tape 13 (side 1) end 1944, 1945 - ercoupe sales … 1944, 1945 - ercoupe sales conference ......
Post on 10-Apr-2018
217 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
"-'
TAPE 13 (Side 1)
End 1944, 1945 - Ercoupe Sales Conference
rcoupe Sales Conference, Henry Berliner
outlined Erco's policies and future plans. Les Wells
and I talked about
engineering problems and ture possibilities in design.
The real sales push was led B Parks who was
to be distributor in 8 states.
brief big post-war boom and spirits
expected a
In the latter part of 1944 the government too started
making plans for post-war aviation. Henry Wallace was
Secretary of Commerce at the time and Theodore P. Wright
who had had a high government position insuring the
availability of strategic materials for the wartime ~craft
construction was appointed the new Administrator of the CAA.
Ted Wright immediately re-organized the CAA, dividing it
into three main groups: one, administrative; two, opera
tions, and .three, developments. He hoped that streamlining
the beginning of a program would eliminate a lot of
unnecessary red tape and for a while I believe it did. To
help in the area we now call general aviation he establishe~
a ~on-Scheduled Flying Advisory Committee. The committee had
10 men who were selected in the hope of covering all of the
main facets associated with general aviation, including
manufacturing, design, sales, flight training, airport
TAPE 13 (Side l) 2.
operation, fixed base op eration, the private plane user, and
even a repre sentative of the airlines who was there to
protect their inte rests, if necessary. The original members,
all pilots, were Art Gorman, chairman and user of small
airplanes for his own transportation, Ed Williamson, D0ug
Robinson, Bill Mara, Bevo Howard, Bil l Pie er , Sr., Harry .. .
Playford, Jim Johnson, John Grove and yours truly, Fred Weick.
The committee met three or four times a year, usually for
two days. In stating his general program, Secretary Wallace
said and also printed in an article in the June 1945 issue
of FLYING magazine, "The less government has to do in post-
war aviation the better". This was exactly in line with
the view of administrator Ted Wright and every member of
the ~~$· ..
committee; - We wor~d hard~reduce the number of
regulations and the requirements for being a pilot and we
were successful for a while in certain areas. For example,
following one of our recommendations, a private pilot could
have his physical examination done by his own family
physician. This condition held for a number of years, but
ultimately after the Wright administration, the old guard
medical staff of the CAA got its way again, and now the
examination must be made by a CAA-approved designee. As
the engineering representative of the Non-Scheduled Flying
Advisory Committee, I met with a group of engineers repre-
senting just about each of the light airplane manufacturing
companies in regard to possible revisions of the regulations
regarding the airplanes themselves. They also agreed that
.. TAPE 13 (Side 1) 3.
they wanted the least possible government in the post-war
period. When a simple general regulation was suggested,
however, which would place more responsibility on the manu
facturer, they each wanted the regulations spelled out in
such detail that the responsibility really fell back onto
the government, so nothing was gained in that area. We did
help a little, though, I believe, with respect to getting
approval for handicapped pilots. In this regard, the regu
lations were loosened up substantially if the pilots could
prove satisfactorily that they could operate the airplane
well. In the case of one-eyed pilots, the old guard was
inclined to eliminate them as pilots entirely. The committee
asked the FAA to dig up such statistics as they could
regarding the safety that had been exhibited in the past by
pilots with only one eye. It turned out that they had done
a slightly better job than the general average with two eyes.
Handicapped pilots are apparently conscious of their
disability and do a more careful job than the general run
of pilots, and this appears to make more difference than
does the handicap. I believe that most of these relaxations
are still in effect. The committee also recommended that
some arrangements should be worked out in which the manufac
turers could certify their own airplanes. Ultimately a
system was worked out to accomplish this, having them certify
the airplanes under government regulations, of course, and
now this system is being used by most of the light airplane
manufacturers. It is called the Delegation Option Authorization,
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 4 •
or the D.O.A. When I say that the committee recommended
this and that, I don't mean to imply that the committee was
necessarily the first to think of these things, but the
committee did make the recommendations, regardless of where
the ideas originated.
