Curtiss-Wright Roc

Once there were 88 U. S. motor car manufacturers. Now there are 47. Mishaps and mergers reduced the number. Analogous has been the career of the aviation industry during the rapid past three years of its expansion. There are about 350 makers of airplanes, five of lighter-than-air craft, 30 of motors. Those concerns too have had their mishaps and mergers, especially mergers. The majority of them now belong to what until last week were four groups--United Aircraft & Transport, Aviation Corp., Curtiss-Keys, and "Hoyt." Last week the Curtiss and "Hoyt" groups merged.

The name of the latest roc of transportation is Curtiss-Wright Corp. Its net as sets are 70 million dollars. Its chiefs are to be Chairman Richard Farnsworth Hoyt, 41, Chairman of Wright Aeronautical Corp. & sundry others, and President Clement Melville Keys, 53, President of Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co.

Neither Mr. Hoyt nor Mr. Keys are putting all their properties into the new Curtiss-Wright Corp. The merged units are:

Wright Aeronautical Corp. (Hoyt)

Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co. (Keys)

Curtiss Airports Corp. (Keys)

Curtiss Flying Service (Keys)

Curtiss Aeroplane Export Co. (Keys)

Curtiss-Caproni Corp. (Keys)

Curtiss-Robertson Airplane Mfg. Co. (Keys)

New York Air Terminals (Hoyt)

N.Y. & Suburban Airlines (Hoyt)

Keystone Aircraft Corp. (Hoyt)

These provide among themselves a manifold sales organization. To them airmen last week felt certain would soon be conjoined three plane manufacturers not yet entirely under Hoyt or Keys control.

Large scale customers for the products of Curtiss-Wright Corp. will be the great transport companies which Mr. Hoyt and Mr. Keys more or less dominate: Aviation Corp. of the Americas (Pan-American Airways), National Air Transport, Transcontinental Air Transport, Pitcairn Aviation, Inc.* Upon sailing for Europe last week Mr. Keys was meticulous in stating that these transport companies would not buy their equipment exclusively from their allied manufacturers.

No unhampered way has Curtiss-Wright Corp. for control of the U. S. air industry, if that is the hope of Messrs. Keys & Hoyt. Redoubtable against subjugation are W. Averell Harriman & Robert Lehman's $40,000,000 Aviation Corp.,/- and Frederick B. Rentschler's $25,000,000 United Aircraft & Transport Corp.

Aviation Corp. already has in its hands:

Fairchild Aviation Corp.

Universal Aviation Corp.

Colonial Airways Corp.

Southern Air Transport

Embry-Riddle Aviation Corp. Inc.

Interstate Air Lines. Inc.

United Aircraft & Transport has:

Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Co.

Boeing Airplane Co.

Boeing Air Transport

Hamilton Aero Manufacturing Co.

Chance Vought Corp.

Hamilton Metalplane Co.

Pacific Air Transport Co.

Stout Air Lines Inc.

Outside of these great dominators are, among many others and to mention only their plane names: Detroit Aircraft Corp. (Ryan, Lockheed-Vega, Eastman, Blackburn), Fokker (into which General Motors has bought**), Ford, Pitcairn, Alexander Eaglerock, Savoia-Marchetti, Bellanca, Brunner-Winkle Bird, Consolidated, Fleet, Great Lakes, Stearman, Whittelsey (Aero-Avian), Columbia, Stinson, Swallow, Sikorsky, Cessna, Douglas (which may go to Curtiss-Wright).

The new Curtiss-Wright Corporation hyphenates two of the oldest names in aviation--those of Orville Wright, 57 and Glenn Hammond Curtiss, 51. Mr. Curtiss early flew what Mr. Wright had invented, the airplane. During the bicycling 1890's, the Wrights made "safety bicycles."/-/- In 1902 Mr. Curtiss began to manufacture motor cycles. While Orville Wright, and his late brother Wilbur, tinkered at Dayton. Ohio, with box kites which would glide and later with motors which would make them fly. Mr. Curtiss at Hammondsport, N. Y., tinkered with engines which would make cycles go mechanically and then with planes which would utilize those motors.

Mr. Wright has a personal reticence which has endeared him to many honorable institutions and societies. To businessmen his reticence seems dourness. He is not connected with the Wright Aeronautical Corp., outgrowth of his original manufacturing company. Mr. Curtiss, on the other hand, has been affable, enterprising and shrewd. He is President of the Board of Trustees of the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co., holds stock in various companies, but takes little interest in their financial and industrial activities. Among airmen Orville Wright is revered as the inventor of the airplane and its controls. Glenn Hammond Curtiss is cheered as the airplane's great improver, and the father of the flying boat.

Clement Melville Keys, one of the two chiefs in the present Curtiss-Wright Corp. merger, taught classics at St. Catherine's, Ont., at the turn of the century. Ambitious, he went to Manhattan where he became a financial reporter, editor, then banker & broker (C. M. Keys & Co.). The war took him into the air. He became Vice President of Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corp., then Chairman of its Financial Committee, then President. Especially during the past three years has he reached out, drawn in and plaited together a powerful aviation organization.

