tinued to fly the east coast of South America.

Between 1975 and 1980, Braniff doubled in size. By this time 95 percent of the Braniff fleet consisted of jets.

Within a few days after the Airline Deregu­lation Act was passed in October 1978, Braniff had applied for 626 new routes. By early Novem­ber the CAB had granted Braniff 67 of these new routes, and by the middle of December, the airline had begun service to 16 new cities. Dur­ing the three months following the signing of the ADA, Braniff hired over 338 new pilots. It bracketed the American continent by establish­ing new hubs in Boston and Los Angeles. It expanded its fleet by buying and leasing all man­ner of new aircraft, including the expensive-to – operate 747, which served to compound the error as its cavernous interior flew practically empty on Braniff s new routes.

But possibly the most astonishing devel­opment after deregulation was in 1979 when Braniff began service with the new supersonic Concorde between Dallas/Fort Worth and

Washington, D. C. as the first leg of international routes to London and Paris with British Airways and Air France. The Concorde was the product of a joint enterprise of the British and French gov­ernments to develop the first supersonic transport (SST), and it had been introduced to the avia­tion world at the Paris Air Show in 1973. The advantage of the Concorde was its ability to fly at Mach 2; its disadvantage was that it could fly at Mach 2 only over the open ocean due to the shock wave produced by supersonic flight. Where Braniff flew the Concorde, which was over the continental United States, there was no advantage—it was limited to an airspeed of.95 Mach, barely over the normal operating speed of a Boeing 727. Worse, even with a nominal surcharge of only $100 added to the DFW-Dulles fare, the cramped 100 seat-configured Concorde usually flew at 15 percent capacity. Some wag observed that all of Braniff’s airplanes should have been painted yellow since the airline had gone completely “bananas.”

Beginning in 1980 and extending into the early years of the decade, fuel prices spiraled upward due to the OPEC oil crisis, interest rates shot up to 20 percent, and the attendant recession had a stifling effect on passenger traffic. When deregulation did not end, and upstart airlines con­tinued to enter the field and pose significant com­petitive pressures on Braniff’s expanded routes, Braniff began suffering catastrophic losses. In order to maintain cash flow, Braniff began to sell off its newly acquired fleet of aircraft at dis­tressed prices to its competitors, further weaken­ing its position. It then turned to selling off its biggest prizes, its European routes and then its Asian routes, as well as some of its domestic ser­vice. This was a pattern that had never been seen before in American aviation, but it was only the beginning.

By 1982, Braniff could no longer keep its doors open against the clamor of creditors, and it filed for Chapter 11 protection under the Bank­ruptcy Act. It was the first United States airline to do so since airline regulation was begun in 1938. Due to the crushing debt that had accumu­lated under Braniff’s bizarre management style since deregulation, the company could not secure an agreement from its creditors to continue operations under Chapter 11. On May 12, 1982, Braniff grounded all of its beautifully designed and painted aircraft and shut down its opera­tions. It had been 52 years since Paul Braniff first coined the slogan, “The World’s Fastest Airline.”

■ The United States Bankruptcy Act4

The Constitution of the United States (Article 1, Section 8) specifically provides that Con­gress be empowered to establish “uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States.” Congress has done so on repeated occasions since 1801. Bankruptcy in the United States, therefore, is mainly a federal exercise, administered in the federal bankruptcy courts, which are an adjunct of the United States District Courts located in each state across the land.

The concept of bankruptcy first implies that one’s debts exceed one’s assets. This is called “insolvency.” Under U. S. law, a petition in bank­ruptcy can be initiated either by creditors of the insolvent debtor, called “involuntary bank­ruptcy,” or by the debtor himself, called “vol­untary bankruptcy.” As we saw in Part I of this book, the industrial revolution, and particularly the advent of the railroads, caused the rise of the corporate form of business entity. Under U. S. law, corporations are entitled to the same basic privileges as individuals, including the protection of the bankruptcy laws.

The bankruptcy code is sub-divided into “Chapters,” each one dealing with a separate kind of bankruptcy. The most common form of bankruptcy, known as “straight bankruptcy” is found in Chapter 7 of the Code and results in the shutting down of the business. This procedure provides for the appointment of a trustee to liq­uidate all of the debtor’s assets and to distribute the proceeds to the creditors. Chapter 11 is a more complex procedure that allows the debtor to remain in business under the supervision of the bankruptcy court while it goes through a “reor­ganization” of its debt structure and contractual obligations.