In spite of the fact that Secretary Wallace thought
that the less government has to do in post-war aviation, the
better, the CAA and our government control has grown
enormously. It seems unthinkable that there should be one
government employee in the CAA for every two airplanes flying
in the United States. It appears to me that this sort of
continuing growth in the government is unhealthy. Any
bureaucrat can increase his own empire by merely stating that
he needs help and then getting Congress to pass suitable
appropriations, and Congres·s has no real way of knowing
exactly how much is needed. The government does not have to
justify its growth economically the way an industrial
company does by either making a profit or passing out of
existence, .so the government just grows and grows.
For a certain period of time Secretary Wallace had
me on pins and needles. He showed a personal interest in
aviation and an indication of an air-minded administration . by starting to learn to fly, and he picked the Ercoupe to
learn in. This could of course be fine publicity for the
Ercoupe but the opposite potential was also there and the
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 5.
day-by-day news was not always promising. It was said, for
example, that after he had soloed and was practicing flying
around by himself one day he invited a couple of friends to
go out to Washington National Airport with him and watch him
take off and land. He took off all right and flew arolind a
while practicing his flying, but when he landed and taxied
up there were no friends to greet him - he had landed on the
Baltimore Airport. Now I did not see all this myself of
course; I learned it through hearsay, but it did nothing to
prop up my confidence. It all turned out all right in the
end, however, for I heard nothing worse than this item.
the war years and particularly towards the end
of ~e was fortunate to have a number of job oppor-
tunities offer I felt duty bound to stay with
Henry and Erco, and so could not accept any of them.
The first one, I reme~er, was early in 1942 from a Mr.
Henz, grandson of the f~er of the Heinz Company in .
Pittsburgh, with its 57
Mr. Heinz was now president of
office in New York City. The
shop for crating its products but
instead of wood for that purpose.
mainly pickles. This
e company and had his main
a large woodworking
using cardboard
going
to use the woodworking shop to make gliders, c or
troop-carrying gliders for the
After the war, he thought they might get into the
airplane business. The prospect of being chief engineer
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 6.
the pickle plane company struck me in a somewhat humourous
vein. I recommended Ralph Upson for the job and he took it.
One evening at home I answered the telephone and it
was Dwayne Wallace of Cessna in Wichita calling. I mentioned
that Cessna had been advertising the family car of the air
for its post-war product and I was surprised to have Dwayne
invite me to come with Cessna and design their family car
of the air. This was an offer I hated to turn down but I -Pt.di-
felt that I had to at the time. At~ time Don Flower,
their sales manager, had been a member of the Non-Scheduled
Flying Advisory Committee and was thoroughly familiar with
my work on the Ercoupe. In fact, Cessna had bought an
Ercoupe or two and had studied it carefully. It looked as
if they might follow that line of development, but when the
war actually ended, of course, .. Cessna came out conservatively
with the 120 and the 190 models, both tail draggers. The
company finally came to the use of the tricycle gears and
of course Cessna has been the most successful of the light
airplane companies. I wonder how different the light airplane
history might have been had I accepted Dwayne's invitation
in 1945. (Dwayne and I both recalled his offer at Howard
(P~g) Piper's funeral in 1981 and mused over it.)
During this period J. S. MacDonnell, with whom I had
been friends since I helped him with the NACA cowling and the
propeller for his "Doodlebug" airplane entry in the Guggenheim
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 7.
Safe Airplane Contest in 1929, had organized the MacDonnell
Aircraft Corporation, and offered me.the job of Chief
Engineer. He understood my situation and gave me a standing
offer to go with his organization any time the conditions
changed.
An official of the General Motors Company in New York
City invited me to visit him a couple of times which I did
during my trips to New York for propellers. They were looking
into the possibility of starting into the light airplane
business after the war and I could have gone with that
possibility in mind, but of course I did not. What appeared
to be another good offer came from Mr. Litchfield, chairman
of the Board of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. They had
made dirigibles during the early days and still did a
certain amount of aeronautical work, including tires, wheels
and brakes. Mr. Litchfield wanted to get into the light
airplane business after the war and offered me the job of
Chief Engineer of that activity. I didn't take it, of course,
but I figured anyway that being a small part of a very large
organization like that, the activity could be turned off just
as quickly and easily as it could be turned on, and on that
basis it wasn't a very secure position. What I didn't realize
at that time was that I was really in the same boat already,
but on a somewhat smaller scale.
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 8.
