Appointment in Washington

Henry J. Kaiser was back in Washington this week, heaving his big bulk around corridors and offices, trying to pound his cargo-plane home for once & all. The net result, it appeared, would be not enough to satisfy eager Henry Kaiser--perhaps an order for three prototypes of a new cargo plane (bigger than the 70-ton Mars) designed by his project partner, Airman Howard Hughes--a far cry from Kaiser's original offer to get right to work on an order for 5,000 planes. But considering the painstaking nature of aircraft engineering--with its many slips between drawing board and production line--it was probably a practical start.

Kaiser's trip to Washington was a saga in itself. When the train that he was supposed to take pulled out of the Los Angeles Union Station, he was just starting to broadcast a Labor Day message from the Beverly Hills Hotel, taking his cargo-plane visions right to the people.

The Streamliner was streaking toward the mountains when the bull-necked builder of bridges, dams and ships came to his peroration, from Tennyson's Locksley Hall:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sales,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales.

Then Kaiser hurled his massive frame into an automobile, started his race with the train. Loud-sirened police patrols screamed at his side. They caught the train in Nevada 375 miles out. Kaiser got to his appointment in Washington.

Chilly to Cold. Again, as he did a month ago, the big builder-promoter plunged into a hectic round of conferences. But if his first reception in Washington had been chilly, this time it was cold.

A special WPB committee of aircraft experts had met with Kaiser on the West Coast, to study his plans and report back to Donald Nelson. These men--WPB Adviser Grover Loening, Producers Glenn L. Martin, Donald Wills Douglas, John K. Northrop--had not been impressed. They found that Kaiser had no engineers seriously at work on cargo planes, that he did not plan to convert his shipyards, that what he wanted was a Government-built plant where he could turn out a plane designed by the aircraft industry itself.

The West Coast conference ended in a clash of two viewpoints. The aircraft men wanted Kaiser to show them designs, tell them how he planned to put them on the production line. That was the conventional way of operating in the aircraft industry.

But Kaiser is not conventional; he is not a designer or engineer but merely a builder--and a fabulously good one. His attitude was: Just tell me what you want me to build. I'll figure out a way.

Cold to Lukewarm. Donald Nelson had become skeptical; he demanded that Kaiser produce detailed plans. Kaiser did not have them: he was leaving the designing and engineering up to Howard Hughes; mass-production details would have to wait. But three days of tumultuous conferences gave Washington a chance to hear and understand the Kaiser viewpoint, and at week's end the atmosphere had warmed a little.

Already Kaiser had brought the day of cargo planes closer: he had fired the public imagination, forced Washington to lend an attentive ear. But if Washington stuck to its lukewarm answer, Kaiser had already lost his battle so far as he himself was concerned. To build three prototype cargo carriers might take around 18 months. Kaiser had asked to build planes now, in quantity.

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