Now if consideration of matters like this appears somewhat academic, the fact remains that they were fundamental to our decision as to what to do with Sikorsky. On the one hand, it was clear that in trying to operate the plant we would assume heavy management burdens with little hope of financial reward; on the other, it was certain that there was a pearl in the Sikorsky oyster which, unless we dived for it, would remain quite undiscovered. Our willingness to accept the risk of further operations there must depend upon our confidence in the collateral benefits. This, in turn, must be based entirely upon the quality of leadership we ourselves could display. And so, after much soul searching, we decided to gamble on our own abilities to direct the genius of Igor Sikorsky so as to benefit the art, if not to swell the treasury. With this decision taken, we cut the organization back sharply to the double handful of men Mr. Sikorsky himself deemed vital to his success. These included, among others, the brothers Gluhareff, Michael and Serge, Bob Lebensky, of the experimental shop, and Buivid of the laboratory. With the organization set, I stated the problem as that involving the creation of a large flying boat so designed that, when operated on the Pan American system, it could earn its board and keep. In other words, we must move the upper limit of the Richardson formula as high as necessary to gain our objectives. As one contribution to this project, we had the new Hamilton-Standard controllable-pitch propeller, then under development; as another we had a complementary development of Mr. Sikorsky’s, a new wing-flapped airfoil. The propeller could pull more weight into the air and fly it; the flaps could help it into the air and get it back on the water at a reasonable stalling speed. This made the flying-boat hull the controlling factor; its characteristics limited the load we could drag into the air with our new wing and new propellers. To refine the lines of the boat hull, our engineers now devised an inexpensive but effective test rig; they towed a model hull alongside a speed boat and photographed its action in rough or smooth water with slow-motion cameras.