The Heart of the Matter

"The war depends on the gasoline engine," said Joseph Stalin in 1941. "The country with the biggest output in engines will be the ultimate victor." It was no comfort to ex-Ally Stalin last week that Frederick Brant Rentschler, who did as much as any man to make that prediction come true, was on the move again.

Rangy (6 ft. 2), broad-shouldered Fred Rentschler is chairman and chief executive officer of United Aircraft Corp., whose Pratt & Whitney plants and licensees turned out 363,619 aircraft engines in World War II, provided just about half of all the horsepower used by the combined U.S. air arms. Last week Fred Rentschler was ready to do the incredible once more. To 15,000 workers in Pratt & Whitney's main plant at East Hartford, Conn., he sent out an emergency message: cancel all vacations, stand by for big military orders.

The Future Is Bigger. Fred Rentschler has always believed that the best airplane is only as good as its engine. Twenty-six years ago, at 36, he quit his job as president of Wright Aeronautical Corp. when his board of directors boggled at his demands for funds for engine research. The popular dream of 1924--a "flivver" plane for every American family--left him unmoved. He was sure the future of aviation lay in bigger aircraft, ever more powerful engines. He went looking for a place to build a brand-new air-cooled engine that would outclass the liquid-cooled engines such as the French Hispano-Suiza which then dominated the air world. He found his spot at the Pratt & Whitney tool company, a generations-old firm of precision instrument makers. When Rentschler unpacked his plans for the engine and predicted that the U.S. Navy would need hundreds of them for the planes of its infant carrier force, the shrewd Yankees wasted little time on bargaining. They promised Rentschler $250,000 in 1925 to help finance the new Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Co., promised him $1,000,000 more if the Navy approved his model.

Rentschler promptly assembled his production team: M.I.T.-trained George Mead, Designer Andy Willgoos, who could "think with his fingertips," and Aeronautical Engineer Don Brown. In nine months, they perfected the 415-h.p. air-cooled "Wasp." It weighed only 650 Ibs., was the most powerful engine for its weight ever built. The Navy was so awed by the engine's test performance it ordered the first Wasp placed on exhibition in Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, where it remains today. It has never flown.

But Pratt & Whitney engines have been flying high ever since. The company delivered its first five Wasps to the Navy in December 1926, was soon ready with an even more powerful engine--the 525-h.p. "Hornet." By January 1928, when Lieut. Commander Marc Mitscher made the first landing on the flight deck of the new U.S.S. Saratoga, Pratt & Whitney was ready to supply engines for 402 of the 475 fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes which the Navy wanted for the big carrier .and her sistership, the Lexington. As his business boomed, Rentschler brought Pratt & Whitney, airframe-maker Chance Vought, the Hamilton Standard Propeller Co. and Sikorsky Aircraft into the combine which forms today's United Aircraft. But the heart of the company remained in the Pratt & Whitney engine division, with its pounding concern for watchwork precision. New factory hands were cautioned: "Handle the parts of an aircraft engine as if they were eggs--only more carefully."

Into History. By such careful handling, Fred Rentschler wove Pratt & Whitney into the fabric of U.S. aviation history. In 1930, U.S. Navy Lieut. Apollo

Soucek broke the world's altitude record by flying 43,166 ft. over Washington, D.C. in a Wasp-powered, open-cockpit Apache biplane. Two years later, a Wasp drove U.S. Major Jimmy Doolittle's stubby GeeBee to a ago-m.p.h. victory in Cleveland's Thompson Trophy Race. And when Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic, she cabled to Pratt & Whitney: "I'd do it again with a Wasp."

From each pioneer flight, Pratt & Whitney translated new knowledge into increased power. By the time World War II broke, the Wasp was buzzing at 2,000 h.p.; Pratt & Whitney became the core of U.S. aircraft production. United's Rentschler-trained President H. M. ("Jack") Horner added two million feet to the Hartford plant, built a new factory in Missouri, licensed Pratt & Whitney designs to the Ford Motor Co. No less than 45 Army & Navy aircraft types were powered by Pratt & Whitney engines during the war, including such famous fighters as Republic's Thunderbolt, the Vought Corsair, the Grumman Hellcat. Consolidated's B-24 Liberators, the Martin B-26 and the workhorse C-47 Douglas transport all had Pratt & Whitney engines.

Blue Fire. At war's end, the biggest engine in P. & W.'s line had been jumped to 3,500 h.p. It was earmarked for the Convair B-36, was installed in Boeing's B-50, first airplane to fly nonstop around the world, and in the commercial Boeing Stratocruiser. Pratt & Whitney had put up the power for 75% of all the world's commercial airlines now flying. But Pratt & Whitney's enforced World War II concentration on piston engines robbed it of five years' work on jet propulsion. To make up for lost time, Rentschler got the license to manufacture the British Nene jet engine in 1947, soon developed it into the J42 power plant for the Grumman Panther now fighting in Korea and into the still more powerful J-48.

This week, 62-year-old Fred Rentschler gained another lap in the jet-power race. To mark Pratt & Whitney's 25th anniver sary, he dedicated a new $12 million gas turbine testing laboratory on the banks of the Connecticut River. Oldtimers who examined the concrete-lined testing chambers, in which jet engines will roar full blast in a gas-swirled inferno, were reminded of a classic Pratt & Whitney story. A wartime visitor to the plant, watching blue flames flickering from an engine's exhaust, remarked brightly: "Actually, you people simply are trying to contain and control fire, aren't you?" Replied a Pratt & Whitney veteran: "Yes, and that's simply all the devil has to do in hell, too, as I understand it."

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