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North American Aviation’s Lee Atwood
"We are not an aircraft company
and we are not a space and missile company." A surprising statement, that.
For the speaker is none other than John Leland ("Lee") Atwood,
chairman and president of El Segundo, Calif.'s North American Aviation, Inc.,[1]
a company which – in apparent contradiction to its boss' words – will this year
take the biggest single corporate piece of the U.S.' combined space and defense
budget. North American, moreover, is a
company that will count on what it calls "The Customer" for all but
about $54 million of its $1.8-billion sales volume.
This old Chrysler-built (1959) Jupiter
missile gave NAA a lead it has never
lost in rocket engines.
Yet
it is impossible to grasp what has made North American successful without
understanding why Lee Atwood says the company is not what most people think it
is. A decade ago Atwood and the late
James H. ("Dutch") Kindelberger decided that North American must be
more than a manufacturer of airplanes or missiles. They thus laid the foundations for NAA's current success. And the success is impressive indeed.
Three
years ago North American ranked sixth among government space and defense,
contractors; it had an annual sales volume of slightly under $1 billion. Boeing, United Aircraft, Lockheed, Douglas
Aircraft and General Dynamics topped NAA.
But in 1963, North American will deliver to the Government goods and
services worth $400 million more than either Boeing or General Dynamics and
probably up to $1 billion or more than Douglas.
In
actual dollars, Lockheed's sales will be very close to, or even higher, than
NAA's this year. Because of its sizable
airplane and missile production runs, Lockheed's profits almost surely will be
$4 million more than NAA's $38 million or $39 million. But 6.5% of Lockheed's business comes from
commercial sources, another 13.5,Yo from abroad. Thus, in business with the U.S. Government, Lockheed's sales will
be $350 million or so less than North American's this year.
And,
while such government business is always low-profit business (currently
yielding North American an after-tax return of about 2 cents on the sales
dollar), careful husbanding of capital will enable Atwood to produce per-share
net of some $4.70 for 1963, a quite satisfactory return of about 15% on North
American's stockholders equity.
North
American has done all this, moreover, without counting on a single outside
acquisition, and in the face of some staggering contract cancellations. The B-70 once could have been a $10-billion
production run. "We lost the F-108
(a Mach 3 interceptor) as a production contract," says Atwood, "and
that was a darned good airplane." NAA no longer has any production-line
program as big as, say, the Polaris, which plays so important a role in
Lockheed's current profitability.
Disciplines & Coherence. North American derives a full 70% of its current revenues from
research and development contracts, a type-of Volume which many businessmen
scorn as being hopelessly low profit North American, however, welcomes this
type of business. It welcomes it for
the very reasons that led Lee Atwood to declare flatly that "we are not an
aircraft company and we are not a space and missile company."
Lee
Atwood, who both looks and talks like an intellectual, tends to describe his
company in an intellectual way: "We have certain capabilities built around
certain disciplines," he says, "and we try to make them
coherent." In plain English, Atwood regards North American as being in the
business of solving problems – not just any problem, but the type that arises
as fast as society pushes back the physical limitations of space and time.
North American has
climbed to top spot among U.S. space-defense contractors. That's usually a risky perch. But it may not be in North American's case,
for here is an exceptional kind of company, oriented not to manufacturing, but
to knowledge.
These problems involve not only
getting into space, but mankind's adapting to it, and the possible uses of
space exploration. Atwood views his
company mainly as a collection of advanced scientific skills, which can be put
together in different combinations to solve previously unthought-of problems. "Most of our business," he says,
"consists of finding imaginative answers to unheard-of problems."
Harrison Storms, president of the Space & Information Systems division,
puts it more bluntly. "We are not
stamping out tin cans," he says.
"Our basic production machinery is men's minds."
To
such ends, North American has built an amazingly wide range of skills. "Our professional employees,"
Atwood told a management group earlier this year, "have degrees
representing more than 175 different college majors. Some of these appear to be far removed from our normal lines of
activity – such as bacteriology, geophysics, medicine, microbiology and
psychology." Atwood concluded by saying that all these disciplines are
"basic to the national space program."
“Dutch” Kindelberger (died ’62) Lee Atwood
The Old Team. The ebullient
Chairman "Dutch" Kindelberger (left) and the introspective President Lee Atwood made an ideal team for
running North American. But after
Kindelberger died last year, both titles
settled on Atwood. Originally
Kindelberger's lieutenant, Atwood is
an ideal man for running today's NAA: He
speaks the same language as National Aeronautics & Space
Administration's brainy brass, also has
the hard practical experience of a man who had to carry ideas all the way
from the laboratory to the assembly line.