One other offer that is probably worth mentioning was
in connection with the Lusco~airplane. A Mr. Klotz had
become owner or at least had taken control of the company
and was going to establish or possibly by that time was
establishing a/factory just north of Dallas, Texas to· produce
the Lusco~ They wanted to come out with a 4-place plane
and he invited me to become Chief Engineer of that company.
That job was taken by Gene Norris, who I knew at the time,
and who I have seen every now and then since then. He
later went with Boeing and for many years was in their
Washington, D.C. office. And I just turned over a telegram 11~~ '!rtdJ..
from Max Short dated January 17, 1945. ~was then with
Lockheed and wanted to know whether I would be interested
in going with Lockheed for their post-war personal plane
program. Too bad all those opportunities came at a time
when I felt that I shouldn't take advantage of any of them.
QUIET l3IRD.iEN
A note about QB: I have just read in the histo,rical
Septewher 197 __ (check this} issue of FLYING magazine, its
50th anniversary,. the following: "In 1921 Earl Osborne and
four other pilots, Vern Ladislaw Doherty, K. C. (Casey}
Jones, Perry Bruneau, and Dick Blythe met frequently at
Marta's, a wine and spaghetti spot in New York City to
discuss aviation and the excitement it provided. Other
pilots joined them in their regular sojourns. The informal
meetings were usually loud, boisterous affairs lasting well
into the night. Commenting on the joviality and noise
TAPE 13 {Sioe 1) 9.
generated by these early pilots, someone suggested the group
call themselves the Quiet Birdmen, since they were anything
but quiet, and no aviator would ever be corny enough to refer
to himself as a birdman. The name stuck and the Ancient and
Secret Oroer of Quiet Bi{men, aviation's most prestigious and
private fraternity was formed." I knew two of these fellows,
Earl Dodge Osborne, whose initials were EDO, which formed
the name of the EDO Corporation which produced largely
seaplane floats, and Casey Jones whom I had first met when
he won a race with a Curtiss Oriole in the 1923 St. Louis
Air Races. During the middle of World War II I was invited
to join the Washin;~~2 the ~rs ~~lej) of
the Quiet Birdmen~ and I have been a member ever since.
For a number of years I did not live near a hangar and was
a "member at large". I attended meetings only here and there
when I could in various parts of the country. A couple of ( ~;_, rcnr)
years ago~a hangar was formed in Melbourne, about 35 miles
north of here, and since then I have joined this hangar and
have atten~ed fairly regularly. [~~~~-~~~4'~~;?4 1\- ~~M'\y~~~ IM~~ ~"'~1LJ9i"tJ. ~~~~~ ~~---~~ ·Z;'~~~~
By the early part of 1945 there was a good deal of
activity among the various light airplane companies regarding
the possible post-war light plane market. The Aeronca Co.
was developing a two-place airplane which was just about a
dead-ringer for the Ercoupe. The main difference in appearance
was just that entrance to the cabin was to be by means of an
automobil~~or instead of the window hatches that we had.
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 10.
This was to have the same tricycle gear, limited control,
non-spinning, two-control operation of the Ercoupe and it had
the same kind of tail with twin-vertical surfaces. It was
licenced under my patents. Only one was built, however, and
I think I. got about a total of $15 out of it for royalty.
A large number of magazine articles came out regarding
post-war flying during this period. One of these was called
"The Evolution of the Ercoupe" which came out in the July
1945 issue of SKYWAYS. Another was an article by Elizabeth
Gordon, editor of HOUSE BEAUTIFUL magazine, which was
entitled "Will You Fly Your Own Plane after the War?" Miss
Gordon had learned to fly on an Ercoupe at the Parks Air
College in East St. Louis before writing this article. She
learned on an Ercoupe, I should have said, and discussed its
characteristics ~:N:A in the article. Another was an article
on planes with simplified controls and spin-proof charac-
teristics that came out in the April 1945 edition of
MECHANICS ILLUSTRATED, and so on and so on.
Erco, as I mentioned before, had increased its plant
size and facilities very substantially during the war period. ~~ It also had iiCE]lF !E!'e$ a good sized tool design department and
when the war orders started dwindling, these people had very
little to do on war work. We therefore put them on the
des;Lgn of a whole new production and tooling system for the
Ercoupe for the post-war period. This incorporated a
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 11.
production line type of activity arra~ged so that 10 airplanes
could be produced in a re.gular 8-hour working day. Since Erco
made automatic punching and riveting machines and the airplane
had been designed for the use of these machines where ~lJO
feasible, the~ine was so arranged that we had riveting
machines available right in the line without having to move
the parts. to a riveting area. And since our shop was not
too busy anymore, as the tools were designed, the various
jigs and fixtures were constructed in the plant and were ready
for use as s.oon as the war ended.
