“Now that you are well fouled up in the slipstream of BUAERO,” he remarked one June morning, “it is about time you looked over the trade. If,” he went on, “you are going to risk your future on the creative capacity of competition, then you ought to look over your new tools. Frankly,” he added, “they aren’t too hot.” So Leighton asked Captain Johnson, Assistant Chief, for permission to make the trip in a cross-country DH, but the captain turned him down. Later on he advised me in confidence that engineers were too scarce to be risked unnecessarily in those flying coffins. And so we took off by train. At Paterson, New Jersey, we sought out the multistoried loft building that housed Wright Aeronautical Corporation. President Frederick B. Rentschler received us in his office, sitting solemnly behind his desk. He looked to be a cool customer, a man of great singleness of purpose. Facing him across the table, Bruce Leighton exuded buoyant enthusiasm against a background of equal determination. Not having previously learned from Leighton the sharp differences in opinion between these two, I was unprepared for the sparring match that followed. Leighton led off with an inquiry as to progress with the new J-3 model of the Lawrance air-cooled radial, which Rentschler fended off with a report on the splendid dependability shown by the liquid-cooled Hispano E-4 in its endurance tests. He had in mind that if Leighton would recommend another production order of Hispanos, Wright could use the time to get the Lawrance ready for the next production order. A flush spread up around Leighton’s ears as he rather testily replied that the Bureau was already definitely committed to air-cooled engines in the 200-horsepower size, and that it was Wright’s job to speed developments to meet Bureau requirements. Rentschler seemed to have a quiet knack of automatically tuning out any wave length he did not care to listen in on. Now he passed up the Hispano-Lawrance issue momentarily to develop the basic difference of opinion. He clearly felt that with all Wright’s accumulated experience in liquid-cooled, they could expect to make more rapid progress with them than with Lawrance air-cooled. Leighton let a smile flicker across his lips and redirected the discussion toward air-cooling. On the way up to Paterson, he had told me about a contract Wright had with the Navy for the development of a new 400-hp air-cooled radial called “P-1.” Intended as an out and out replacement for the Liberty, the engine promised to save a lot of weight although it was just an overgrown Lawrance as to design. Now he asked Rentschler for a report on its progress.