Blending
Skills. What has all this
intellectualizing got to do with running a billion-dollar business? A good deal. For it was this intellectual concept of North American as a rich
collection of varied skills capable of being put together into different
combinations that more than anything else won for North American the coveted
Apollo project.
Outside
of Martin Marietta, North American was, in fact, the only company willing to
tackle the project alone. For the
Apollo space capsule project, designed to carry three men to the moon and back
by 1970, is probably the most complicated and costly single technical job ever
tried. In bidding on the project,
mighty GE teamed up with Douglas, Grumman and Space Technology Laboratories. The other rival bidders included the
following major teams: McDonnell with Lockheed, Hughes and LingTemco-Vought;
Astronautics division of General Dynamics with Avco.
"We
were invited to join a team or two," Atwood says, "but they weren't
very attractive to us. We thought we
could take it on by ourselves." Atwood, a man who goes out of his way to
avoid the appearance of boasting, says he does not know why North American
finally won the coveted contract.
Officials of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration,
however, make no secret of the fact that it was North American's high standing
with NASA that won the day.
Satellite instrument window receives final
checkout
President
Kennedy had just advanced the target date for a lunar landing from 15 years to
less than ten. The agency decided that
North American's ability to handle almost all aspects of the project was
crucial. Dr. Robert Seamans, associate
administrator of NASA, says that the other bidders "placed too much
dependence on associate contractors."
There
were very good reasons to keep Apollo under one corporate roof where NASA could
deal with just one set of project managers, who in turn would be bound by one
corporate boss-Lee Atwood. NAA, to
boot, had heavy experience in guidance, propulsion and space airframe work
through its X-15 airplane that has flown 59.6 miles above the earth at better
than 4,000 miles an hour.
North
American has already received the biggest single R&D work order the space
agency has ever handed out-for $934.4 million to carry the Apollo project
through to completion. Eventually,
Apollo could put $2 billion worth of work through North American's plants and
labs-or more than half the total size of the U.S. commercial jet airplane
market. The engines being built for Apollo
by NAA's Rocketdyne division could bring in as much again.
Any
way you look at it, Apollo is a giant project.
It has 20,000 suppliers, several thousand second-tier subcontractors and
19 major subcontractors, including such high-powered outfits as the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Collins Radio, Aerojet-General and
Minneapolis-Honeywell. Some of the
subcontracting jobs are worth up to $200 million. And, as the project manager, North American has to have a firm
grasp on every bit of the technology.
The technology ranges from the welding of foil that is only
four-thousandths of an inch thick, to the mechanics of a heat shield that can
withstand a burning temperature of 5,000 degrees (Fahrenheit), of heat, to the
physiology and psychology of men in space.
What Next?
The man who runs this show is a trim, tanned, gray-haired aeronautical
engineer who started as an engineer at Douglas and became Dutch Kindelberger's
chief aide at North American. In that
capacity he engineered the biggest airplane production runs of World War II:
More than 42,000 military aircraft rolled off NAA lines between 1939 and 1945.
Its
planes included the T-6 Texan trainer, the B-25 Mitchell, with which Lt Col. Jimmy Doolittle bombed Tokyo, and the P-51
Mustang, the most famous fighter plane of the war. The P-51 was the plane Atwood and Kindelberger designed, built
and rolled out in a breathtaking 117 days in 1940.
When
the war ended, North American, like everyone else in the aircraft business, was
looking around for new ways to make a living.
In one 24 hour period, NAA's backlog of airplanes was cut from 8,000 to
just 800. One dark day a short time
later, Dutch Kindelberger actually thumbed through a mail-order catalogue to
see what kind of business he could go into and keep his company alive. He tossed the catalogue aside in dismay;
North American, he decided, would build on what it knew or nothing.
Other
companies thought the same way, but not all of them went as far as Kindelberger
and Atwood. Curtiss Wright didn't look
beyond the then budding jet airplane engine and eventually was driven from the
business. The Martin Co. (now Martin
Marietta Corp.) within a decade would have to give up the airplane altogether
and even now is tied to just a few missile projects (the biggest: the Titan
series). United Aircraft (FORBES, April
1, p. 29) stayed too long with
aircraft engines as the mainstay of its business. Boeing, riding hard on commercial planes, took a bath with its
lumbering Stratocruiser and has yet to make much money on its 707s, 720s and
727s. Douglas ran into trouble both in
commercial and military business. Only
Lockheed, really, has been able to make a big, successful go of a multiplicity
of old-line production-type jobs.