The post-war Ercoupe as it came out at first was very
similar to the pre-war model, but it had a Continental C-75
engine with 75 hp instead of the or~ginal 65. The extra
power. enabled us to include a starter and a generator and a
battery, .so that the post-war plane would not have to be
hand cranked anymore. This added a total of 65 lbs., but
fortunately a new classification of airplane had come along.
The Civil Air regulation now permitted a Normal Category
airplane which was to be flown without aerobatics of any
substantial kind and which could have a lower load factor.
This allowed us to increase the gross weight of the plane
from the 1260 lbs pre-war value to 1400 lbs. They also came
out standard with two wing fuel tanks and the header tank,
. giving a total of 23 gallons of fuel. All of this made it a
much better cross-country airplane with reasonable baggage
allowance, and a fair range, at a reasonable cruising speed
of at least 100 or 105 mph.
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 12.
When World WarU ended in August 1945, Erco was ready
for both Ercoupe production and Ercoupe distribution. The
first airplanes started coming off the line in October and
by the first of the year, they were actually coming off at
10 per day. ~orne of our customers from the north country asked
about the possibility of having Ercoupes fitted with skis for
operation during the wintertime. No one had tried a tricycle
ski arrangement. During the fall of 1945 we got in touch
with the Federal Ski Co. in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and they
said they would try to lay out a suitable ski arrangement.
They provided two standard skis for the rear wheels and a
small ski for the front, mainly because the static load on
the nose gear was lower than on the rear wheels, but also
because they wanted to keep the ski behind the plane of the I"
tc,wl.."d<. ~ propeller. They had the skis ready to fit to an ErcoupeAin
possession of the Minneapolis deal~t the time.
On December 9, 1945 I started with my son Donald to
ferry an Ercoupe to be delivered to the dealer in St. Paul,
Minnesota. Donald had spent his freshman year at Carleton
Coll~ge, about 35 or 40 miles south of Minneapolis and he
thought he'd like to have a ride back there to visit some
of his old friends, particularly one feminine one. Just
before he was 18 and would have been ·drafted, he enlisted in
the Navy V-5 program as a cadet, as he hoped to learn to be
a Navy pilot. The Navy put him in school at Emory & Henry
College in Virginia for a couple of semesters and then sent
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 13.
him to pre-flight at the University of North Carolina. He
was there when the war ended in August and he immediately
started to continue his college courses,but at the University
of Maryland right where we lived. Now he was taking a break
over an extended weekend.
We flew the new Ercoupe to Pittsburgh where we had
lunch with a dealer and then went on further west. Originally
we had hoped to get to Chicago that evening so that we could
stay with my folks, but we had heavy headwinds and I had
visited a little too long at noon, so we didn't make it.
Actually with· the headwinds we stopped at Van Wert, Ohio,
and I wired back to Dorothy what our location was and that
we had just barely eased ahead of a fast freight in getting
to Van Wert. The next morning we were detained by weather,
but managed to get out just about noo~ in a severe snowstorm,
but with the knowledge that Ft. Wayne, Indiana, not too far
away, was clear. That was my first experience in flying in
a severe snowstorm in which you could see down fairly well
if you didn't fly too high, but you couldn't see ahead at
all to.speak of. I was glad that the stormy weather had been
coming from the west and that we would soon be in the clear.
In the meantime we kept our nose on the railroad track.
That night in Chicago stayi~g with my folks the
temperature was 3° below zero. Fortunately the Ercoupe was
a fight little airplane and the cabin heating system was adequate .•
TAPE 13 (Side 1) 14.
Knowing that we were going up to Minneapolis where it was
still colder and that I might spend a couple of weeks there,
my mother disappeared upstairs. She came back down with my
suit of long, woollen underwear that I had used in surveying
emergency landing fields for night air mail use in Illinois
and Iowa in the winter of 1922. This came in very handy
the next couple of weeks. Our headwinds had pretty well
dissipated and the next morning we flew all the way from
Chicago to St. Paul in one hop without stopping for fuel.
