WINGS FOR THE NAVY

PRODUCTION

At Bethpage, Long Island, a trim new plane raced down the runway, lifted, climbed up, up, up almost beyond hearing, then peeled off into a grinding power-dive. Fresh off the assembly line, another Grumman Avenger, the Navy's new, deadly torpedo plane, was in the torturing rigors of its shakedown flight.

On the other side of the world, in the shell-blasted smoke-haze of the Battle of the Coral Sea (see p. 18), swarms of bee-bodied Navy fighter planes had just proved prime factors in the United Nations' decisive victory. The planes were Grumman Wildcats, the only fighters used by U.S. aircraft carriers.

The Navy will not release either pictures or reports on Avenger operations. Not so with the earlier model Wildcat. Last February, carrier-based Wildcats engaged Japanese land-based aircraft over the Marshall Islands, shot down ten fighters and three bombers without loss of a single U.S. plane. At Wake Island, two Marines in Wildcats sank a Jap cruiser with bombs. Lieut. Commander Edward ("Butch") O'Hare was at a Wildcat's controls when he bagged five Jap bombers and crippled another in a single engagement.

Both Avenger and Wildcat are built in the streamlined plant of the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp.--and above each Grumman building flutters the fouled-anchor-&-"E" pennant, the Navy's tribute, (first of its kind to an airplane company).'

Everybody Chipped In. In December 1929, unfazed by the depression, a small group of men pooled their savings, started a little company giving maintenance and replacement-parts service to privately owned passenger amphibians. The shop was set up in an old tree-shaded garage in Baldwin, L.I., with less than 20 officers and employes. President and chairman was Leroy R. Grumman, who had engineering degrees from Cornell and M.I.T., experience in naval aviation (he enlisted as a machinist's mate, second class, resigned as a lieutenant), and a wealth of aeronautical ideas. Leon A. ("Jake") Swirbul, the vice president and general manager, was also a Cornell man, a onetime Marine passionately interested in Army fighting planes--a man who couldn't work with his coat on. W. T. ("Bill") Schwendler, chief engineer, turned out to be one of the crack aeronautical engineers of the period.

In their first day of business, in for repair came a flying boat so large that its nose stuck out in the street. A passing motorist crashed into it, immediately threatened suit. Grumman and Swirbul retired to the corner dog wagon, there ate hamburgers moodily, brooding on the unprofitable aspects of a business launched with a legal action. But after the second cup of coffee they decided to stick. The plaintiff dropped his suit when the partners offered to repair his car free. Next step was to saw off the amphibian's tail, repair it, reattach the amputated section and return the corporation's first job.

From Baldwin to Bethpage. As the depression tightened, fewer & fewer privately owned flying boats came in to be repaired. The partners scoured the New York and New England areas for business, bringing in cracked-up plane parts on a trailer and, whenever possible, towing the wrecked fuselages behind a car. Roy Grumman visited one crash scene, found the wreck submerged, with only its tail out of water. He paid an insurance company $500 for it, fished it out, put in a new motor, patched it up and resold it for some $20,000. At one time the plane-repair business was so slack that the firm branched out into the truck-trailer field, designing and manufacturing light-weight dural truck bodies and a chassis-less trailer.

When they had nothing else to do (which was often) the shop worked on an improved amphibian float gear for the Navy. The first model brought a trial contract for two, followed by another contract for eight, then 15. Encouraged, Roy Grumman set out to build the first military plane with a retractable landing gear. A test model delivered in December 1931 was 30 m.p.h. faster than any other Navy fighter at that time. Its wheels retracted into the float, proved beyond doubt that a fighting plane can be launched from a carrier, land on water, take off from water and return to the carrier on its own. Grumman received the first of its long series of really substantial Navy contracts: to make 27 of these XFF-18.

Steadily the corporation expanded, moving always to larger quarters--Valley Stream, Farmingdale, Bethpage. Production was started on the commercial amphibians which became the popular G-218. Amphibian observation planes were turned out for Navy, Army, the Coast Guard and Great Britain.

When a British Swordfish torpedo plane sank the Bismarck, Jake Swirbul donned his coat, caught the bomber-ferry to London, saw both Luftwaffe and R.A.F. in action, returned with many an idea for both Avenger and Wildcat.

Since Pearl Harbor, production at the Bethpage plant has broken all records. Dispersal units have been established in nearby former shops and garages. The eastern aircraft division of General Motors Corp. will soon be turning out Grumman models for the Navy. Grumman plane production in the first four months of this year was substantially above the 1941 total.

In awarding Grumman the Navy "E " Rear Admiral John H. ("Jack") Towers chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, declared: "Practically every airplane you turn out goes to an active combat area immediately. ... We are teaching the Japanese what the expression 'to fight like a Wildcat' means. May we shortly teach the Japanese and other enemies the meaning of the word 'Avenger.' "

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