The intent of Chapter 11, in allowing a com­pany to remain in business under reorganization, is to provide a way to pay most if not all of the creditors, to save jobs, to preserve the engine of profitability (which is the corporation’s opera­tions in place, good will, experience, and hope of the future), and to allow the business to earn a “fresh start.” One trade-off to accomplish this result is the cancellation or renegotiation of pre­viously incurred debts and contracts, including labor contracts. This is accomplished either by compromise between the debtor and the credi­tors, or by rulings of the bankruptcy judge.

During the reorganization process, which may take months to years depending on the complexities of the reorganization, the debtor is considered “under the protection” of the bankruptcy court. This means that the debtor is shielded from lawsuits that could otherwise be brought by creditors, and from general harass­ment associated with its unpaid debts. At the same time, the operations of the debtor are sub­ject to the scrutiny of the bankruptcy court and the creditors.

In the following chapters of this book, we will see how Chapter 11 bankruptcy has become an integral part of the air transportation business in the deregulated world. Other sophisticated free market techniques, previously unheard of in commercial aviation, would be brought to bear as airlines attempted to cope with the new world of competition. Hostile corporate take­overs, leveraged buyouts, downsizing, outsourc­ing, and employee pay givebacks and salary cuts were only some of the new developments that loomed over the horizon. Chief practitioner of these ideas was a Harvard MBA by the name of Frank Lorenzo.

4. The bankruptcy law is codified at Title 11 of the United States Code. The U. S. Code is a series of books contain­ing all of the laws of the United States arranged sequen­tially from Title 1 through Title 50A. Each Title is devoted to a particular subject matter. Title 49, for example, con­tains the federal statutes in the field of transportation.

■ n the fall of 1903, aerodynamic research і had proved the practicality of gliding flight, capable of carrying a man on wings of various designs. Rudimentary control had been shown in gliding flight, but with inconsistent results, and lack of control had caused the recent deaths of at least two gliding aeronauts. Sustained powered flight had been shown using models with steam engines. Reaching the goal of sustained, manned, and controlled flight was tantalizingly close, and was seemingly within the grasp of several dif­ferent experimenters, yet it remained completely out of reach—as far away as the moon. The combined knowledge and experience of all of the preceding pioneers of flight hung in suspension just above their heads, awaiting some catalyst— some insight or development—that would crys­tallize all of it into successful, sustained flight. Of all such contenders, the most promising in the fall of 1903 seemed to be Samuel P. Langley (see Figure 6-1), an astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C.

Langley’s formal education ended on his graduation from the Boston Latin School, but he was self-taught in mathematics, physics, and astronomy. When he was nine years old, he was heavily into reading books on astronomy, and

he built telescopes of various types, using them to observe the moon and the planets. He secured placement as an assistant astronomer at Harvard College Observatory during the middle 1860s, and then took a position at the U. S. Naval Acad­emy as a professor of mathematics. His work in

Annapolis mostly related to the restoration of the observatory at the Academy.

After a year, Langley went to the Alle­gheny Observatory of the Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh), where he began to engage in pioneering work in solar observation and discovery, and where he developed astronomical instruments and con­ducted research that brought him a degree of recognition and fame. His work naturally led to publications in scientific journals and periodi­cals, and in turn he met and became familiar with inventors and scientists in many cognate fields of exploration, including the pursuit of heavier than air flight.

From his university life he moved to Washington, D. C., in order to take the appoint­ment to the Smithsonian Institution as its third Secretary in 1887. The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846 by Congressional act to establish a charitable trust to create a museum, a library, and a program of research, publication, and collection in the sciences, arts, and history. The Secretary of the Smithsonian is the chief executive officer of the Institution.