Richard Hoyt went from Harvard (1910) into finance (Hayden, Stone & Co.) and into aviation. The diverse companies which he dominates have been little integrated.

Socialite Flying

Proud were four pretty Eastern girls last week. At Hicksville. L. I., they performed the central rites at the opening of the Long Island Aviation Country Club, first of its kind in the U. S. Before several hundred socialites beneath variegated lawn umbrellas, each girl christened a club plane--Bunny, Squirrel, School Marm, Malolo. The girls were Eleanor Hoyt, daughter of Richard Farnsworth Hoyt (see above);* Emily Lawrance, daughter of Charles Lanier Lawrance (see below); Ann McDonnell, daughter of Vice President Edward O. McDonnell of G. M.P. Murphy & Co. (securities); Frances Reaves, daughter of John S. Reaves, chairman of a committee organizing 114 Aviation Country Clubs throughout the country. Each daughter received a gold medal with her name on it.

A speech by Assistant Secretary of War for Aeronautics Frederick Trubee Davison, a prayer by Navy Chaplain J. J. Brady, military music and air-gambolings by Army pilots and club members, completed the first air country club's opening program. Fifty-five planes were in the air at one time. In activity and gayety the scene was like a hunt meet or steeplechase.

A companion aviation country club, the Westchester near Greenwich. Conn., will begin operations within a few weeks. Others already in process of organization will be at Philadelphia, Newport, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ruth Nichols, pilot-saleslady, is now on the Pacific Coast explaining the Aviation Country Club idea.

That idea is to have a club near the well-to-do suburbs of every large city. The clubs will have their own club houses. hangars, planes, landing fields. Members belong to the national organization and have the full privileges of every local club--hiring planes for sport, business, travel or training, or parking their own planes.

Frederick Trubee Davison was asked a few days after the Long Island Club's opening, to be chairman of the National Governing Board of Aviation Country Clubs. A very busy public official he could not answer at once.

President of the Long Island Club is Charles Lanier Lawrance. On the board of managers with him there are famed names:

Chance Vought William B. Leeds

Henry P. Davison C. Oliver O'Donnell

E. O. McDonnell Roland Palmedo

Reginald L. Brooks James B. Taylor Jr.

William Hale Harkness Cornelius V. Whitney

Robert Law, George M. Pynchon Jr. and Elliot S. Phillips have worked up the Westchester Club. Charles Townsend Ludington is busy at Philadelphia; Major Lorillard Spencer, Count Alfonso Villa and William H. Vanderbilt at Newport; George Hann at Pittsburgh; David S. Ingalls at Cleveland; Robert R. McCormick, Joseph Medill Patterson, Philip Wrigley, John J. Mitchell at Chicago; William G. McAdoo Jr., Tod Ford Jr., Aldrich M. Peck at Los Angeles; William G. Parrott, Peter B. Kyne, Julliard McDonald, Thomas B. Eastland, Alexander Young, Edward H. Clark at San Francisco.

Insignia of Aviation Country Clubs is a purple plane surrounded by purple initials ACC, superposed on a pair of gold wings. The pin worn on lapel or dress will indicate membership in what present members intend to be the most exclusive social club in the U. S.

Iron Horse & Tin Goose

By next week three transcontinental air-&-mail routes will be in operation, viz:

Universal. Train (Santa Fe) between Los Angeles and Garden City, Kan., plane between Garden City and Cleveland, train (New York Central) between Cleveland and Manhattan. Time, 60 hours; fare $250. Service began in mid-June.

Standard-Southern Air Fast Express. Plane between Los Angeles and El Paso, train (Texas & Pacific) between El Paso and Sweetwater, Texas; plane between Sweetwater and St. Louis; train (New York Central, Pennsylvania or Baltimore & Ohio) from St. Louis to Atlantic Coast ports. Time, 58 hours; fare, $215. This service made its first run the same day as the Santa Fe-Universal-N. Y. C. Last week it began regular trips.

Transcontinental Air Transport. Plane between Los Angeles and Clovis, N. Mex.. train (Santa Fe) between Clovis and Waynoka, Okla.; plane between Waynoka and Columbus, Ohio, train (Pennsylvania between Columbus and Atlantic Coast ports. Time, 48 hours; fare, $345. Last week a demonstration run was made. Regular service begins July 7.

These systems go through the Southwest where year-round transportation can be maintained easily. Elsewhere in the country the hurried traveler can splice his own air-&-rail way by hopping from iron horses to "tin geese" (see TIME, May 27).

Flights & Flyers

Fifth Worst Accident's Cause. The cause of aviation's fifth worst heavier-than-air accident, the wreck of the Imperial Airways' City of Ottawa in the English Channel fortnight ago (TIME, July 1), was the splitting of two small connecting rod bolts. An inquiry board decided last week that the bolts were "fatigued," a metallurgical term which means that the crystals of the metal had been strained out of their most useful shape and arrangement, in this case probably by motor vibration. Planemakers took note of the necessity for tireless bolts.

