Rough Engines

After months of tests, the Civil Aeronautics Administration last week stamped formal approval on the engines slated to power the first U.S. jet airliners. The power plants: Pratt & Whitney's J57 and J75, scheduled for 90% of the 250-odd jetliners on order (both Boeing's 707* and

Douglas' DC-8). That the J57 and J75 had passed with flying colors was fine for Pratt & Whitney. But it was one more blow to the rest of the troubled U.S. air-craft-engine industry. In a few short years, the five well-matched big companies that had competed for the jet market have been narrowed to Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Aircraft Co. Said a top Defense Department official: "It's a short, sad story. Pratt & Whitney has the best engines, and that is what we have got to have."

Bombers & Backlogs. Though military secrecy clouds the exact backlog and production figures, Pratt & Whitney will fly off with at least 70% of every defense engine dollar in 1957, leaving its competitors to dogfight for the remaining 30%.

Developed by Engineer Leonard S. ("Luke") Hobbs. now United Aircraft's vice chairman, the J57 has been in production since 1953, powers Boeing's eight-engine B-52 heavy bomber and four-engine KC-135 jet tanker-transport, Convair's supersonic F102 interceptor and five other military planes. Soon the even bigger J75 will go into two more important planes, Convair's supersonic F106 interceptor and Republic's F-105 fighter-bomber. To add to its horsepower riches, Pratt & Whitney has important military contracts for a smaller J52 jet engine and a T57 turboprop, and is building a $50 million plant in Connecticut to develop a nuclear engine. Net result for United Aircraft, whose Chairman H. M. ("Jack") Horner and President William P. Gwinn also have a booming business in Hamilton-Standard propellers and Sikorsky helicopters: a $2.3 billion backlog at the end of 1956, which was some $900 million more than 1955.

What worries the Pentagon is that in the horsepower race the rest of the industry seems to be fighting a losing competitive battle. General Electric, which claims to have delivered more jet engines than any other manufacturer, lost its bread-and-butter J47 engine contract with the end of B-47 medium-bomber production. To replace it, G.E. has a new J79 engine (about 15,000-lb. thrust) for Convair's supersonic B58 bomber and Lockheed's F-104A Starfighter. Yet the four-jet B58 Hustler is far from quantity production, and the F104 program may be slowed down (TIME, Feb. 25). Curtiss-Wright is little better off. The company has big commercial orders for its 3,700-h.p. Wright Turbo Compound piston engine, but was slow to push into jets, has only one big seller in the relatively low-powered (about 7,000-lb. thrust) J65 engine for subsonic Navy and Air Force fighters and Grumman's lightweight supersonic F11 F-1 Tiger.

As for General Motors' Allison engine division and Westinghouse. which produced the first U.S.-designed turbojet, both have lost much ground. Though Allison leads the turboprop field and will produce the engines for Lockheed's C-130A Hercules transport and new Electra airliner, it has only a small slice of the big jet market. Finally, Westinghouse has been beset by so many engine bugs that it is pinning most of its hopes on the new, medium-sized J54 jet which it has developed with $12.5 million of its own funds, hopes to sell to the Navy and Air Force.

Rockets & Light Planes. To compound the troubles, few U.S. enginemakers have been quick to jump into the new field of rocket power. Though both Curtiss-Wright and General Electric, now building the first-stage rocket motor for the Vanguard satellite project, are hurrying to catch up, most of the contracts so far have gone to new companies in the field. North American Aviation's Rocketdyne Division currently has 10,250 employees and contracts to power a fleet of big missiles, from the intercontinental Atlas to the Army's 200-mile Redstone. A second newcomer. California's Aerojet, owned by General Tire & Rubber Co., with 1956 sales of $140 million and a $300 million to $400 million backlog, is doing equally well; it proudly boasts that it makes the engine or engine parts for "practically every missile for all three services."

Another area where the major companies could look for new profits is in the big market for light civilian plane engines. Of the estimated 24,500 engines 'built in the U.S. last year, more than half were for civilian aircraft, most of them small business or personal planes. Enginemaker Lycoming, with half a dozen small piston engines already in production, is busy developing a light turboprop engine for greater speed and altitude. Continental has moved into baby jets, looks forward to a big market for its 920-lb.-thrust jet as the power plant for Cessna's T-37 Air Force jet trainer and will be ready when the potentially big civilian-small-jet market opens up.

No airman thinks that the Air Force will let a big segment of the vital U.S. aircraft-engine industry wither away. But the immediate future looks thin. Said one Pentagon policymaker last week: "I would like to see a more even distribution. But for all these jet-engine people, it is just too bad that Pratt & Whitney is so uniformly good."

*Which set a new transcontinental record for passenger planes last week by whistling 2,650 miles from Seattle to Baltimore in 3 hr. 48 min. for an average speed of 612 m.p.h.

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