It
is no particular news that the airplane and missile business is dying on the
vine these days. For the first time
since the end of World War II, there is not much in the way of a major new
military airplane or missile program in sight for anyone-and there may not be,
some experts think, for perhaps a decade.
But space jobs are burgeoning – and no one is better equipped to get
them than NAA. This is the payoff for
Kindelberger's and Atwood's big gamble on technology years ago.
Thus
Kindelberger at the crucial point showed himself to be a man of more than
ordinary vision. "Dutch even
wanted to build an atomic-powered airplane," recalls one associate. "But he couldn't get the weight down,
so he had to quit." That put NAA into the atomic power business which, a
year from now, may be pulling in close to $100 million in sales.
When
other big companies decided to duplicate German rockets after the war,
Kindelberger and Atwood decided to use German technology as a starting point. "We got our hands on two German V2s and
tore them apart," recalls Harold Raynor, who recently retired as executive
vice president of North American's Space & Information Systems division. "We knew we couldn't just relax on our
record for having built more planes than anyone else during the war."
This
was the way NAA brass was thinking when it got a contract to build a missile
for the Air Force in 1946 called the Navaho. The bird never came into
operational, but over an 11-year streatch, North American spent $700 million to
develop it, learning all the while how to make rocket engines and guidance
systems and how to use exotic new fuels. Remembers a Pentagon missilesman:
"The Navaho needed a rocket motor; it needed a guidance system. North American in the mid-Fifties had the
one organization that could handle all these jobs."
Another Crisis. By
1955, Korean War orders were a thing of the past. The defense industry faced another crisis. Four of the big companies – Douglas, Boeing,
General Dynamics and Lockheed – decided that commercial jets were the answer.
North
American's bosses, however, were determined to take an even longer look down
the road. Having taken a moderate
beating with a postwar commercial plane (the Navion), Kindelberger decided to
stay out of the commercial jet race.
Instead, at the very moment his rivals were bent over their jet
transport drawing boards, Kindelberger and Atwood daringly created some
divisions that looked, mighty strange then for an aircraft company: NAA broke
up its Navaho team into four entities: atomic power, rocket engines,
electronics and missiles. "We took
a risky step," says Atwood.
"Without really knowing where the business would come from and for
what, we felt that this kind of technology would be needed."
It
worked. North American got a foothold
in the newer fields, first in defense, later in space technology. NAA developed rocket engines that United
Aircraft might logically have had; its Rocketdyne division is today Aerojet's
leading competitor in that field. NAA's
Autonetics division is one of the U.S.' top ten electronics outfits. Small as it is, Atomics International is
third-largest in nuclear energy (behind GE and Westinghouse).
Only A Start? This dome
houses reactor for NAA's Piqua, Ohio
atomic power station. NAA has big ambitions in atomic energy.
All
this, of course, involved NAA with more then its share of the kind of projects
that get shot down short of the production stage. But there was often a fallout of benefits even from these. Atomics R&D never produced the airplane
that Kindelberger wanted, but it got NAA a $70-million business (fiscal 1963)
all the same. The Navaho never went
into production, but out of it came Rocketdyne ($200-million sales) and
Autonetics ($573-million sales). The
X-15, a $90-million test vehicle to begin with, helped land the biggest R&D
job of all in the Apollo. Atwood,
friends say, broke into tears when he learned that the B-70 had been cancelled
as a production job; it has, nevertheless, given NAA an edge in planning for
the supersonic transport program that is beginning to take shape now.
Decentralized, But.... Lee Atwood, who has inherited
Kindelherger's job on top of his own, runs this complicated show in the
pragmatic fashion that one would expect from a physical scientist. In theory, North American is highly
decentralized. (See page 25 for a divisional breakdown.)
But
in fact, North American's method of operation fits no conventional mold. "We have our own ideas on how to run
this company," Atwood declares.
"Less than 1% of our people work in headquarters," he says,
emphasizing the autonomy of the divisions.
