General Motors & Dornier

Because Germany's great aircraft builder Dr. Claude Dornier frankly told the right U. S. industrial leaders last spring that he needed money to expand his manufacturing plants at Friedrichshafen, General Motors' President Alfred Pritchard Sloan last month went over to Friedrichshafen with a staff of engineers. They looked over the Dornier plant, machines and blue prints. They saw the 12-motored Do-X, which last fortnight carried 169 passengers over Lake Constance. Result was that Mr. Sloan bought for General Motors the licenses to manufacture Dornier planes in the U. S. General Motors lawyers immediately busied themselves last week, while Mr. Sloan was on his way back to the U. S., then incorporated the Dornier Motors Aircraft Corp. of America. The company is owned jointly by General Motors and Fokker Aircraft Corp. of America.

That joint ownership complicates General Motors aviation activities and folds it into the entire U. S. flying fabric. Because :

1) General Motors owns a two-fifths and so practically controlling interest in Fokker Aircraft; 2) the other major owner of Fokker Aircraft is Western Air Express whose president Harris M. Hanshue (also Fokker's president) was in Manhattan last week arranging a 36-hour all-air transcontinental service with Graham Bethune Grosvenor, president of The Aviation Corp. The Aviation Corp., through its subsidiary Universal Aviation Corp. flies from Cleveland to Kansas City. Western Air Express flies from Kansas City to Los Angeles and thence to San Francisco. The project is to extend Universal passenger services eastward to Manhattan. The two systems would transfer passengers at Kansas City.

Besides the Fokker Aircraft interest General Motors owns a large block of stock in Bendix Aviation Corp., accessory manufacturers selling to the entire industry.

In a way General Motors' present leaning to aviation may be considered world-spread. General Motors is the emergency reservoir whence Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker draws cash and credit for his airplane factories in Holland and nine other European countries. Last week he disembarked at England from the U. S. and hastened to Mr. Sloan's transient London quarters. There they held a quick, pointed conference on combining European and American Fokker interests into a worldwide organization with factories on both continents and a centralized sales agency. Quickly after the talk Mr. Fokker left England in his private trimotored plane for a thorough inspection of European air activities.

An exigent early stop is Friedrichshafen where he must meet Dr. Dornier before the German leaves for Manhattan where, the middle of next month, he must confer with the directors of Dornier Corp. of America and help them get started manufacturing his monster seaplanes. At the Friedrichshafen meeting the German and the Hollander will discuss, among other practical things, the usefulness of fulfilling the promise which Dr. Dornier made last week--that next March or April he will send his huge Do-X flying across the Atlantic to demonstrate that heavier-than-air machines can be made as practical as dirigibles for such work.