Bob Gross, who had bought Lockheed for a song, had succeeded in giving Don Douglas real competition in air transports. While tending to depreciate his own efforts, he managed an aggressive outfit that placed a high premium on speed. Jack Northrup, having launched a new company, was bubbling with enthusiasm for his newest project, a big bomber designed along the lines of his earlier flying-wing. Always unorthodox, yet extremely practical, he was most helpful to me with my problem. Following my Los Angeles visit, I flew down to San Diego to look up Reuben Fleet of Consolidated Aircraft, an enterpriser who had lost none of his enthusiasm for, and skill at, making an honest dollar. By this time the Navy had become San Diego’s major industry and FLEET AIR filled the skies with formations of carrier aircraft. Out of this tour around the country, I not only collected every man’s point of view as to power plants, but got an interesting cross-section of the industry as a whole. One-man shows for the most part, they were managed by engineer executives, a combination hard to beat when manufacturing was involved. In contrast with the rather studied approach we had in United, they were bold and forthright. Averaging then somewhat under forty-five years of age, they compressed into brief business careers the whole history of aviation. In a brief span of two decades, they had created a whole new technology, and this had been accomplished in the face of many vicissitudes. Through doing business largely with a few customers like the government or the airlines, they had developed an outlook quite at variance with that of industries dealing with large numbers of individual customers. As an important segment of the national security, it was natural that they should look upon their profession more as a public service, and thus develop an appreciation of public relations. At a time when new enterprises had been almost interdicted by the unfavorable economic climate and they had been singled out for attack, they had still gone on, with youthful self-reliance, with rugged independence, and a competitive spirit, to exploit the freedom of their homeland and create a new art. And out of my swing around the circuit, I reached clear conclusions with respect to my own problem, aircraft power plants. I had heard nothing to shake my convictions as to the superiority of air-cooled radials. On the contrary, I had heard much to confirm them. If the Air Corps still wanted a source of supply for liquid-cooled engines, they should look elsewhere than Hartford. Furthermore, even if Pratt and Whitney could create the world’s best liquid-cooled engine as well as the best air-cooled, it would do little good. The two required different tools, different production processes, in fact separate factories, and we already had our hands full with our own job.