After arriving in Washington, D. C. in 1887, Langley continued the research that he had ear­lier begun in studying aerodynamic lift. He con­structed a whirling table (in order to generate wind) on which he affixed various bird wings, by which means he was able to observe the lifting characteristics of the particular designs. Lang­ley worked briefly with gliders, consulting the work of Sir George Cayley of some 75 years earlier, who had also studied bird wings in shap­ing wings he constructed. The Smithsonian was a refuge and bulwark of naturalists, and it was easy for Langley to conduct research in that environ­ment. He mused at the time, “I watched a hawk soaring far up in the blue, and sailing for a long time without any motion of its wings . . . How wonderfully easy, too, was its flight! I was brought to think of these things again, and to ask myself whether the problem of artificial flight was really as hopeless and as absurd as it was then thought to be.”

This was also the time of other true believ­ers, like Lilienthal and Chanute, whose work concentrated on lift experiments with gliders. But Langley moved away from gliders, favoring the development of a complete, self-sustaining aerial machine that would, by its own power, show that manned flight was ultimately possible.

He did this by building a series of mod­els, which he called “Aerodromes” sequentially numbered, the first of which was completed in 1892, but not flown. By 1894, he had settled on a design that used two sets of equal-sized wings in tandem (one set of wings located behind a first set forward), on which he placed small contriv­ances of motive power, using compressed gas or steam. He converted a 38-foot houseboat, with a workshop, into a launch platform and towed it down the Potomac River to a point near Quan – tico, Virginia.

From here he tested Aerodrome 4 (all attempts were failures, resulting in each of the models falling into the water), and Aerodrome 5, which sustained a flight in October, 1894, for 35 feet and three seconds. A year and a half later, on May 6, 1896, Aerodrome No. 6 was launched from the houseboat’s catapult but its left wing collapsed and the model landed in the water. At 3:05 p. m. that same day, Aerodrome No. 5, 13 feet long and weighing about 24 pounds, is launched and flies for a minute and a half, covering about one-half mile and reaching 100 feet altitude. This is the first successful sus­tained flight of a heavier-than-air machine ever recorded. At 5:10 p. m., Langley does it again as the machine climbs to 60 feet and flies in circles for 1 minute and 31 seconds. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the only witness to the flight who was not a staff member, photographed the accomplishment. Joy abounded.

The see-saw battle against gravity proceeded in fits and starts. In June, Chanute conducts his acclaimed glider experiments at the Lake

Michigan dunes using his box glider design, which will be later borrowed by the Wright brothers to good effect. In August, after over

2,0 gliding flights, the intrepid Lilienthal dies when his glider stalls and crashes from an alti­tude of about 50 feet. On November 28, Langley repeats his success as Aerodrome No. 6 flies 4,800 feet in 1 minute and 45 seconds.

On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine sank in Havana harbor, with the death of 266 sailors, due to a massive explosion. The Maine was in Cuba to protect American citizens during revolu­tionary unrest caused by Cuban freedom-fighters against Spanish colonial rule. A Navy Board of Inquiry concluded that the Maine had been sunk by a mine placed on her hull. Although the government did not affix blame for the mine’s placement, an outraged public blamed Spain. This was one of the precipitating factors to the American entry into war with Spain (the Spanish – American War), which began on April 21, 1898.

Between the sinking of the Maine and the declaration of war, on March 25, 1898, the Assis­tant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, suggested the development of Langley’s Aero­drome as a possible weapon of war to Navy Secretary John D. Long. This shortly resulted in a grant from the War Department of $50,000 to Langley for the construction of a full-sized ver­sion of the Aerodrome model capable of carrying a man in controlled flight.

The Smithsonian is intricately connected to the federal government, and has always been largely funded by federal dollars and adminis­tered by officials from the three branches of the federal government. It was natural, then, that the federal government would fund advanced research that had already been started under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. It is not clear that this was a welcome development to Langley, as many have supposed that he intended to complete his aeronautical experiments and contributions with the successful flights of the models he had already produced.

Still, Langley accepted the assignment and was immediately confronted with several sig­nificant challenges. First, his plan was simply to scale up the models that he had successfully flown into a full-sized flying machine capable of carrying a person. Based on later analysis by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum,1 this was an error of failure-producing propor­tion since the aerodynamics, structural design, and control system of the smaller craft were not adaptable to the full-sized version. However, Langley’s primary focus was not on the integrity of the craft’s structure, but on its propulsion.