But in the next breath, he adds that he personally keeps a close tab on
all important projects. "On
Apollo, I talk to Storms by telephone at least once a day." And Chauncey
Starr, president of Atomics International, says that Atwood is the key man when
it comes to dealing with "The Customer." "Any hint of a change in our relationship with the
Government," says Starr, "will get Atwood out of his chair in a
hurry."
It
was, in fact, this combination of autonomy and strong central control that made
North American a natural for the Apollo project. By shifting the stance of its missile division, the company had
an outfit all geared up for space when Apollo came along. "We have a good deal of interaction
between divisions in working on a project," Atwood says. Nor does he encourage one division to hoard
top men to the detriment of other divisions: "We have had many
interdivisional transfers." The lesson of General Dynamics, where
decentralization was carried to the point of anarchy, was not lost on North
American.
Describing
North American as an egghead kind of company can, however, be a bit
misleading. North American's
intellectual approach gets down to some pretty hard fundamentals in
practice. Take purchasing: NAA annually
hands out some 600,000 to 700,000 purchase orders worth $815 million to more
than 14,000 suppliers. To get a work
order from NAA, small companies have to prove their managerial effectiveness,
technical competence, their ability to control quality-in addition to being
able to make what NAA wants. NAA has a
reputation for running the toughest purchasing system in government
contracting.
In
its own shop, too, NAA's intellectual approach has nothing dreamy about
it. Three times each week, the 20 top
men on Apollo report to the project manager, John Paup, in a closed-circuit
television briefing. Says Paup: "I
receive a five-minute briefing. No
questions are asked. The staffman may not
give reasons for things, he just states results. When something on a program is shown to be in error, even if it's
the error of Engineer No. 29, the chief engineer's name goes on it."
No Miracles. All
this is not to suggest that North American has by any means licked all of the
problems that beset today's government contractors. Low profits are endemic in the kind of research and development
work in which North American specializes.
North American is hardly a manufacturer any longer; manufacturing as
such accounts for less than 30% of volume.
"An order for 100 of anything is a big deal," says Treasurer
R. Andrew ("Andy") Lambeth.
Thus, North American is probably the only major company that measures
its output, not in units of output, but in engineering man-hours. When the B-70 project was emasculated in
1961, North American lost its one immediate hope for an assembly-line project
of the type which enables government contractors to rise a bit above the usual
paltry profit margins.
In an effort
to broaden its profits, North American has made several attempts to get into
commercial business. None of them has
come to much. "You may have a
broad spectrum of techniques," says Atwood a little sadly, "but there
is no guarantee that you are going to be the one that applies them to an end
product."
Breakthrough? It
would be a mistake, however, to think, that North American has forever closed
the door on commercial applications of its techniques. "Autonetics will get commercial
business when we find a deal that makes sense," says D.O. Bowman,
Autonetics' vice president for longrange planning.
THE SUM & THE PARTS
A successful company ought to add up to a bit more
than the sum of it’s parts. But the parts are important. Here are the divisions of NAA and the men who run the-in.
Autonetics' John Moore: Cool, brilliant
ex-GE research engineer, 47, with NAA since 1948, responsible for NAA's biggest
division; on the Board of Counselors of Univ. of Southern California.
Autonetics' fiscal 1963 (ending this
month) sales should be near last year's record $573 million. This has been NAA's fastest growing
division. "The surprise,"
says Moore, "was that we grew so fast; at times, we have almost choked to
death." Autonetics is the nation's biggest missile guidance and navigation
outfit. It has no successful commercial
end products yet (see story).
Los Angeles' Ralph Ruud: 55, came up through
the ranks starting as NAA toolmaker in 1931; native of Norway, informal and
soft-spoken; NAA's top production man; responsible for its big, impressive B-70
program.
Without the B-70, the vast Los Angeles
division won't have much in the way of an income producer. Sales were off 6% last year (to $354
million) and could be cut in half by 1965 when the money stops coming in for
the $1.4 billion worth of B-70 prototypes.
Atomics' Dr. Chauncey Starr: 51, followed
doctorate work at Rensselaer with study stints at Harvard, MIT; an exManhattan
Project physicist; fluent and friendly.
Atomics International, under Starr
from its beginnings in 1955, has become the U.S.' third-largest in atomic power
sales; behind GE and Westinghouse but ahead of Allis-Chalmers, Babcock &
Wilcox and General Dynamics. Sales of
$65 million in fiscal 1962 ought to show a gain of 8% this year, says Starr,
and should be up to $90 million by fiscal 1964. Although Starr yearns for commercial sales, the division still
gets all its income from government contracts.
