And while we pushed on with our concept of a wholly new design in which we would accept no compromise that impaired the economy of operation, we all sweated out the days and nights of tests and experiments. But there was one critical item on which I did no sweating. Had Mr. Sikorsky revealed to me the fact that the wing loading he had selected would be too high to conform to the current Department of Commerce requirements, and that he would have to sell the Department a new concept of landing in a power stall before he could get his ship accepted, I am sure I should not have had the courage to risk all that money on his persuasive qualities. As it was, he kept me in ignorance of the risk, assumed it wholly to himself, and let me know about it only after he had made his sale. The principle of high wing loadings, involving a new type of approach and landing, is now so thoroughly accepted that few pilots know how it came about. The principle is inherent in current air economics and the limits have gone steadily upward. In 1927 I had solemnly announced for the Design Section of BUAERO that we would not consider wing loadings in excess of 10.5 pounds per square foot. Today, the new Boeing Stratocruiser utilizes loadings eight times that high. And so Igor Sikorsky built the famous S-42’s, forty-passenger flying boats, designed to hop from New York to Bermuda to the Azores and to Portugal on what was called the “stepping-stones” route to Europe. So well did he design the planes that, when the British refused to give Pan American landing rights at Bermuda because they had no similar boat with which to match the service, Pan American turned westward to the Pacific and used the new Clippers to pioneer the run to Australia, the Philippines, and China. On this run the controlling factor was the great distance to Honolulu, 2,400 miles against 1,900 miles from Bermuda to the Azores, but the Sikorsky boat hulls, derived from model-towing tests, could take off nearly 20 per cent more load than that originally contemplated. Thus they removed the last barrier to overseas air commerce. From the United point of view, while we made no money on the transaction, and, accounting-wise, lost a hundred thousand dollars on the ten ships, cash-wise we bore no out-of-pocket loss. And while the project took a lot of nervous and physical energy out of management, it paid dividends to the aviation art as a whole. Meanwhile we kept our eyes open for a chance to work into some Army or Navy business, though a number of important changes had taken place.