In 1898 there existed no available engine that could produce sufficient horsepower for mounting on a full-sized flying machine, primar­ily due to considerations of weight. The best ones available produced only about one horsepower for each 20 pounds of engine weight. In spite of his accomplishments, Langley was not an engi­neer, nor was he an expert in either propulsion or structure. He had concluded, however, that steam engines were not suitable for large fly­ing machines. This left as the only alternative the gasoline internal combustion engine, which had been invented by Gottlieb Daimler in 1885. Meaningful advances in the internal combustion engine were, at that time, awaiting the arrival of the automobile industry. Langley also concluded that he could use some engineering assistance.

Charles Manly, who was set to graduate from Cornell University as a mechanical engineer in 1898, was recommended to Langley by a professor friend of his at that school. Langley hired Manly in June 1898, and by October the two of them had begun major work on the Great Aerodrome, as it was called (see Figure 6-2). Manly had calcu­lated that the machine would require at least two 12 horsepower motors, each weighing no more than 100 pounds. Finding none available, Langley contracted with automobile engine manufacturer Stephen Marius Balzer of New York to build it. After two years of effort, Balzer’s engine, which was a 5-cylinder radial type, was not functional

and Balzer was near bankruptcy. Manly prevailed upon Langley to assign the project of building the engine to him, and by September of 1900, Manly had produced an experimental engine weighing 108 pounds and producing І8У2 horsepower. Manly had, in effect, produced a motor that would perform to almost twice the specifications of the original. As he later said, “At the time very little was known about the ‘proper way of constructing’ an engine and what work had been done was jealously guarded against patent theft by the automobile industry.”

By January 1902, the 5-cylinder radial engine had been successfully developed and tested, and it produced 51 horsepower while weighing only 207 pounds, including water for cooling (see Figure 6-3). His weight to power ratio was an unbeliev­able 4 to 1. The unsuccessful Balzer engine’s design specification had been 8 to 1.

The remaining news about the finished air­craft known as the Aerodrome A, on the other hand, was not so good. The fuselage was con­structed of steel tubing. The wings and tail were of wood covered by Percaline (lightweight cotton). The frame of the craft, and both the design and construction of the tandem wing setup, was pro­duced without the benefit of manned glider test­ing. Given its large size (it was 52 feet long with a wing span of 48 feet), it was flimsy. It did not help that the structure had to sit 11 feet above the ground to provide propeller clearance. Strangely, the Aerodrome had no landing gear or flotation devices. There were no specific provisions for lateral control except for a rudder mounted aft and beneath the fuselage of the craft. The press assigned it the moniker “the Dragonfly.”

Refinements and finishing touches were made during 1903, and on October 7, things were all in order for the launch. Although Lang­ley had planned to use ballast or dummy passen­gers, Manly insisted that he be permitted to pilot the craft. The launching mechanism had been enlarged, inspected, and tested. The Aerodrome had been affixed atop the launching mechanism and stood ready. The engine was cranked and was running smoothly. Wearing a cork-lined coat for flotation, and with a compass affixed to his left trouser leg to assist in navigating a lengthy flight, Manly mounted the Aerodrome atop the houseboat and signaled that he was ready. Two sky rockets were launched and the tugs holding the houseboat into the wind tooted to signal the launch.

With the press in full attendance, what hap­pened next is described by Dr. A. G. Bell in a speech ten years later:

. . . but when the catapult was released the aerodrome sped along the track on the top of the houseboat attaining sufficient head­way for normal flight; but at the end of the rails it was jerked violently down at the front, and plunged headlong into the river.

Langley was lampooned in the press, his air­craft maligned as a “buzzard,” and his launch plat­form and houseboat ridiculed as the “Ark.” The Washington Post said the Aerodrome plunged into the Potomac “like a handful of mortar.” Despite the very public failure, the commitment to flight remained steadfast. Manly was chagrined but unhurt, the engine was undamaged, and the Aero­drome was repairable. On December 8, 1903, with the Wright brothers hard at work on their craft at Kitty Hawk, all was again in readiness for history to be made. According to Dr. Bell:

This time the rear guy post was injured, crip­pling the rear wings, so that the aerodrome pitched up in front and plunged over back­wards into the water. . .