There we delivered the airplane to the St. Paul dealer, I
went over to see the Federal Ski people in Minneapolis, and
my son Donald started right down for Carleton and from there
went straight back again to his classes at Maryland.
The next day the Federal Ski Co. mechanics fitted
the set of skis that they had prepared to the Minneapolis
dealer's Ercoupe and then we tried to fly them. George
Mallinson, the dealer's pilot, who was accustomed to ski
operation in the Minneapolis area and I both tried the skis.
Unfortunately the conditions were unfavourable.
End of Side 1
.. TAPE 13 (Side 2) 15.
Unfortunately the field conditions were not very good for
the ski trials. The temperature was very low, down near
zero Fahrenheit and there was only between ~" and 1" of snow
on the ground. There was none on the runway and on the grass
areas which we used, the grass blades stuck out through the
snow. Even with good conditions, the drag ~f skis is about
equivalent to the drag of smooth rubber tires on an airplane
on a grass field with the brake half on. In other words, is
the coefficient of friction MaB close to 0.25. It was no
doubt higher with the very light covering of snow. With
the skis dragging back at ground level and the high propeller
thrust pulling forward, the nosing over moment was so great
that with the limited elevator control of the Ercoupe we
could not get the tail down far enough to get the wing up
to an angle of attack suitable for take-off, and we just
kept taxiing along the field, nose level., even with the
wheel full back. After a few days of adjustments of the
spring tensions holding the skis at a certain angle and
extending the nose gear down, that is blocking it, so that
the nose of the airplane was 2 or 3" higher than it had been
previously when the airplane rested on the ground, we were
finally able to get satisfactory take-offs and landingswith
both one person and·two people in the airplane.
I finally got a hold of some good Canadian ski data
on the drag of skis from the Federal engineers and did some
computi~g. I was surprised to find that even though the
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 16.
static load on the nose wheel was much less than that on the
main wheels, still when a take-off run was started, considering
the drag of the skis down below and the propeller thrust up
above, the weight shifted from rear to front so that the nose
ski had a greater load than either of the rear skis •. I then
insisted that we try a full-size ski like the rear ones, a
standard ski, on the nose as well as on the rear, and even
though ~e front of the ski extended ahead of the propeller.
This actually gave the propeller some prdtection when running
through high drifts and such, but it did require having an
absolutely sure support linkage for the ski, so that it would
definitely never get up into the path of the propeller blades.
When we did this, the operation was better than with any of
the previous arrangements, and we decided we needed to try
it in deeper· snow. I should say that during our trials we
had found areas where the snow was between 1" and 1~" deep
instead of between ~~~ and 1" and the operation was a little
better there.
We flew the airplane up to St. Cloud, Minnesota, where
the snow was about a foot deep and had about an inch of heavy
crust on top of it. This gave us a good test and we found
we could operate quite satisfactorily under these conditions.
~~dings could be made directly on the crusted snow; for
the take-offs we made one or two runs through the crusted
snow, packing down a track, and then the take-off was easy.
The castering of the nose ski and the steering on the ground
TAPE 13 {Side 2) 17.
in the snow operated quite well and the first satisfactory
installation of a tricycle ski arrangement had been
accomplished. During the next few years, skis were used on
a fair number of Ercoupes in Canada and the northern part of
the United States in the wintertime, but as time went. on,
more and more airports kept their runways open all winter
and the use of skis declined to the point where now it is
negligible.
This ski situation got me thinking about tricycle
gears with wheels operating under soft field conditions. Back
at Erco I made some experiments. We dug out a rectangular excavation ~' 3' wide, about 12' long and 1' deep. In it we put
various types of soft terrain material, such as dry, loose
sand, thick mud, soft mud, and so forth. We then dragged
an Ercoupe so that the nose wheel ran through this area.
We ran a cable forward from the propeller hub to a pick-up
truck which could drag the airplane, and the front end of
the propeller cable was supported on a scale so that we could
measure the force required. This was representative of the
propeller thrust and was made approximately the same value.
We did this with two different sized nose wheels. We got a
fair amount of data, some of which was rather hard to use.
