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Interviewee: Mr. J. Leland Atwood
Interviewer: Martin Collins
Location: North American, El Segundo, Calif.
Date: June 20, 1989
Collins: How was this initially, this Aerophysics Laboratory to pay for itself? Was this something that was just essentially an investment on the part of the corporation, or was this taken from profits?
Atwood: The initial iteration was all company money, of course. We turned a section of our manufacturing area over to them, a suite of offices and laboratory space, in what we called our tooling building, which was right down the road here. We provided these offices, and we began to provide other facilities. One of the first things we undertook was a blow-down wind tunnel. It was called after the German design, called the Kochel design, and that was a tunnel with a small throat, but we could evacuate a receiver, we could dry air in a container, suck the dried air through the throat, at supersonic velocities, and begin to test in those ranges ourselves. The throat was only something like 12 or 14 inches square, but it was up to Mach 3 or higher, you see, for a brief test. We had a towing table, where the analogy between high speed aerodynamics and hydrodynamics could be demonstrated and tested, towing models through a shallow basin. Well, that's crude, but it was one of the things that Bollay and his people started getting data on.
We started rocketry in some abandoned bomb shelters which the Engineering Corps had erected during the war on the outside chance that we might have to evacuate the plant because of Japanese air raids, but they were never used for that purpose. We began the rocketry testing with things that were no bigger than whistles, shooting oxidizer and propellant of various descriptions, igniters ignited, testing efficiency. Right there I might point out that the chase is still going on in rocket efficiency. We measure that in the term "seconds," like seconds of time. That means roughly, crudely, that one pound of propellant or one kilogram of propellant will produce one pound of thrust or one kilogram of thrust for so many seconds.
So we worked on that, and eventually, we acquired the Downey plant, which is 15 miles east, which had been used by Convair during the war to produce BT-13 trainers. It had been abandoned. We bought what we could, what was privately owned. There had been some government additions. We were allowed the use of those. And we began to expand and broaden. Now, the government part of it, it wasn't very long until Bollay and some of his people had received some study contracts from the Air Corps, the Army, because they were highly interested in this new phase of technology, naturally. Bollay was ringing their bell in the technical sense, so we got the research contracts, and we got a rocket test contract, elementary tests and that sort of thing. And finally, taking it on some three years, we got a contract to study an intercontinental cruise missile.
Collins: OK, what time period roughly are we talking about?
Atwood: We're talking about 1946 to '48.
COLLINS: What was the evolving nature of your working relationship with Dutch Kindleberger?
ATWOOD: We were very compatible people. He was my boss at Douglas, and I didn't know him too well, although pretty well. He was a practical down to earth man, he was much more outgoing and self-confident person than I have been. Very high intelligence, smart, a very compelling way of talking, good exponent of his point of view. He had a presence and a voice that were compatible with that and always made a very favorable impression. In fact, we were kind of almost closer than, you know, a couple of hardworking cooperative people. We used to travel together a lot. He depended on me for a variety of things, but he always took the lead. He was very good at that. And I enjoyed my association with him very much. In fact, I was exceedingly sorry to see him fade out. He turned over the chairmanship, I mean the chief executiveship of the company to me before he died. Actually he could have kept it. It wouldn't have made any difference to us. We weren't working on that basis anyhow. But he did, and I regretted very much to see the way he went. He began to get depressed, which is unfortunate. I think it's because of his failing physical condition. He had some serious ulcers at the end of the war, and had to have his vegas nerve cut after two operations, and it interfered with his digestion but it stopped his ulcers from killing him. He used to be very vigorous but his durability seemed to diminish. Eventually he died in his sleep in 1962 at the age of 67.
COLLINS: This period of poor health you're referring to was toward the end of the fifties, early sixties?
ATWOOD: Well, his ulcer laid him low in about 1947. But he recovered from that, and was very active. He was in the forefront, you know, but he didn't come to work till 10 o'clock, say, and things like that. But he headed the company very effectively, until I would say the time when he quit really looking into what was going on, in any depth, would have been about--well, he had heart trouble, of course--would have been about '57, '58.
COLLINS: In addition to this question of thinking about new areas for corporate activity in the postwar world, what other things were occupying you at that period?
ATWOOD: Well, everybody believed, a little bit I guess, that you had to convert more to peace, and they were trying to think of something. Dutch in his characteristic way said he went through a Sears Roebuck Catalogue to see what we could build and he couldn't find anything we could compete on. And we did spend a certain amount of time on that, not large amounts of money, but going back into mundane production items certainly wasn't the answer. We were in no position to start anything that was contemporary in competition. Our only opportunity seemed to be over the horizon, science.
COLLINS: Were you looking towards any commercial aircraft at that time?
ATWOOD: We talked about it some. Fortunately, Dutch Kindleberger was smart enough to say, we just can't afford it. Convair went into it, Consolidated-Vultee. Frank Pace was the big man on that. They went almost bankrupt. They went through a change of management, anyway. The Martin Company nearly went under trying to do it. Boeing invested a tremendous amount, but they started with the prototype of the 707 which was of course successful after a large investment. Douglas had a line of transports going and so did Lockheed, so they were doing very well. To compete head-on with that the way Chet Pearson tried to do with Martin was just suicide. And that's what Convair Consolidated was trying to do, and they paid their price.
COLLINS: So it was the consensus at North American that the route to go was to pursue the various opportunities in the military sphere.
ATWOOD: Advanced aircraft and high tech was all we could see, that we could really put our money on. And we made various intrusions into commercial things. But to tell you the truth, it's been a long time, and the most likely interface is theAlbert Bradley automation, now part of Rockwell with Autonetics and Collins Electronics, and there is quite a bit in common, but it doesn't fit completely. It's not like a glove. I'm afraid it's never going to be. Things are so specialized. You have to make it fit the case and the requirement and the competition with no extra baggage.
COLLINS: You're referring to getting into the commercial market?
ATWOOD: Yes, especially the advanced technology commercial markets. I hope I'm coherent.
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Used for educational and historical purposes only.
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