Columbus' Will Yahn: 56, assistant controller
for Curtiss-Wright before joining NAA in 1950; no college degree, but a
first-rate cost control and finance man.
Sales of the Columbus division this
year are expected to almost equal the $224 million of 1962; its biggest program
is the Navy A-5 Vigilante attack bomber.
Other division projects are small.
This oldline NAA plane-making division faces an uncertain future.
Rocketdyne's Samuel Hoffman: 61, ex-engine design man for
Fairchild, GM's Allison division; ex-Penn State professor; at NAA since 1949;
one of the best rocket engine men in U.S.
Rocketdyne has been growing
phenomenally since the mid-1950s. Sales
for fiscal 1963 will be up 20% (to $240 million) and may stay there for several
years. The company's engines have
powered most U.S. missiles to date (Thor, Jupiter, Atlas) and all of the
nation's manned space missions; all 11 engines to be used in Apollo boosters
are Rocketdyne's. The division,
however, is smaller overall in rocket engines than Aerojet-General.
Science Center's Dr. Howard Reiss: at 41,
NAA's youngest division boss; ex-Celanese, U.S. Steei and Bell Laboratories
research chemist; dedicated and ambitious.
The 150 scientists at NAA's year-old
Science Center are working on no corporate projects. Rather, they are working in basic scientific disciplines such as
physics, chemistry, metallurgy and mathematics. "We hope this will become the wellspring of the
corporation," says Reiss, "the last thing we want is an ornament."
Space & lnformation's Harrison Storms: 48, aeronautical
engineer with NAA since 1941; the ramrod behind the B-70, X-15 and Apollo.
Space & Information Systems
division sales doubled between 1961 and 1962 (to $216 million), and with its
big Apollo funding, it could become NAA's biggest division in the next year or
two. The Hound Dog missile building
program has phased out, but the Saturn S-II (the second stage of the booster
for Apollo) and the moon-shot capsules could bring in $1.5 billion in the next
three years.
Actually,
a major commercial breakthrough may be at hand in the supersonic jet
transport. The rules of this game look
more to Atwood's liking than those of the original commercial jets. For the present, it is going to be a
question of dealing with "The Customer." Most of the costs that are expected to hit a staggering $2
billion will be paid for by the U.S. Government, thus limiting the risks for
the manufacturers to a tolerable range; certainly no company wants to take a
chance on the kind of debacle that cost GD $454 million.
NAA
is the only company in the U.S. that has any experience in building a really
big airplane that can fly at three times the speed of sound (or about 2,000
mph). The reason the B-70 has cost so
much is that it is brand new from the wheels up. "There has never been anything like it," says Ralph
Ruud, boss of the Los Angeles division.
The public does not yet know what the B-70 even looks like (they will a
few weeks from now when it is rolled out of its Palmdale, Calif., hangar at
last). "But from this,", says
Ruud, "we think we know more, for instance, about how to weld certain
high-strength metals than anyone in the world."
Also
a bit down the road is another major commercial possibility, which is clearly a
target of NAA's Atomics International division. Dr. Chauncey Starr, a former Manhattan Project physicist who runs
the division, says that atomic reactors may be a $500million business in a few
years and "we expect to have 15% to 20% of the business."
Better Times? Even
without such long-range expectations, NAA's stockholders will probably see
tangible results over the next few years from the Kindelberger-Atwood
philosophy. Atwood says: "It has
taken a good bit of doing to get where we are and even if we don't gain much in
volume, our profits should increase."
But
Atwood warns that stockholders should not expect any major improvement in North
American's payout, which at $2 annually represents a fairly high average of 53%
for the past five years. "Another
man," lie says, "might be willing to wring out more of a dividend
payout than I'd feel justified in doing.
But it would be a short honeymoon."
The
simple fact is that NAA has not gotten $1 billion of new business since 1959
for nothing. Atwood has spent some $174
million for new facilities alone in that time – more than the company has spent
on plant in all its previous 28 years in business. And it has all come out of thin defense company earnings,
because, as an associate says, "Lee Atwood will be damned if he will put
this company into debt." In addition, NAA has to carry $200 million or so
in short-term loans these days to finance its month-tomonth commitments while
it negotiates a final price on certain government contracts, or just plain
waits around for the check to arrive.
A Fall? But,
meanwhile, how secure is North American's leading role in space and
defense? "When you see a pretty
good-looking government contract," says United Aircraft's Chairman H.