For example, with a small nose wheel, or really with any size . nose wheel, if the mud were soft enough and the nose wheel
merely rested on it, it would ultimately sink down to the
bottom where the earth was hard. In the end I concluded i
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 18.
that for soft field ~se with the tricycle gear, the nose
wheel should be as large as the rear wheels, because at
certain times it gets as least as large a load. Also the
nose wheel gets a more severe treatment than the rear wheels.
Therefore the size of the nose wheel is what should determine
the size of the wheels all around. From one viewpoint, the
nose wheel should be at least the size of the rear wheels.
From another viewpoint, if you are alw~ys operating on a
smooth, satisfactory surface, such as paved runways or hard
smooth turf, the rear wheels need be no larger than the
nose wheel. This is no doubt an oversimplification,
especially if applied to large transport-type or bombing
type airplanes with groups of wheels instead of just one in
each location. But it is a general idea that I have had
for many years now.
In February 1946 I was fortunate enough to get the
Fawcett Award, which also entailed an honorarium of $1000.
The Fawcett Award is given for the greatest contribution to
the scientific advancement of aviation during the year,
the year 1945 in this case. I received the award in New
York City from Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, World War I ace
and President of Eastern Airlines,on the radio program
"We, The People" on the Columbia Broadcasting System. Two . .
of the previous recipients of the award were Donald Douglas
of Santa Monica, California, President of Douglas AircraftCorp.
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 19.
for the development of the DC-4, and Donald Hibbert, of
Burbank, California, Chief Engineer of Lockheed Corp. for
the development of the P-80 jet propulsion Lockheed Shooting
Star. I felt a special interest in·· the award to Douglas for
the DC-4 because, as I have mentioned, it was the fir$t
large airplane with a tricycle gear. My award was for the
tricycle geared, spin-proof, two-control Ercoupe.
In the fall of 1946 I was fortunate to be able to
attend a demonstration of a new form of air navigation and
air traffic control. This was called Teleran and was a
development of the Radio Corp. of America, RCA. Demonstration
was made in its laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. I
prefer the principle of its operation over that of our ;t/~
present system, largely becauserfeleran system would give
the pilot the information he needed, but he would do the
flying himself and go where he thought best, instead of
being directly under the control}fand being told where to go
by the controllers on the ground.
In principle, it would be more like the present
automobile traffic system, where the roads are all definitely
known and available, the laws of traffic are known, and the
operator is expected to stay within them. The ground . controllers, the police officers, the traffic officers merely
make sure that people operate within the correct limits.
Essentially Teleran employs a ground search radar which
.·
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 20.
surveys the ai~ space of inte~est an~ displays on a cathode rfl1 ~/....:. 7-r..~::J - .
ray tube/\the information thus 'received. ·. This radar presen-line
tation is viewed by a television earner~. A~map of the area
is superimposed, and the combination picture is broadcast by
a television transmitter. The picture is reproduced by a
television receiver in the airplane and the pilot sees his
plane as a spot of light or blip moving across a map. Other
planes appear as different spots of light, each moving
according to its actual course. Each spot representing an
airplane has an elongated teardrop form which indicates the
direction in which the airplane is travelling. The pilot can
tell which blip represents his airplane because a radial line
from the centre of the map will pass through his.. The pilot,
therefore, has a simple chart in front of him something like
the en route low altitude charts used for present instrument
flying with the main airways and airports on it and he merely
flies his blip along the airway he desires, keeping on the
right hand side of it as you would on a high~ay. He flies
at a suitable altitude and he sees the blips representing all
of the other airplanes on the entire chart, but within a
reasonable range of that same altitude. He does not have
to bother seeing those which are flying at definitely higher
or lower altitudes. He does not have to stay on the airways
but can fly his blip directly to any spot on the map that he
de~ires. The radar depends on line-of-sight contact and the
projecting stations would have to be about as close together
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 21.
as the present OMNI range or VOR stations. The present
radar coverage for instrument f~ng would probably be
sufficient. As a terminal airport is approached, the pilot
can switch to a close~n radar map··which covers a radius of
possibly 30 miles and then for the final approach he •can have
one that does for him what the present instrument landing
system does. It can even be arranged to take care of fully
automatic landings. Weather information such as velocity
and direction of the wind, ceilings, etc., could be made
available visually at all times on the charts for certain
areas and this would eliminate much of the two-way radio
communication now required and which limits the amount of
use that can be served. A smaller number of ground .
controllers could still be available to help out a person
when help was needed or to make sure that the traffic was
proceeding in an orderly manner. All in all, Teleran at the
time seemed to me to be about the most comprehensive of all
the proposed air navigation and traffic control systems and '
one that should be developed very strongly.
