tape 13 (side 1) end 1944, 1945 - ercoupe sales … 1944, 1945 - ercoupe sales conference ......

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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


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.


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


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 .•


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


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


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.


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

.·


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


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\~: ,


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,


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~~

·,


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

·.


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.


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

.~, )


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

tape 13 (side 1) end 1944, 1945 - ercoupe sales … 1944, 1945 - ercoupe sales conference ......

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