Mansfield ("Jack") Horner, "it is already curved out to zero in
somebody's book." Three big smart companies (GD, Boeing and Douglas) have
all ruled the defense roost at one time or another in the past ten years. None of them could stay on top. Douglas' sales this year (of about $750
million) will be 35% under those of 1960; GD's will be down 25%. Can NAA fare any better?
Actually,
its chances of staying on top look fairly good. There are many "ifs," to be sure. There are signs, for example, that NASA is
not happy about letting a single company dominate projects in the way North
American dominates Apollo. As NASA
builds experience itself, it will probably insist on a bigger role, perhaps
itself coordinating the work of various contractors on a given project. At any rate, North American faces some lean
and, hungry competition and its penchant for lone-wolf operation puts it
squarely into competition with such smart specialists as Avco and
AerojetGeneral, as well as with generalists like Lockheed, Douglas and Martin
Marietta. Moreover, it is clear that
such cavernous plants as North American's Los Angeles division and the one at
Columbus have seen their best days.
"We haven't enough business to sustain the aerospace industry and
we aren't even going to try," says a NASA executive. neither, of course, is
the Defense Department.
Sky the Limit?
For the immediate future, then, NAA's prospects are for gradually
improving profits but continuing rough competition. For the longer view, however, the sky may be the limit. The fact is that no man today can say what
new projects or new industries may come from space exploration. And it is toward these frontiers of
knowledge that North American is reaching.
Today that knowledge is harnessed to low-profit government work;
tomorrow it could lead into the kind of profitable exploitation of technology
that has made, say, IBM rich and famous.
"We
dropped out of data processing because the field is so crowded right now,"
says John R. Moore, president of North American's Autonetics division. But Moore hints that the dropout may not be
permanent. "In three or four years
the whole game will change," he adds.
"Microelectronics is almost here, and that is going to
revolutionize the industry. You will be
able to put in one desk-top model all the things that you need a roomful of
data processing equipment for now. So
why should we put North American's money in an interim kind of system?"
At
any rate, it is worth noting what an executive of one of the nation's largest
corporations recently said of North American: "We can look down the road
and see ourselves in a real collision course with that company." Lee
Atwood, a man not much given to flamboyant statements, will only say: "We
want to maximize long-term gains for the company. That's what really counts." Obvious conclusion: For those
who like to take the long view, North American is a company to watch.
NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION, INC.
Divisions: Atomics International,
Autonetics, Columbus, Los Angeles,
Rocketdyne, Science Center, Space
& Information Systems
Personal Comments by Darrell Landau
Looking back, 36 years later: At the time of this article Autonetics was
still coming up to speed on Guidance systems for the Navy and becoming one of
the prime associate contractors for the Minuteman. The Minuteman would have three versions I, II & III with III deploying multiple hydrogen war
heads. This system was technically more
advanced than the moon shot -- there was no human on board. The Minuteman served the defense needs
intended for B-70 supersonic bomber and the mach 3 transcontinental Navaho
missile – from which it derived it’s sophisticated Guidance and Flight
Control.
North American was bought by
Rockwell. The NAA division built the
B-1B bomber and Autonetics the Guidance and Control for the MX missile. But as defense department needs diminished,
Rockwell’s defense work also declined.
Boeing
bought out Rockwell and Douglas’s defense capability. Rockwell spun off many parts and is now (2000) primarily in
commercial Automation Controls and Commercial Avionics – it’s only a fraction
of it’s prior size.
I
was proud to have been part of this organization from 1955 to 1992 – it was a
collection of very talented people – and an era that will not be repeated.
Lee Atwood died at age 97 – a
remarkable man. I once spent an hour of
one-on-one time with him when he abruptly showed up un announced requesting a
tour of our Nahaho High Temperature Test Lab at Downey CA, which he’d heard
about from people in El Segundo for which we were conducting test on equipment
intended for use on the B-70. He was
interested in the facility we’d created.
I recognized him when he walked in, and proceeded to tell him how we
were fulfilling test and equipment needs, much of it pertaining to remotely
controlling heat applied to flight controls. Only later did learn he was one of
the US most capable experts in thermodynamics.
He listened to me talk for almost 1 ½ hours during the tour, taking in
what I said with apparent genuine interest.
When done he looked at me, through me, for a long long time. Then gave a
friendly smile and thanks for the tour as he turned and left. He’s a man I would very much liked to have
known.