more able and reliable man” than Hughes and “if you go along with Hughes I want it understood that Hughes has the responsibility and you do not interfere with him.” 44 Now Kaiser saw that had been a mistake. Jones’s own view on being saddled with the Hughes debacle was never recorded.
On the Spruce Goose, Kaiser had learned his lesson and moved on. Hughes, however, refused to give up. He sank more than $11 million of his money into the plane’s completion. It would fly a single maiden flight after the war, in November 1947, with Hughes himself at the wheel. Then it returned to its climate-controlled hangar, where it would remain until Hughes’s death in 1976. Right to the end, Hughes kept on payroll a fifty-man team to fix and maintain his wonder plane in case the federal government, or Henry Kaiser, changed their minds.
Kaiser never did. But he was not done with airplanes by a long shot.
His opportunity to redeem himself came with Brewster Aviation. The Long Island company had a $275 million contract to make dive-bombersand one of the Navy’s finest fighters, the Vought F4U Corsair. In February 1943 it produced exactly eight planes. Not one was a Corsair.
The problem was partly poor materials control, which created bottlenecks and slowed production. But the heart of the matter was management’s battles with labor and the plant’s UAW boss, Tom Di Lorenzo. Di Lorenzo was a hard-nosed union man who had fiercely opposed the no-strike pledge taken at the beginning of the war. “Our policy is not to win the war at any cost,” he told the
Washington Post
, but “to win the war without sacrificing too many of [our] rights,” including the right to strike. The latest strike, a bruising one, had come in August 1943—the same month Roosevelt and Churchill were meeting in Quebec to plan Operation Overlord. When the strike was over, Brewster president Fred Riebel decided it was time to quit. He was Brewster’s fifth president in sixteen months. 45
The Truman Committee felt it had to weigh in on this unacceptable interruption of production in a vital defense plant. It knew that Kaiser was on the board, so it presented him with a choice. Resign from the board, or take Brewster over. Kaiser was less than thrilled. “It’s not an alluring prospect to take over what is reputed to be the worst situation in the country,” he grumbled. But Undersecretary James Forrestal also intervened, asking Kaiser to take over as a personal favor. The Navy, he said, had to have those planes. So Kaiser agreed and handed the plant over to his younger son, Henry Jr. “Brewster will be back on schedule this month,” he said. 46
More than seven thousand Brewster workers and managers were on hand on Sunday, November 7, 1943, when Kaiser landed at La Guardia Airport. They wanted to hear how he was going to heal the labor wounds and turn their plant around. He wanted to fill them with the same enthusiasm and optimism about the war effort he was feeling, despite Howard Hughes. He strode to the microphone.
“I feel so cheerful I could sing to you,” he announced. Then to the vast astonishment of his audience, he did.
“Oh, what a beautiful morning
,
Oh, what a beautiful day
,
I’ve got a beautiful feeling
,
Everything’s going my way.”
“I can’t sing,” he told the newspapers afterward, “but … and seeing all those people there and the planes they helped to make, well, it gives you a feeling of confidence. That’s why I couldn’t help but to do my best in trying to sing.” 47
Kaiser decided the best way to get Brewster Aviation productive again was to work out a deal with its labor leaders. “You don’t cure a patient by whipping him,” he said. But some in Congress, like Representative Melvin J. Maas of Minnesota, thought he was going too far.
MAAS: Of course if you give [labor] all the candy he wants, he is for you, isn’t he?
KAISER: That’s not what I said. You are making a statement that I am giving
On the Spruce Goose, Kaiser had learned his lesson and moved on. Hughes, however, refused to give up. He sank more than $11 million of his money into the plane’s completion. It would fly a single maiden flight after the war, in November 1947, with Hughes himself at the wheel. Then it returned to its climate-controlled hangar, where it would remain until Hughes’s death in 1976. Right to the end, Hughes kept on payroll a fifty-man team to fix and maintain his wonder plane in case the federal government, or Henry Kaiser, changed their minds.
Kaiser never did. But he was not done with airplanes by a long shot.
His opportunity to redeem himself came with Brewster Aviation. The Long Island company had a $275 million contract to make dive-bombersand one of the Navy’s finest fighters, the Vought F4U Corsair. In February 1943 it produced exactly eight planes. Not one was a Corsair.
The problem was partly poor materials control, which created bottlenecks and slowed production. But the heart of the matter was management’s battles with labor and the plant’s UAW boss, Tom Di Lorenzo. Di Lorenzo was a hard-nosed union man who had fiercely opposed the no-strike pledge taken at the beginning of the war. “Our policy is not to win the war at any cost,” he told the
Washington Post
, but “to win the war without sacrificing too many of [our] rights,” including the right to strike. The latest strike, a bruising one, had come in August 1943—the same month Roosevelt and Churchill were meeting in Quebec to plan Operation Overlord. When the strike was over, Brewster president Fred Riebel decided it was time to quit. He was Brewster’s fifth president in sixteen months. 45
The Truman Committee felt it had to weigh in on this unacceptable interruption of production in a vital defense plant. It knew that Kaiser was on the board, so it presented him with a choice. Resign from the board, or take Brewster over. Kaiser was less than thrilled. “It’s not an alluring prospect to take over what is reputed to be the worst situation in the country,” he grumbled. But Undersecretary James Forrestal also intervened, asking Kaiser to take over as a personal favor. The Navy, he said, had to have those planes. So Kaiser agreed and handed the plant over to his younger son, Henry Jr. “Brewster will be back on schedule this month,” he said. 46
More than seven thousand Brewster workers and managers were on hand on Sunday, November 7, 1943, when Kaiser landed at La Guardia Airport. They wanted to hear how he was going to heal the labor wounds and turn their plant around. He wanted to fill them with the same enthusiasm and optimism about the war effort he was feeling, despite Howard Hughes. He strode to the microphone.
“I feel so cheerful I could sing to you,” he announced. Then to the vast astonishment of his audience, he did.
“Oh, what a beautiful morning
,
Oh, what a beautiful day
,
I’ve got a beautiful feeling
,
Everything’s going my way.”
“I can’t sing,” he told the newspapers afterward, “but … and seeing all those people there and the planes they helped to make, well, it gives you a feeling of confidence. That’s why I couldn’t help but to do my best in trying to sing.” 47
Kaiser decided the best way to get Brewster Aviation productive again was to work out a deal with its labor leaders. “You don’t cure a patient by whipping him,” he said. But some in Congress, like Representative Melvin J. Maas of Minnesota, thought he was going too far.
MAAS: Of course if you give [labor] all the candy he wants, he is for you, isn’t he?
KAISER: That’s not what I said. You are making a statement that I am giving
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