It’s hard to believe what I had to go through before I could make that flight. The brass didn’t want me to fly it again, not after the first crash. I had to apply for permission and this time Wright Field turned me down. I went to see Ira Eaker, an Air Force general. I hired him later to run Hughes Aircraft, which was a godawful mistake, and it shows you how sentimentality or the returning of favors has no place in practical business decisions.
But I went to Eaker and he told me he’d see what he could do, and he got me an appointment with Carl Spaatz, the commanding general of the Air Force and a hard-nosed son of a bitch. Spaatz said no dice, and fed me some crap about how I was too valuable a man to be lost in a crash.
I said, ‘The plane won’t crash and I won’t be lost, and if you’re worried about the money you’ve got tied up in it, don’t be, because I’ll guarantee the cost of the plane.’
Spaatz said okay, and I put it in writing that if the ship cracked up for any reason whatsoever, Hughes Tool Company would pay the Army $5 million. It wasn’t me they were worried about, it was their money.
The ship performed beautifully. I got up to 9,000 feet and I had her well over 400 miles an hour. I checked the propellers very well, you can believe that. The second test model didn’t have dual rotation. I was a little nervous, but I don’t think I showed it.
Didn’t you consider having another test pilot fly it that second time?
The F-11 was my ship. I had to fly it.
Wasn’t it after that crash that you grew a mustache?
Yes, but not to hide any scar. That’s what people have always assumed, but they’re wrong. I wasn’t vain that way at all. I grew the mustache because my mouth had been badly burned and it was very painful to shave. That’s the only reason, and since then I’ve shaved it off many times. I like a mustache, but if you have a cold you sneeze into it and all the germs get trapped, and it’s an uncomfortable feeling to have wet hair right under your nose. I certainly put my health before my appearance, so I always shave it off when I have even the beginnings of a cold, because you can sneeze in your sleep and not know that your mustache has become a culture medium for harmful bacteria.
You were wearing that brown fedora at the time of the crash, weren’t you?
I always wore it. I got it back though. The cops took it, and I asked for it and got it back.
You’ve said to me several times that you’re not superstitious. Did you really think of the hat as a good luck piece?
I’m not superstitious, believe me. I suppose it really doesn’t matter anymore, and I can tell you the truth about it now.
I wanted my hat back because there was money in it.
I always carried money in the lining of the hat. And not only that hat, but all my hats. I didn’t have just one hat. I had eight or nine like that, and they all looked alike. That’s where I kept my money for emergencies. My house had been burglarized once, and I thought if anyone breaks in again or finds out where I’m staying he may blow up the safe but he’ll never steal an old dirty hat. So I had all those hats and I kept my money in the lining. When I bought a new one it took me over an hour to scuff it up and trample on it, work the dust into it so that it looked disreputable enough, of no value, just like the others. I had those hats scattered all over, in each of the houses I had. I kept my money in the linings – about four or five thousand dollars in each one, in thousand-dollar bills. And a few singles in case I had trouble changing the larger ones. I never carried that much on me in my wallet or pocket. The hat I wore when the F-11 crashed had only $2,000 and change. But naturally, Jesus, I wanted it back. And the money was in it when they returned it.
And now where do you carry your money?
I can’t wear a hat like that anymore. It got too much publicity, became my trademark. And of course people are always looking for me for various reasons, and that hat would be a dead giveaway. But I carry money. Never mind where.
14
YOU COULD WRITE a whole book about my battle with Senator Owen Brewster of the Republican Party during the 1947 Senate investigations. I’ve often been tempted to do just that. It was one of the most dramatic things that ever happened to me, because that was the time that I actually met some of those people who were out to get me, face to face, on their home field – and I whipped their ass.
I bumped into Bernard Baruch just before this happened, in Washington. We had a little talk about it and he said, ‘Don’t worry, the bastards tried to do the same thing to me.’ He’d been hauled up before the Senate right after the First World War and accused of war profiteering. Naturally they couldn’t prove anything, and that cheered me up a bit, to think that a man of Baruch’s stature and reputation had to suffer the same mudslinging. He told me not to give an inch to them, admit nothing, not even the slightest mistake, because even if it was an innocent mistake, they’d pyramid it into the fact that I was the Dracula of the aircraft industry, sucking the blood out of innocent senators and generals. And Bernie said, ‘Never get excited. Keep your dignity.’
He also advised me to hit back at them every chance I got, because they were more vulnerable than I was, since they were congressmen, and that meant thieves and hypocrites. That was a fruitful talk and it gave me good ideas on how to handle it, although I’d been hitting back already through the newspapers.
This whole experience – going up before that Senate committee those two times – taught me something I’ve never forgotten. I hadn’t been totally aware of it before, but it stayed with me and was a tremendous revelation. I developed a theory.
You take any given situation in life – from the senate investigation to a business deal – where you have two parties or individuals who want something from each other. In other words, practically every situation in life, because that’s what life is, one person putting the pressure on another person and that person trying to defend or attack or bargain or adjust. This excludes most situations where love is involved, but not all, because what passes for love – I’ve seen this time after time between people who are supposed to love each other – is often combat. Many times love degenerates into the most uncivilized form of combat precisely because the people won’t admit it’s combat.
In any situation such as I described – two parties or individuals who want something from each other – you have what I call a lion and a donkey. You can’t have equality in bargaining, in arguing, or in combat. You may have an apparent equality but it’s only an illusion, a false arrangement. You may get a tie score in a football game, or after thirty-six holes of a pro golf tournament, but if they play long enough someone’s going to win. There are no ties in life except if they’re arranged artificially. People are not equal; that’s a pernicious lie.
This is my lion and donkey theory. It’s not patented and it may not be original, but it’s mine. You always have a need for one person to be the lion and one to be the donkey. Most people aren’t aware of this, but it happens anyway.
Two men sit down to negotiate the price for some airplanes and the conditions of delivery. If one of them is accommodating and humble, and says, ‘Oh, yes, I see your point, you’re right, I understand your situation, your problems’ – then the other one automatically is going to have to play the part of the lion and eat the donkey up alive. He may not be a lion by nature, but if there’s a donkey sitting in front of him, all wobbly-kneed, his lion instincts are going to come out and he’s going to chew up the donkey and spit out the bones. If a man goes into that meeting roaring like a lion and says, ‘This is what I want! This is fair, and don’t fool around with me!’ – then it’s the other man who’s going to play the part of the donkey, like it or not. Has to. Because nature, as in the animal kingdom, demands that these two parts be played – that’s nature’s way.