This idea, while commendable in spirit, seemed to me somewhat fantastic in practice. Some years earlier, “Captain Dick” Richardson, a naval constructor, designer and pilot for the giant NC boats that had crossed the Atlantic, and himself a pioneer pilot, had carefully analyzed the economics of commercial operations and solemnly concluded that airplanes in excess of thirty thousand pounds gross weight could not possibly pay their freight, let alone produce revenue. At that time there had been no controllable-pitch propellers in sight, nor had wing flaps appeared on the horizon; Captain Dick’s dictum had become an axiom. In view of this, it seemed to me wise for us to attempt to dissuade Juan Trippe, President of Pan American, from his foolhardy undertaking. When, later on, we tried to do so, Juan could not be sold. He, like Igor Sikorsky, had that intuitive something that motivates the pioneer. Meanwhile, back there in the New York office, Fred Rentschler continued to explain the complexities of the Sikorsky problem. At this point, J. F. McCarthy, United’s controller, who had sat through the whole discussion, began unrolling several of those long yellow ruled sheets of paper on which accountants were accustomed to line up their figures. Mac had broken the Sikorsky expenses down into the usual three categories, general and sales expense, engineering expense, and manufacturing expense. Now it appeared, the ratios of these expenses to one another and to shipments, sales, and so on, were far out of line with good practice. There were certain items in each that were more or less fixed, but manufacturing expense now looked like the best point of attack; it was a large part of the whole; it had large reducible items and it could be cut without serious harm. In other words my job was to go down to Stratford and fire enough of these attractive Russians to bring the expense into line. Fred summed it up this way: “There is a limit to the contribution United Aircraft can make to Russian relief.” And so, next day I took a morning train from Grand Central. The new Sikorsky factory lay just below the town of Stratford and just above the point where the Housatonic River empties into Long Island Sound. It was a sheltered spot and had been selected as possessing good seaplane facilities with space for a landing field nearby. From the outside, the high factory buildings looked new and shiny, but as I entered the door I thought that someone had cut corners on the details of construction.