United Aircraft and Transport, it seemed, had been originally conceived as a consolidation of outstanding manufacturers for military and air transport. However, back in 1928 when it was being set up, Fred had encountered considerable pressure from certain ones “downtown” to include some outstanding private commercial manufacturers as well. Some in Wall Street had become convinced that the day of private flying had already dawned, and they had drawn the analogy with the automobile somewhat closer, it had seemed to Fred, than was warranted by the facts. While he resisted their pressure, he did agree to take over a few outstanding commercial manufacturers like Stearman in Wichita and Sikorsky in Bridgeport. And when the bottom had dropped out of the stock market, and the fool’s paradise that characterized the late ’twenties had faded into the deep depression now steeping the country in gloom and fear, Fred’s judgment had been vindicated. At Sikorsky, a flock of “firm orders,” with down payments from Curtiss-Wright Flying Service, had been transformed into a big inventory surplus. Somebody must now liquidate that to get enough cash to continue, and somebody must create something to sell to the Army and Navy, the only remaining users of aircraft. That somebody could be me. “When you get up to Stratford,” Fred told me, “you’ll find an organization that is unique to say the least.” Practically every one in the company was a Russian—a White Russian refugee who, “come the revolution,” had made his precarious way to the United States. They were all talented, artistic, intellectual, and by our standards at least, wholly impractical. Igor Sikorsky was their guiding genius, a man around whom all had rallied when the going was tough. Over on College Point, Long Island, at an abandoned chicken farm, they had pooled their resources for the common good and built their first twin-engined bomber. And so successful had this ship been that Arnold Dickinson, an enterprising fellow from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who had been greatly attracted to the fascinating Russians and much impressed by their cleverness, had advanced them large sums of money. Then came the Sikorsky twin-engined amphibian, one of the first American aircraft to control and maneuver well on either of its two engines, and with its success, United Aircraft became interested in taking the company into the fold. By that time, Sikorsky’s backers had built a modern plant for him at Stratford on the Housatonic River, and things had looked promising indeed up until that Black Friday of October, 1929, when the bottom dropped out of the stock market.