The Washington Star headlined on December 9, 1903, “AIRSHIP FAILS TO FLY,” accompa­nied by a distressing photograph of the Aerodrome
just after launch, captioned “Collapse of the Air­ship.” (See Figure 6-4.) Within three years Langley was dead, the object of ridicule. In 1913 Dr. Bell believed that the catapult was the only problem:

It will thus be seen that Langley’s aerodrome was never successfully launched, so that it had no opportunity of showing what it could do in the air. The defect lay in the launch­ing mechanism employed and not in the machine itself, which is recognized by all experts as a perfectly good flying machine, excellently constructed and made long before the appearance of other machines.

The remains of Aerodrome A were carefully packed up in crates and stored at the Smithsonian Institution. But the end of the story of the Aero­drome was not yet at hand. In fact, the Aerodrome failure just two weeks before the Wright broth­ers’ first successful manned flight in Kitty Hawk,

N. C. was to fuel a controversy that would fester for decades to come. It would cause the Smithso­nian Institution to question the Wright brothers’ claims to be the true “inventors” of the airplane, which, in turn, would cause the original Wright Flyer to be sent to the London Science Museum for exhibition rather than to the Washington Smithsonian. It would play a part in the rupture of the close and fraternal early aeronautical com­munity and become a foil in the patent wars to come between the Wright brothers and the rest of the world over the issue of who owned the right to fly. The failure of the Aerodrome was to be just one poignant vignette among many as man strived to produce the world’s first practical airplane in the early years of the 20th century. [3] [4]

ate had set apart a place for Fred Rentschler in the Age of Aviation that was just begin­ning. Today, his is not a name that springs to mind as central to the development of commer­cial aviation in the United States, but it should be. He changed the aviation world. Almost single – handedly, and certainly single-mindedly, his vision and dedication made the military air forces of the United States the strongest in the world, for the longest time, and at the time they were most needed for survival of western civilization because of the advent of World War II. The giant airliners of the pre-jet world were mainly pow­ered by his designs.

Fred Rentschler (see Figure 11-1) came from solid German stock. His father, George Adam Rentschler, an immigrant from Wiirttem – berg, established a foundry in Hamilton, Ohio, where pig iron and machine castings were the mother’s milk of his upbringing. The Rentschler family also owned the Republic Motor Car Company, which built automobiles until 1916. Hamilton is but a stone’s throw from Dayton, not only the home of the Wright brothers, but also in the early years of the 20th century the locale of the National Cash Register Company, its biggest business. The Rentschler foundry supplied the company with castings for its cash registers, and

George A. Rentschler became a friend of Edward Deeds, NCR’s vice president.

Fred Rentschler grew up in Hamilton around the foundry and automobile business, graduated from Princeton University in 1909, and returned
to Hamilton to work in the family businesses. In addition to NCR, Hamilton was a center of man­ufacturing of different types, including machine tools, steel products, railroad rail and steam engines, reapers, threshers, gun lathes, and many other heavy industry products. It was the home of Niles-Bement-Pond Company, one of the world’s largest machine tool companies, which would later acquire the Pratt & Whitney Tool Company of East Hartford, Connecticut, and it was home to many powerful executives, bankers, and engi­neers. The social network of Fred Rentschler and his family was extensive.

Edwaixl Deeds had the idea to fit NCR cash registers with electric motors in order to replace the mechanical finger-force needed to ring up of the register. He brought into NCR Charles Ket­tering, an inventor and engineer (he would have 186 patents in due course) to create the electric motor application. Soon afterwards, Deeds and Kettering started a little company by the name of Dayton Engineering Laboratories to manu­facture an innovation thought up by Kettering, an electric self-starter that could be applied to automobiles. DELCO, as the company was to be known, was to be credited with taming the horse­less carriage, eliminating the need for the manly and strenuous art of hand cranking required at the time. The first starter was one of 5,000 installed in the 1912 Cadillac, and the idea rapidly spread throughout the automobile industry. DELCO forged close ties with the automobile industry. In 1916, Kettering and Deeds sold DELCO to United Motors Corporation for the whopping sum of nine million dollars.

With the profits from the DELCO sale, Deeds and Kettering formed the Dayton Air­plane Company and then brought in Orville Wright as consultant. The name was changed to the Dayton-Wright Company with the idea of producing airplanes for private use. When the United States entered the war in 1917, Deeds volunteered for work on the Aircraft Production Board in Washington. He was placed in charge of all aircraft procurement for the United States and given the rank of colonel in the Army. The Dayton-Wright Company thereby received con­tracts from the government to produce 5,000 De Havilland warplanes under license.