For light planes, however, it had two distinct
disadvantages: the cost and the weight at that time. A
l~ght plane set would have included a television set receiver
and a transponder and a communications radio which would have
cost a fair amount, but possibly by now would have been
within reason. The weight at that time was said to be about f
90 lbs. for a light plane installation which was also.too hea\~: ,
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 22.
however, it seems likely that by the present time that weight
would have been reduced to a small value. Instead of following
this more comprehensive line of development the CAA pushed
its own VOR, or OMNI range development. This was less
expensive at first and has certainly become a highly satis
factory means of navigation for all airplanes, including the
light ones. But I would like to see the Teleran approach
developed where the pilot can do his own flying, fly his own
course and be guided or corrected by the ground controller
only in case of necessity. Also it app~ars to me that a
great deal more traffic could be handled satisfactorily that
way and much of our present radar and communications radio
equipment would be used almost without change. I still
think it is worth developing.
Dr. Jack Jenkins was a psychologist who as a captain
in the Navy during the war, had the job of insuring that
good psychol~gical procedure was used in regard to the Navy
pilots. After the war, he returned to his old job as head
of the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland.
There, with a graduate assistant by the name of Williams
who was working for his doctor's degree, he made an investi-
. gation of the tensions that occur in pilots under various
flight conditions. They fitted the control wheel of an
Ercoupe with devices for measuring the tenseness with which
the pilot gripped the wheel. They found that an experienced
pilot could go through the entire range of taxiing, taking off,
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 23.
making various ordinary air manoeuvres and approaching and
landing time after time without ever squeezing the control
wheel very hard at all. This was associated with the fact
that his mind was alw~ys at ease. They tried out people
coveri~g a wide range of piloting experience, temperament
and age. A new student or a disturbed pilot was likely to
grip the wheel very hard and show high pressure on .the
instrument. It was obvious from the results that good
instruction would keep the student in a light, free and easy
but of course alert, state of mind. Of course any good -
instructor might have known this to start with, but it was
interesting to see the tests actually show the physical
results. When the graduate student Williams received his
doctor's degree, he went to the University of Illinois and
continued this line of work.
Dr. Jenkins helped me in a different field, that of
transmitting instructions or information in a simple and
direct and easily understood way. He had built up a con-
sulting practice in the field of helping industrial officials
get ideas across to their employees. Part of this involved
the use of simple, direct English that could undoubtedly be
understood by the people it was aimed at. He used a method
developed by a Dr. Flesch who divided English into 8th grade,
lOth grade, 16th grade, and so forth. The grades being the
years of schooling required to understand it easily. I had
poured over the results of 4 years of flying with the 112 Ercoup~~
·,
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 24.
produced before the war and had come up with a set of half a so
dozen or/suggestions for flying soundly and safely with
these airplanes. I thought I had done a simple straight-I
forward job of it, but I asked Dr. Jenkins to go over it
and grade it on the basis of Dr. Flesch's method. He 'did
this and it came out 17th grade; that is, a person should
have not only 4 years of college but 1 year of graduate work
to be able to understand it easily. I then asked him to put
it into words suitable for an 8th grader. He did this and
it came out as a much more direct and powerful piece of
writing and his was much shorter than mine. Whereas I had
tried to give a little background and reasoning so that the
pilot's judgment would itself lead him to do the correct
thing, Dr. Jenkins had come out directly and merely told him
to do it or not to do it, in the manner of a military command.
His statements were not always 100% correct or complete, but
they were very forceful and I suppose for most people, more
effective. I personally rather like to do the correct thing
because I understand the situation rather than because I
have been told to do it.
It happened that when Dr. Jenkins went back to the
University of Maryland immediately after the war in September
1~45, he thought he'd like to get in gear again by teaching
an elementary course in Psychology. It happened also that
our son, Donald, who started at Maryland at that same time,
took that elementary course from Dr. Jenkins. Donald was so
·.