Keystone Patrician in Service. The biggest plane in this country is the Keystone Patrician, an 18 passenger. This spring it hopped between the coasts and borders, proving its stamina in all sorts of weather. Last week it went into its first regular passenger service, on the Colonial Airways New York-Boston run. Fare: $34.85.

Spaniards Rescued. A lingering hope drove the British airplane carrier Eagle to search last week for the Spanish trans-Atlantic aspirants, Commander Ramon Franco and his companions, missing a week (TIME, July 1). The Eagle found them 100 miles southeast of the Azores, where they had planned to land. In a fog they had overshot the islands. Spanish Premier Primo de Rivera cried with relief at the news.

Other famed ocean rescues: Harry G. Hawker and Commander Mackenzie- Grieve, picked up between Newfoundland and Scotland, May, 1919; Commander John Rodgers and crew, near the Hawaiian Islands, September, 1925 (see map, p. 12); Ruth Elder and George Haldeman, near the Azores, October, 1927; Commander Francesco de Pinedo and crew, between Newfoundland and the Azores, May, 1927.

Southern Crossers Flayed. Two men died this spring hunting to rescue Charles Kingsford-Smith, Charles Ulm and their crew of the Southern Cross "lost" in wild Australia. The flyers, who guided the Southern Cross across the Pacific from San Francisco to Brisbane, Australia last summer (TIME, June 18, 1928), had made a feint to fly from Sydney to London. Last week an Australian committee of inquiry found that they had considered, although not deliberately planned, "losing" themselves for purposes of publicity and money, that they "did not carry an efficient emergency radio set, did not ascertain whether emergency rations were aboard, did not consult the weather bureau regarding weather conditions, did not carry suitable tools, and did not make adjustments for changing the radio receiving set into a transmitter, which would have enabled them to communicate with the outside world." Also, inexplicably, they did not use their oil for smoke signals. Rebuked, they immediately started for London.

Endurance Attempts. The Question Mark stayed in the air 150 hrs. (TIME, Jan. 14). The Fort Worth stayed up 172 1/2 hrs. (TIME, June 3). To surpass these records four planes were flying last week. At Cleveland R. L. Mitchell and Byron K. Newcomb took up the Stinson-Detroiter Miss Cleveland. As the new week began they were still flying. Also flying were Leo Norm's and Maurice Morrison in another Cessna at Los Angeles. At Minneapolis Thorwald Johnson and Owen Haughland kept the Cessna Miss Minneapolis up for 150 hrs., when a broken valve forced them down. At Roosevelt Field, L. I., Viola Gentry, flying cashier, and Jack Ashcraft, went up in the Cabinair biplane The Answer, after only one practice flight. They unexpectedly ran out of gas after 10 hrs., tried to land through a mist, crashed. Ashcraft was killed, Miss Gentry badly hurt. Her first and continuous cries after the smash were for "Bill." "Bill" was William Ulbrich, at whose mother's Mineola home she lived. He, at the time, was just overhead flying for the record with Pilot & Mrs. Martin Jensen in their Bellanca Three Musketeers. While Miss Gentry lay in the hospital and Pilot Ashcraft was at an undertaker's, the Three Musketeers flew on, on; stayed up 70 1/2 hrs., when their refueling plane, disabled, could sustain them no longer.

Round Trip

From Roosevelt Field, L. I., Captain Frank Monroe Hawks of the Texas Co. flew a Lockheed-Vega to Los Angeles in 19 hrs. 10 min. 32 sec. He rested awhile and returned to Roosevelt Field in the fastest transcontinental time--17 hrs.. 38 min., 16 sec. Total flying time for the round trip: 36 hrs., 48 min., 48 sec. Said he: "I do not think a transcontinental flight need be a non-stop affair. This, too, is still impractical and must be classed as a stunt. . . . Frankly, the only reason I made non-stop flights was to draw closer attention to the feasibility of flying across the continent, with stops or without."

*Last month Mr. Keys bought Pitcairn Aviation mail-carrying unit of Harold F. Pitcairn's group. Last week Mr. Keys sold Pitcairn Aviation to North American Aviation, holding company of which he is president.

/-Only that amount of its $200,000,000 stock has been sold.

**Bendix Aviation is another channel whereby General Motors has recently entered aviation. Bendix Aviation combines Bendix Brake Co., Eclipse Machine Co., Delco Aviation, Stromberg Motor Devices and Scintilla Magneto, and since last week Pioneer Instrument. In forming Bendix Aviation the Curtiss, Wright, United and Aviation Corp. interests worked with General Motors.

/-&$134;Another famed onetime bicycle maker is Motor Tycoon John North Willys, 55, who did business at Canandaigua, N. Y., not far from Hammondsport. In 1917 he helped Mr. Curtiss expand Curtiss Motor and Plane production for war demands, by acquiring controlling stack of the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co. Mr. Keys, president, now has control.

*She owns her own sport biplane.