The state of the art of American airplane and aircraft engine design was represented by the out-classed Curtiss Jenny and the OX-2. As discussed in Chapter 9, the redesigned Packard automobile engine became the Liberty engine that would be installed into the De Havillands, and it was Deeds who engaged his automobile industry contacts to effect that redesign. The Liberty engine became America’s greatest con­tribution to the war materiel effort. The Dayton – Wright Company also produced a pilotless “flying bomb,” another of Kettering’s innova­tions, but too late for use in the war. The device was kept a military secret after the war, but the Nazi German government employed the same technology in the V-l rocket, used with some success against England in World War II. These were smart and dedicated men.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, Fred Rentschler came to Edward Deeds. Deeds found a place for him at the Wright-Martin plant in Brunswick, New Jersey, where the French Hispano-Suiza aircraft engine was being produced under license for shipment to Europe. When Rentschler arrived at Wright-Martin, pro­duction and inspection of engines was the job of a French Commission, and it was Rentschler’s job to replace the Commission. The Hispano 180, followed by the 300, were the dominant power plants of the final years of the war and gave the Allies superiority in the air. At the end of the war, Wright-Martin was turning out 1,000 engines a month under Rentschler’s direction.

After the war most of the assets of Wright – Martin were sold to the Mack Truck Company. Fred Rentschler accepted an offer to manage the remnants of the company, under the name of Wright Aeronautical, for the production of postwar aviation engines. Starting from scratch, he located another plant site in Paterson, New Jersey, to refine and improve on the Hispanos, and to design an American product based on both liquid and air-cooled experimentation. During the postwar days of plentiful engines and planes, these engines were not for personal or private use, but for the military and the government mar­ket. The trouble was, no one knew if there would be such a market. Many of the Wright-Martin engineers and technicians returned to the auto­motive industry, but a few stalwarts remained with Rentschler at Wright Aeronautical. As it turned out, these were the most dedicated and gifted of the group, and soon the company was profitable and had established a credible reputa­tion against the other two aircraft engine produc­ers, Curtiss and Packard.

In the early 1920s, the aircraft engines of choice, for both the Army and the Navy, were the 500 horsepower liquid-cooled engine, the D-12 and the Liberty. These were produced by all three companies (Wright Aeronautical, Curtiss, and Packard), but it was the air-cooled engine that had caught the attention of Rentschler and, as it turned out, the United States Navy.

he Big Four, having been established largely 1 through the efforts of Walter Brown, and having survived the Black investigation and the resulting remedial legislation (Black-McKellar), were well positioned for the beginnings of the modern era of commercial air transportation. The airlines were hurting financially, however, due to the losses experienced during the stand down period when the Army had flown the mail after the cancellation of all CAM routes in February 1934, and because the new rates mandated by Black-McKellar were set to a maximum of 33.5 cents per mile, less than a third of the going rate in 1929.

But progress had been made. In 1929, the contract mail carriers (who were to become the country’s major airlines) were still flying wood and wire airplanes, although a few had acquired the very latest technology in the Fokker or Ford trimotors. By the late 1930s, when the Civil Aeronautics Act was passed, great innovations in aircraft manufacture had occurred, largely due to a combination of commitments and risks under­taken by the airlines, by the aircraft manufactur­ers and engine manufacturers, and to government innovations achieved at the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics.

II The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA)

We first learned about NACA in Chapter 9 in con­nection with the ending of the patent litigation between Glenn Curtiss and the Wright brothers. This one accomplishment freed up the develop­ment of aerodynamics for the country, which had been paralyzed by the patent litigation. NACA’s importance cannot be understated (in 1958 it would become NASA) as a progressive force in American aeronautics. Because of its importance, it will appear from time to time in this book.

As we saw, it was created in 1915 as an aeronautical research laboratory, at a time when the national government had fallen well behind European countries in developments in avia­tion. World War I (1914-1918) had the effect of pointing out that aviation was rapidly becoming an issue of national defense. The year 1915 was a transformational one for the United States and the world, even aside from the effects of World War I. The Panama Canal, which had opened just the year before, was treated as a national asset and essential in the defense of the United States. Robert Goddard had started experimenting with rockets and Albert Einstein had announced his
general theory of relativity. Alexander Graham Bell made the first transcontinental telephone call and a new automobile speed record had been established of 102.6 miles per hour (still slower than Curtiss’ motorcycle speed record of 136 miles per hour set in 1907).