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 25.
well impressed that he decided to major in Psychology and
to go for a Ph.D. after he had obtained his bachelor's
degree, which would take a couple of years. He thought
possibly he might po~sibly do so~e research work applying
psychology to aeronautical matters, as Dr. Williams was
doing. He was looking forward particularly to doing his
graduate work urider Dr. Jenkins. He finally finished his
undergraduate work in January 1948 and was ready to start
the graduate work under Dr. Jenkins a week or so later. It
happened, however, that Dr. Jenkins had overloaded himself
with both his academic and his consulting work and he had
had a nervous breakdown a couple of months before. He
didn't recover immediately and had apparently lost some of
his alert mental capacity and memory. He became completely
discouraged and during the short vacation period between the
time when Donald had finished his undergraduate work and the
time he was to start his graduate work, Dr. Jenkins shot
and killed himself. This of course was a terribltt shoc,k
and disappointment to Donald. He went ahead with the next
semester of graduate work, however, and also took the first
half of the summer term. By then he decided he wanted to
change to another field and he travelled and took various
jobs for about a year before he decided what to do. He then
went to Georgia Tech and got a master's degree in industrial
engineering, after which he got a job with Dupont in nylont
manufacturing and has been with them ever since.
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 26.
As I mentioned a while back, in January 1946 the
Ercoupes were coming off the line at 10 per day from a single
daylight shift. The demand was very great, however, and in
early spring a second shift was established from 4:30 in
the afternoon until 1 o'clock at night. The production was
then 20 airplanes per day. The orders still piled in and
in late spring a third shift was established, filling up the
whole 24 hours with a total production of 30 Ercoupes per day.
This made for a difficult type of operation because except
for weekends, there was no shut-down time whatever for
repairs on tools or taking care of any sort of production
difficulty. Even so, for about a month, the production was
squeezed up to 35 a day. There were usually about 100
airplanes on the field. This meant that it ordinarily
took about 3 days for an airplane to come from the factory,
be check-tested on the field, be readjusted and flight
tested again if necessary and for the dealer Ol! a third pilot
or possibly the owner to fly it away. The process was
relatively simple compared with the modern day situation
because there was only one model of Ercoupe with very few
options.
In the summer of 1946 during this high activity,
Henry Berliner was preparing for a production of 50 per day.
To get the main items such as engines and aluminum sheets and
aluminum extrusions, he had to put orders for this material in
for many months in advance. Suddenly, during a week in
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 2.7.
September, the airplanes on the field built up from 100. to
300. The dealer pipelines had filled up and they were not
taking them away anymore. The abruptness of the reversal
of this situation was emphasized by the fact that during
that same week Oliver Parks was still calling up the. factory
and aski~g for more airplanes. At the close of World War II
many service people and businessmen had a fair amount of
extra money to spend because during. the war th.e production
of civilian items such as automobiles and airplanes had been
curtailed. Apparently at this time that particular demand
for private airplanes like the Ercoupe had been satisf.ied
and the demand for further production would be at a greatly
reduced rate. Most of the other l;lght airplanes were not
hit as hard at that moment as the Ercoupe was, because they
were usually. trainers and could be used in the government
sponsored c.ivilian training programme. At Erco the_ graveyard
shift had to be laid off immediately and the earlier night
shift a short time later. Then the regular shift was also
pared down substantially. Erco was in a very bad situation
because the large orders for future delivery of engines and
aluminum and other parts had to be cancelled and not without
substantial cost. For example, the Decker Co. in Chicago
had been given_orders for control wheels for 5000 airplanes
which made 10,000 control wheels. They were an automobile
parts supply company and did things in a relatively large way.
Unfortunately they had purchased all the materials and had
the parts cut to size, ready for assembly. Thus the cost to
.~, )
TAPE 13 (Side 2) 28.
Erco on that order was a large part of the_ total cost of
the finished wheels. For Erco the boom had busted and Henry
had a very tough time saving the company at all.
/
Production of the Ercoupes continued at a very low
rate for a good portion of a year~ -Bob $a-nders--came back
from the Na'(y aft_er .the war and was. put in ch.arge of the
Ercoupe service dei'artment, including sales of· spare parts~.
In the spring of ·194 7 1r believe it was1 Bob and his brother
Dick with the help of their father, Joe Sanders, Henry
Berliner's brother-in-law, formed Sanders Aviation, Inc. '·
End of Side 2
End of TAPE 13
top related