In the United States, aerodynamic research was a far-flung undertaking. Experiments were conducted at the Navy Yard, the Bureau of Stan­dards tested engines, experiments in aeronautics were sometimes undertaken at Catholic Univer­sity in Washington, a curriculum in aeronau­tics was being developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University ran propeller tests. Although the NACA charter provided for the possibility of an independent laboratory, by 1917 none existed. NACA was set up as a loose organization, consisting of a main committee of 12 members, who met semi­annually in Washington, and an Executive Com­mittee of 7 members who did the actual work of supervising NACA activities and proposed activities. They decided their best bet was to tag along to the Army’s new proposed airfield con­struction across the river from Norfolk, Virginia, to be called Uangley Field after Samuel Pierpont Langley, formerly of the Smithsonian. NACA named its new laboratory the “Langley Memo­rial Aeronautical Laboratory,” or just “Langley.”

When completed in 1920, the small Langley NACA component consisted of a staff of just 11 people, mostly civil or mechanical engineers, who did their work without the normal formali­ties of government institutions. By 1925 the staff had grown to 100. At that time the engineers had 19 airplanes dedicated to test operations with two wind tunnels, as well as a new engine research lab for high altitude flight and increased climb capabilities.

NACA’s variable density wind tunnel, rec­ognized in the 1920s to be the world’s best, allowed the engineers to develop and test vari­ous airfoil shapes, resulting in 78 different air­foil cross-sections with designated camber lines, thicknesses, and nose features. Independent air­craft designers by 1933 could select an airfoil from the catalogue for any desired performance they wished in any airplane they were in the pro­cess of designing.

A new propeller wind tunnel was com­pleted at Langley in 1927. For the first time, this 20-foot diameter tunnel allowed the testing of full-sized aircraft models, and it was put to work on attempts to solve the problem of drag associ­ated with radial engines.

As we saw in Chapter 11, conventional wisdom in the 1920s held that inline liquid – cooled engines were superior to radial engines because of several factors, including “head resis­tance,” cooling, and horsepower. In 1926, the Navy asked NACA to conduct cowling research for radial engines at the same time that Pratt & Whitney was developing the Wasp. The Navy had found that carrier landings by aircraft using liquid cooled engines resulted in cracks in the cooling system and attachments, which mandated a different engine solution than the Army had found acceptable.

By 1927, after hundreds of tests, a techni­cal breakthrough was achieved, and subsequent practical tests showed that the military test air­craft increased its speed from 118 to 137 miles per hour solely by use of the NACA-conceived cowling. When applied commercially, NACA estimated savings to the airmail/airline industry of over $5 million, which was more than all the money that had been appropriated for NACA from its inception to 1928.’

The results of cowling research alone justi­fied NACA’s creation. The cowling-drag break­through boosted the preeminence of American engine and aircraft design, and allowed the cre­ation of the modem reciprocating-engine airliners of the 1930s, like the Boeing 247 and the DC-3 with their all-metal construction, retractable land­ing gear, and powerful radial engines.

Now let us take a look at the commercial side of aviation as we progress through the 1930s.

After World War II, commercial aviation inter­ests in England conceded that the state of British aircraft technology and production was woefully behind that of the United States. The British, by necessity, had concentrated their efforts on fighter aircraft during the war, while the United States had been able to pursue transport devel­opment as well. The British concluded that they could never catch up with the Americans in exist­ing technology, but they saw a chance at leveling the competitive playing field with the United States by using the conventional turbojet in a new series of passenger transports.

In 1949, the De Havilland Comet began flight-testing with a design expectation of speeds of 480 miles per hour at flight levels of 35,000 feet. (See Figure 19-4.) While pressurized aircraft had been flying since the late 1930s, no airliner had faced the stresses that would be imposed at this projected altitude. The De Havilland Comet completed testing and entered into service on British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) in May 1952, to the thrill and applause of the world. The first turbojet airliner halved flight times over BOAC’s world routes. To the surprise of many, the Comet made money even though

its operating costs were three times that of the DC-6, even charging regular fares. The differ­ence was that the Comet flew virtually full on all flights, proving that high-density seating was commercially feasible, at least on the vibration- free Comet. Next, Air France inaugurated jet ser­vice on some of its routes with the Comet. In the United States, it was still DC-7 and Superconstel­lation piston engine service.

The Comet had three serious accidents in 1953. The third one involved the airplane com­ing apart in the air, possibly due to a design flaw, but it had occurred in connection with suspected thunderstorm penetration and was written off to the expected result of thunderstorm force. A fourth accident on January 10, 1954 grounded all seven of the Comets. This fourth Comet was lost over the Mediterranean Sea as it climbed above

26,0 feet. Its wreckage fell into the sea and was not immediately available for study. A com­mission formed in England to study the accidents came up with some 50 fixes to be incorporated into the Comet fleet. These adjustments were made and the Comets resumed service.

The wreckage of the Mediterranean crash was recovered and taken to the Civil Aviation Investigation Branch in England for analysis. As

the investigation was proceeding, another Comet disappeared on April 8, 1954 on a flight from Rome to Cairo as it climbed to 35,000 feet. The fleet was again grounded and an all-out investi­gation was ordered to resolve the cause. It was fully appreciated that the future and reputation of the English aircraft production industry was now at risk, as was the entire future of commercial jet transportation.

The Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farn – borough, headquarters for British aeronautical research, was given the task of solving the mys­tery of the Comets’ crashes. A test procedure was contrived to expose the fuselage to a lifetime of pressurization and depressurization cycles, but at a rate 40 times faster than would normally occur. On June 24, 1954, the Comet’s fuselage failed, developing a structural crack at the corner of one of the square windows, and expanding away down the fuselage. This indicated that the Comets likely had exploded, not unlike a bomb, due to the interior pressure of the aircraft. In August 1954, the last section of the doomed Rome to Cairo Comet was recovered. The investigators’ conclu­sion of the cause of the crash was confirmed as the Comet’s fuselage disclosed an almost exact duplication of the test results. The Comet 1 never flew again. Two later iterations of the Comet never flew commercially. The official findings of the British government’s inquiry included that “more study both in design and by experiment” was needed to secure an economically safe life of the pressure cabin. These requirements were not met until 1958, at which time the Comet 4 made the first transatlantic jet commercial flight, on October 4, 1958. By then, the British advantage had been lost, and the United States aircraft pro­duction community was just getting started.

The responsibilities of the FAA discussed above grew and were assumed over time as civilian aviation sector activities developed. All of these responsibilities relate to civil aviation operations occurring on the surface of the earth and within the earth’s atmosphere. When the United States began operations beyond the earth’s atmosphere with the first U. S. space launch in 1958, and for many years thereafter, all U. S. space activities were the exclu­sive province of either NASA or the military.

With the passage by Congress of the Com­mercial Space Launch Act of 1985, the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (referred to as FAA/AST) was created within the FAA. Under this statute, AST has the responsibility to:

* Regulate the commercial space transporta­tion industry, only to the extent necessary to

ensure compliance with international obliga­tions of the United States and to protect the public health and safety, safety of property, and national security and foreign policy interests of the United States;

• Encourage, facilitate, and promote commer­cial space launches by the private sector;

• Recommend appropriate changes in federal statutes, treaties, regulations, policies, plans, and procedures;

• Facilitate the strengthening and expansion of the United States space transportation infrastructure.

FAA/AST is organized into three divisions:

• Space Systems Development Division (AST-100)

® Licensing and Safety Division (AST-200)

• Systems Engineering and Training Division (AST-300)

Because the FAA has been assigned an entirely new role in aviation safety, staffing and expertise concerns have been expressed both within and out­side the agency. This has been compounded by the fact that, while the original thrust of the FAA’s over­sight related to unmanned launches of expendable launch vehicles, commercial space activity is rapidly expanding into space tourism, so that the FAA’s responsibility for licensing reusable launch vehicle missions will need to expand correspondingly. As of the end of 2009, FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation had a staff of 71 full-time employees, including 12 new aerospace engineers, and had established field offices at Edwards Air Force Base and NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

For a more thorough discussion of commer­cial space launch activities in the United States and the role of FAA/AST, please refer to Chapter 41.